Opened

[Nathan McLaughlin]

Just wondering of those of us that have opened , how's it going ? We are only open weekends Friday-Saturday and Sunday
First week not bad, second week not good but the rodeo was in town . Would be great to hear from others on what titles have done the best .
First week we showed Goonies everyone had a good time and concessions were up considerably.
Second week we showed E.T. With lots of people saying they can't wait, but with rodeo, a free concert on the water and a poker run for boats , we are at the mercy of what's happening in our small town even in good times , and of course you can't complete with free .
This week we are showing Racing Stripes . Fingers crossed! We may try True Grit with John Wayne we are just searching. We are doing $4.00 admission.



On another note we have had 3 theater's in Oklahoma that I know of that opened May 1 , one 3 screen that was showing the Back To the Future and Despicable Me trilogy's with $5.00 admission. Then sadly closed back down , Due to the lack of attendance and lack of movie releases according to their FB page . The Drive In. in the same town is open.
A single screen was showing double features for $10.00 but you could watch one movie for $5.00 . They even tried free admission their last week open, they show on their FB page that they closed because of 74 cases of Covid-19 and climbing rapidly they decided to postpone movies for a few weeks with plans to reopen as soon as possible. On June 5 a 10 screen to our north and a 6 screen to our south opened with limited 5 movies @ $5.00 admission . There is a single screen not far from us that opened May 1 and after 2 weeks went to only weekends. That's all I know from Oklahoma.

Nate

[Scott Jentsch]

I see five theaters in Oklahoma with showtimes for today, and seven with showtimes for any day. Of course, that doesn't count any theaters have not submitted their upcoming showtimes.

• The District Cinema in Durant
• ShowBiz Cinemas - Edmond in Edmond
• Epic Cinema McAlester in McAlester
• Epic Cinema Muskogee in Muskogee
• Strothers Twin Cinema in Seminole
• Admiral Twin Drive-In in Tulsa
• Cinergy - Tulsa in Tulsa

[Mike Blakesley]

We are open and showing two "classics" per week. Attendance has been fair to poor.

So far results:

Footloose - fair
Grease - pretty good
National Lampoon's Vacation - poor
Beverly Hills Cop - poor
Raiders of the Lost Ark - pretty good (best yet)
Jurassic Park - pretty good
Shrek - fair (and I thought it would do much better than it did)
Ferris Beuller's Day Off - fair

This week we are showing Singin' in the Rain and the original True Grit. Our booker is really high on Singin' in the Rain -- I'm not sure what to expect from it. We've played True Grit before and had good crowds for it.

We are seeing more people on the weeknights than on Fri/Sat, so clearly people are trying to avoid large crowds. I also expected to get a lot more kids than we've had -- I suppose they've gotten used to staring at little screens all day, or I guess they were already used to it.

We've had quite a few teenagers, not a surprise there.

We are charging $4 for all seats.

[Frank Cox]

Please keep us up to date on how you're doing with these movies, Mike. I'm planning to use you as my guinea pig for planning out what to play when I'm allowed to open here.

[Mike Blakesley]

If it helps, here are some good ideas that I've had requests for. We might still play some of these, since it's looking more and more like there won't be any new movies at all this summer.

Jaws
E.T.
1917
Saving Private Ryan
The Cowboys
Fiddler on the Roof
The Sound of Music (which isn't available....thanks for nothing, Disney)
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
They Call Me Trinity
Dirty Dancing
The Outlaw Josey Wales (and other Clint Eastwood films)
Lethal Weapon
The Godfather

I would advise against playing your personal favorites. That's what I did with "Beverly Hills Cop" and we had lousy crowds for it. Although, it happened to play right after the whole George Floyd incident happened so maybe nobody wanted to go see a "cop" movie in that moment.

[John Eickhof]

Mike, its too bad you dont still have the 35mm on line...you could run your print of SOM !!

[Mike Blakesley]

Oh that print is long gone.... it was so faded and vinegar-y I finally tossed it. I have a nice DCP of it that I converted from BluRay, but we still can't show it because Disney won't license it.

[John Eickhof]

i figured it finally must have self destructed...its sad that disney has become so big and errogant that they have completely lost all sense of where they came from and what wed started the whole thging for as well as the exhibitors that made them what they are...profit and greed...a lousy combination! im glad your up and limping along at least! take care! my best to you and the misses!

