Adventures at Warwick Castle

"Did you see her hem? Six inches deep in mud. She looked positively medieval." -Caroline Bingley, Pride and Prejudice

Yesterday was Journalism Excursion #1: Warwick Castle. We traveled about 45 minutes away to see what was essentially the Renaissance Festival in a 1,000-year-old castle and learn how one would go about marketing a place like this to the general public. I filmed some of the jousting and fighting we got to see before speaking to the one of the PR reps for the castle, which explains the video above. I apologize for the shoddy filming...it's not often I film with my small digital camera.

When I got there, I expected to see tons and tons of tourists with cameras around their necks and small children pulling their parents around. There were plenty to go around, but I didn't expect many of them to be British. That probably sounds completely ridiculous -- I mean, we're in England. But I thought of this castle and others like it as primarily international tourist meccas because I assumed British citizens were used to seeing castles all the time. I thought castles wouldn't be that impressive because they're everywhere in the U.K. -- in the same way, I oftentimes forget that people who live near me go to see Stone Mountain all the time. I can see it from my mom's house and I can hear the fireworks from the Laser Show from my dad's house. It's always been there and I've visited several times in my life, and plenty of my neighbors and friends go often to picnic in, hike through, or just walk around the park.

One of the women in charge of PR for the castle also reiterated this for me. She discussed three different segments of the general population -- older people, nuclear families, and young couples -- and how they try to appeal to those segments. Obviously, most of those people live in England and probably go to Warwick Castle the same way someone who lives in Atlanta would drive about thirty minutes to see Stone Mountain.