Summer Bucket List: See A Drive-In Movie

Every summer, my friends and I create a summer bucket list of activities to accomplish before Labor Day. One of those bucket list activities was to see a drive-in movie. Seeing a movie at a drive-in theater is a summer time classic.

Some of my fondest childhood memories were summer evenings at the drive-in movie theater. My home town had a drive-in movie theater, one of the first ever to open in Connecticut. 

.http://cinematreasures.org

According to United Drive-In Theater Owners Association, the United States currently has 604 movie screens located at 357 drive-in movie theaters still in operation. The number of drive-in movie theaters and screens decreases every year. In the past ten years, approximately 35 theaters have shuttered.

The closest drive-in movie theater to Washington, DC is Stephens Family Drive-In Movie Theater, located in Frederick County. Here is a great website with the locations of all the theaters in Virginia.

When I was a child, the cost to enter the drive-in movie theater was by the car load, not per person. It was always fun to see how many people you could squish into one car. Now a days, Hollywood requires theater operators to charge entrance fees per person; instead of per car load. The cost for the Stephens Theater was very reasonable at $8 for adults and $4 for children.

The Stephens Drive-In Movie Theater has two screens that show two different movies at the same time. Unfortunately, I only took a picture of screen A.

This theater still had the speaker boxes that you attach to your cars:

                                     

The United Drive-In Theater Owners Association indicates that the majority of profits come from the concessions: "movie theatres (both outdoor and indoor) make most of their money in the concession stand. An often-high percentage of the monies received for ticket sales must be paid to the film studios as film rent. Therefore, for a theatre to survive, theatre operators must depend on their customers to patronize their snack bars."

Stephen's had a small concession stand between both screens:

The concession stand sells pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, and traditional movie food: popcorn, candy, soda etc.

On the weekends, the theater sells snow cones and funnel cakes:

That night we watched Disney's Planes and Percy Jackson. 

To watch the movies, you either put lawn chairs outside of your cars:

or you pop open the hatch of your SUV

Either way, drive-in movie theaters are a summer classic. We need to support them before they die.

One way to support your local drive-in movie theater is to help it switch to digital projectors. Many new movies are no longer being made into reel formats. This limits the amount of movies a drive-in can show on their older equipment.

Upgrading to digital equipment can cost upwards of $80,000. Honda is hosting a competition to help 5 drive-in theaters to purchase digital protectors. If you visit a theater, voting takes a few minutes, but your vote can help save a small business.

Drive-In movie theaters are summer time traditions for many of us. If we do not visit them, they will disappear and our children and their children will lose an amazing tradition.

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