[Sean Falk]

We opened on the 11th doing Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun with $5 tickets, and kids shows in the morning on thu/fri for $2

First week was pretty poor

• Spidervers kids show
• Split Trolls World Tour and Emma
• I Still Believe (which we were played for a week before we closed)

This Week, better but not great

• A Dogs Way Home (heard kids were walking out crying from how sad this is, I only QC'd 15 min of it)
• The Invisible Man
• Goonies

Next Week

• Goosbumps kids show
• E.T.
• Ferris Buellers

I'm not sure why we're not taking full advantage of the Paramount and WB combos that goonies and Ferris come on, but I don't order our movies haha. Right now we're planning on opening up weekdays in mid july before mulan and tenet come out

Besides the kids shows where we have a garunteed 45 kids on thursdays, Goonies and Trolls have been our better shows

[David Bird]

We were 3-4 weekends delayed here at the drive-in and 3 weekends in we still can't sell food. Extremely reduced capacity of about 120 cars. Good deals on films and pent-up demand means we've sold all the spaces we've had, actually outdrew last year first two weekends, in spades for Shrek/Jurassic Park last weekend. This weekend, we're up against Toy Story 4 and won't touch the attendance for that, but certainly paying a lot less for it. If we can get some food sales approved and just piece this together for a bit, and if Mulan does come out, and people show up for a month to watch it........if-if-if-if, we could be "reasonably reasonable" for the year. It's too bad film wasn't around, or people had a spare projector for some reason. I keep reading about indoors (usually smaller plexes) with parking lots busting a window out the side and creating a drive-in on the fly, using their snack bar or creating service windows for food and doing ok with it. It all depends on the building's set-up of course. People feel very, very safe out here for what it's worth and seem to care very little about what's playing (Sonic & Grease this weekend). Agree on the double-features though, if they're actually letting indoors do it right now, why not?

[Frank Cox]

I'll be cranking 'er up again on July 3.

[Frank Cox]

After being open for my first week and playing Trolls World Tour, I can say that while I didn't really big out of Trolls, it wasn't completely dead either. I'm selling tickets for $4 each for the next while until something "new" is available, so the box office dollars are less than they would be otherwise but people are still (mostly) buying popcorn and drinks. The biggest show that I had for Trolls was on Tuesday, when I got 25 people.

I'm allowed to sell up to 45 tickets so I didn't reach anywhere near capacity this week at all.

Those who came to the show are all telling me how pleased they are that the theatre is up and running again. I had one guy give me $20 for two tickets for his kids ($8 total) and tell me "Just keep the change, I'm happy to have you here again."

For myself, I'm just glad to have (most of) my life back.

[Marcel Birgelen]

We were 3-4 weekends delayed here at the drive-in and 3 weekends in we still can't sell food. Extremely reduced capacity of about 120 cars. Good deals on films and pent-up demand means we've sold all the spaces we've had, actually outdrew last year first two weekends, in spades for Shrek/Jurassic Park last weekend. This weekend, we're up against Toy Story 4 and won't touch the attendance for that, but certainly paying a lot less for it. If we can get some food sales approved and just piece this together for a bit, and if Mulan does come out, and people show up for a month to watch it........if-if-if-if, we could be "reasonably reasonable" for the year. It's too bad film wasn't around, or people had a spare projector for some reason. I keep reading about indoors (usually smaller plexes) with parking lots busting a window out the side and creating a drive-in on the fly, using their snack bar or creating service windows for food and doing ok with it. It all depends on the building's set-up of course. People feel very, very safe out here for what it's worth and seem to care very little about what's playing (Sonic & Grease this weekend). Agree on the double-features though, if they're actually letting indoors do it right now, why not?

I'm thinking out loud, but can't you do orders via app and have it delivered to the car directly? There are some off-the-shelf solutions for this.

[David Bird]

Marcel,
We found a number of apps and tested one that has been integrated into our current POS system. In the end, the drive-ins here ended up getting the runaround from authorities, or I should say, mostly silence in response to our being able to fully comply with all regulations in place for all other existing and new pop-up food businesses, that I believe all have simply opened. In our case, we are completely off limits to customers and serving via take-out window with a sign stating that customers must "deliver all food back to their vehicles to enjoy there". One place is doing a "drive-thru" at their snack bar, some have adapted take-out windows, most have simply installed plexi at the service counter and limited the number of folks inside. Another wrinkle for those places today as the province has mandated masks at all indoor places of business open to the public. Not enforceable by the human rights act, threat of fines from gov't if businesses don't, not an "order" by gov't, but an "instruction", people aren't obliged to wear but can be fined if they are "continually" found not to wear. VERY confusing. We don't believe it applies to us with no customers inside, but how the hell would we know?

[Randy Stankey]

The local ice cream stand in my town has put up caution tape and wooden stakes to make stanchions in order to keep people in line. They require customers to wear masks in line and they ask you to either go to your car to eat your snacks or to keep six feet apart if you want to eat in the yard. They have packed up all of the picnic tables. Customers order and pay at one window then pick up their food at the second.

But for the formality of going through the lines, etc., things are fairly normal. I don’t think they have lost much business at all. I know that the local Department of Health is pretty strict on seasonal businesses like ice cream and hotdog stands so, if this place is operating in this manner, they must have gotten clearance from somebody.

If you consider that a drive-in movie concessions stand is similar to a roadside ice cream stand, I figure you’d be okay if you did the same thing as Creamland.