The path on the right leads an elaborate stone-ad-marble arch guarded by two eight-feet-tall guards in plate armor. Well, it's obviously painted styrofoam, of course, and the armors are probably made out of recycled soda cans, but Josh figures they're supposed play along and believe it's stone and marble and steel plate with some real half-giant warrior inside. So he takes a slight bow and motions Marie to go fist. "M'lady, if you please...?" he says in a very fake English accent.
She replies with a curtsey and walks toward the gate. The guards' halberds suddenly drop halfway down, barring her way, and a recorded voice resounds inside the helmets.
"Beware, o trav'ler at the gate,
for if you cross, you seal your fate:
to be amused and entertained
the way you'll never be again,
to travel through a world of old
of maidens fair and warriors bold,
and to be bored right off your skull
by rhyming couplets weak and dull.
Beware, o trav'ler at the door,
for there's no strength, nor skill, nor lore
that will protect you from the spell
of our bewitched doggerel:
once in, you'll have such fun you'll shout,
I'm never, ever getting out!
You'll have such fun your head will spin
until you cry, I'm staying in!
Beware, beware, and thrice beware:
we warned you good, we warned you fair.
If you're still stubborn, come right in
and meet with your thick-headed kin."
Josh chuckles. "Someone in their marketing department ought to get fired," he says.
"For the bad reverse psychology or for the cheesy poetry?" agrees Marie. Oddly, though, the funny little rhyme seems to have tickled their curiosity, and they take taking another few steps towards the gate. The mechanical guards raise their weapons again to let her and Josh pass.
"What do you say," Marie asks, "are we going in?"
He shrugs. "A bit too Harry-Potter-ish for my tastes, but it might be interesting. Why not?"
As they step in, the loudspeakers inside the armors click and rasp with static, then begin with another verse:
"O trav'ler who's beyond the door
we'll give no warning any more:
you wanted in, have it your way.
There's nothing else for us to say."
For some reason, the words sound oddly ominous to Josh. He looks at Marie and sees the same doubt in her eyes - and somewhere in the back of his head he feels that he knows what's going on, and that it's bad, and that he should run...
He shrugs the feeling off. It's an amusement park, you idiot, he thinks. What do you think is gonna happen?. "Let's go, then," he says.
---=== ... ===---
After marching through a fake-stone corridor, paved in fake marble and lit by fake torches, Josh and Marie come to a hall with a number of exits, each marked by a wooden sign on a post. One of the signs, pointing to a stairway leading down, says "Ye Dungeons". Another, on a much larger and darker opening, warns "Here Be Dragons!" - below it, on the same post, a second, smaller signs reads, "Well, just the one, actually". There are a few other signs and exits, but they are too far to read. On the other side of the hall, another archway leads out to what looks like a replica of a Renaissance village, where some other tourist are wandering about.