{"id":4310,"date":"2016-10-06T16:33:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T16:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/?p=4310"},"modified":"2016-10-17T17:55:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T17:55:41","slug":"beyond-popcorn-the-growing-popularity-of-dine-in-theaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/fall-2016\/beyond-popcorn-the-growing-popularity-of-dine-in-theaters\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beyond Popcorn: The Growing Popularity of Dine-in Theaters<\/h2>\n

By Alexis Daly<\/p><\/p>\n

From Drive-in to Dine-in<\/h4>\n

D<\/span>o dinner and a movie sound like too much of a hassle these days? With long waits at restaurants and crowded theaters, a Friday night out can turn into a five-hour event. However, a genius idea that started in Texas is changing the view of your typical date night to the movies.<\/p>\n

Eating and watching is not completely new. Remember\u00a0drive-in movie theaters? Rewind to 1933 when the first drive-in opened in Camden, New Jersey. Named \u201cPark-In Theaters,\u201d the idea was conceived by Richard Hollingshead who first tested the concept in his own driveway using a 1928 Kodak projector mounted on the hood of his car, a screen tacked up to a few trees and a radio behind the screen for sound.<\/p>\n

Tickets sold for 25 cents per car and 25 cents per person. Hollingshead\u2019s patent was lost in 1949 and drive-in theaters were built all across the country. In the late 1950s through the mid-sixties, there were more than 4,000 theatres nationwide.<\/p>\n

Many reading this can remember how you would drive up, attach the audio box to your hand-cranked window and watch a movie from the comfort and privacy of your own car. Maybe you would walk to the concession stand to get popcorn and a soda. Some drive-ins even had picnic tables and playgrounds for the kids.<\/p>\n

The demise of the drive-in theatre was partially due to the increasing price of real estate, digital cinema, theatres offering a larger selection of movies to choose from and the boom of in-home movie watching via the likes of Netflix and Amazon.<\/p>\n

There are still over 330 drive-in theaters left in the U.S. where you can re-live your youth or pretend you are back in the 50s or 60s.<\/p>\n

Move Over Drive-In\u2026 Welcome Dine-In<\/h4>\n

Dine-in theaters were created to revamp the dying movie theater market and, in some ways, to bring back the glory days of drive-in theaters. These popular theaters started in the south and have begun to quickly spread across the country.<\/p>\n

The idea arose from a desire to have cocktails at the movies and grew into a full-scale, dine-in theater from there. The dine-In theater combines the dinner and a movie outing into one. You still buy a ticket at the box office, but the experience inside the theater is completely different.<\/p>\n

Not Just Popcorn and Candy<\/h4>\n

As you relax in a reclining chair, a stealthy waiter takes your order before the movie begins. The typical menu not only includes the classics like popcorn and candy but restaurant-caliber food plus your favorite cocktails and beer. If you need anything during the movie, simply push a button on the chair to alert the waiter.<\/p>\n

These dine-in theaters are the ideal hybrid to a dinner and a movie night\u2014the best of both worlds. They are popping up all over the country, especially in major cities. Founded in 2001, Dallas-based Movie Tavern, The Movie Tavern<\/a> boasts 24 high-quality theatres and 211 digital screens in ten states<\/p>\n

AMC Theaters also has jumped on board and has opened dine-in theaters in downtown Los Angeles and Chicago, among other cities.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t live near any major cities, there are a few private companies that are joining in on this trend. Living in Boston? There is a theater called the Showcase SuperLux located in Chestnut Hill. If these aren\u2019t all great reasons to visit a dine-in theater near you, then here are four more reasons.<\/p>\n

\"328074id1f_Sully_FinalRated_27x40_1Sheet.indd\"Sully<\/em> (Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)<\/h4>\n

On January 15, 2009, the world watched as Captain \u201cSully\u201d Sullenberger safely landed his failing plane on the freezing Hudson River, managing to save all 155 people on board\u2014an event that later became known as the \u201cMiracle on the Hudson.\u201d As the world and media triumphed Sully as a hero, he was still facing threats to his career and his reputation.<\/p>\n

Directed by Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood and starring Tom Hanks as Captain Sullenberger, Sully chronicles the dramatic events that unfolded after the landing. Also starring is Aaron Eckhart (Olympus Has Fallen<\/em> and The Dark Knight<\/em>) as Jeff Skiles, Sully\u2019s co-pilot, and Oscar-nominated Laura Linney (The Savages<\/em> and Kinsey<\/em>) as Sully\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n

Storks<\/em> (Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Sony Pictures Imageworks)\"328223id1e_Storks_FinalRated_27x40_1Sheet.indd\"<\/h4>\n

Storks<\/em> is a comedy that plays on the old myth that storks deliver babies\u2014or at least they used to. Instead of delivering babies, storks now deliver packages for a major retailer. However, Junior (Andy Samberg), the companies best delivery stork, accidentally reactivates the Baby Factory, resulting in an unauthorized, adorable baby girl.<\/p>\n

Storks<\/em> follows Junior and his friend Tulip, the only human on Stork Mountain, on their adventure to make their first-ever baby drop off before the boss finds out. This delivery could make one family happy and might restore storks back to their original purpose.<\/p>\n

Directed by Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors<\/em>) and Oscar-nominee Doug Sweetland (Cars<\/em>), this animation stars Andy Samberg (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs<\/em>), Kelsey Grammer (The Simpsons<\/em>), Jennifer Anniston (We\u2019re the Millers<\/em>), and Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"Inferno<\/em> (Sony Pictures)<\/h4>\n

Oscar-winner Ron Howard returns to direct the latest installment in Dan Brown\u2019s bestselling Da Vinci Code<\/em> series. Inferno<\/em> follows the story of the famous symbologist, Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), as he wakes up in a hospital in Italy with memory loss.<\/p>\n

Langdon teams up with a doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), in the hopes of regaining his memory. All the while, the team races through Europe in order to stop a villain from spreading a virus throughout Earth that would result in the death of half of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

\"loving-loving_onesheet_rgb-550h\"Loving<\/em> (Sony Pictures)<\/h4>\n

Loving<\/em> is a historical drama written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Starring Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, as Richard and Mildred Loving, it chronicles the true story of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The film follows the couple as they are arrested in Virginia for their interracial marriage, which violates Virginia state law. They are banned to Washington, D.C., where they sue the state. Their actions result in this famous court case, which made it unconstitutional for states to create laws banning interracial marriages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From drive-in to dine in. Dinner and a movie with a new twist. Plus new releases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2016","category-fall-2016-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4310"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4609,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4310\/revisions\/4609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}