I am attempting to transport to Dark Side in M&MV using the pyramid and it tells me to ctrl + F4 and Enter. It does nothing, freezes, won't allow further game play of any sort and I have to hard quit. Is there something else I should be doing?

Are you using GOG's DOSBox that came bundled with the game, a custom DOSBox, or ScummVM? If DOSBox, how are you starting it?

How long did you wait? I did it yesterday and it took a bunch longer than I would have expected, so I thought it had frozen. Then I just waited longer and it worked.

There's a disc swap between worlds. They edited the text to say ctrl F4 as that's the shortcut to swap in DOSbox. The dosbox.conf file bundled with the game is setup so this will work, so if you've tampered with it, revert the changes. Or if you tried to run the game on a separate DOSbox install, update the dosbox.conf so that it mounts both discs like the one provided by GOG does.

Everything is the standard GOG load. I'm not savvy enough to go mucking with custom interfaces without FUBAR everything up. I'll give it time then. I'm probably too impatient. Will check back for more help if that doesn't resolve the issue. Ty!

OK I've ended up waiting upwards of 30 minutes and nothing is happening. I'm truly baffled at this point. Everything is standard installation. Nothing custom. When I load the game up I select option 1 to use the CD load rather than the disc load. Is there anything different I should be doing? Is there a secret release pattern I'm missing?

Make sure this is two distinct key presses--
Press Ctrl + F4
Release keys
Wait a few seconds
Press Enter
Wait a few more seconds

Ref: https://www.gog.com/forum/might_and_magic_series/entering_the_darkside_portal_pyramid/post5