Introduction
You may remember me mentioning my youngest daughter's birthday and that we were going to the cinemas for the first time to celebrate. Well, that event gave me inspiration for today's content. I have personally always loved the cinemas even though it was not something my mother did regularly with me as we were on the poor side when I grew up. Thankfully, I had a few uncles and aunts that would pass on some money here and there to do fun stuff as well as my grandparents helping my mother keeping her head above water.
I have some very fond memories from going to the cinemas, not all from my childhood btw, some are from my children's childhood or others are from my early adulthood before I became a parent. Today I want to share some of these memories with you, and of course I hope that you will share some of your memories with the readers in a comment or even get inspired to write a post about the topic yourself.
My first cinema experiences
I went digging deep in my memory but I have to be honest that I remember seeing a few movies in the cinema, although I can't recall which one was my first cinema experience. I was born in '84 and I had to check when certain movies were released to see if it could possibly the first one.
One of the movies I remember seeing in the cinema was "Jurassic Park" that movie is from '93 so that means I was about 9 years old. I remember going to the cinema with my favorite uncle and aunt and that I was scared several times to the point that I dug behind my aunt during the movie. I remember the sounds being impressive for me.
Another one I remember seeing in the cinema is "The lion king" from 1994. Although it felt as if I saw this one before Jurassic Park, it seems this one was released a year after that one came out so it must have been next in line. I remember going to the movies with some friends from school and we were all shedding tears at some point when we thought Simba's dad died.
I shared it before in the soundtrack edition, I loved the movie soundtrack even as a child and I can still remember how some of these songs went, even until today. It was a pretty impressive movie for us to see and it was the talk of the town for a long time.
Something in my head said I saw "The Neverending Story" in the cinema too but that one came out when I was just born so it must have been one of these impressive movies I saw on videotape instead. I tried digging in my memory but for my childhood, these are the only ones I'm sure of (and movies that came after) so it's possible that I went to the cinema's for the first time around age 9. But I'm not 100% sure.
First time cinema with my eldest
When my oldest daughter was almost 5 years old, I took her to the cinema for the first time. It was not that we had a lot of money, on the contrary, we were quite poor for a few years. Our municipality had this arrangement for people under a certain income threshold, we could apply for a yearly bonus of 100 euros which we could spend on certain things where the municipality made a deal. You had to apply, and children living with you automatically received their own 100 euros with the approval.
An example of things we did thanks to that arrangement was go to an indoor playground where we could even have a lunch included with fries and Dutch frikandellen which was a favorite for many kids there. Thanks to the arrangement (until they changed it) we were able to have a special afternoon out including some drinks and food which always felt like a special afternoon. The kids could release the energy and we could chill there.
The favorite thing we did though was visit the cinema. We found out that the cinema was also included in this arrangement and we were able to buy a drink and popcorn with the same funds as well, making it a complete evening or afternoon out without having to say no to the request for popcorn or a drink. Once I discovered the cinema being optional, I decided to take my daughter there most Wednesday afternoons so we had some mommy and daughter time. I remember she truly enjoyed it and it was great fun.
One of the movies I saw with here was "Sinterklaas and Diego, the secret of the ring". In Holland we don't only have Santa Claus but we also have "Sinterklaas" bringing gifts at December 5. Back then almost every year a movie was released in cinema and they all had different story lines. This is the one we went to see together:
I remember her first time in the cinema, it was so impressive and she loved every minute of it. I remember she kept raving about these moments we visited the cinema together. When we all went together, it was different, it felt a bit like cheating as this was our moment. I still cherish these moments. Thankfully for her, her brother only joined us once, he could not sit still, he was too young back then. So he kind of ruined the moment, and the movie sucked too. It was SpongeBob SquarePants.
First time cinema for my youngest
This was a first timer for all of us, not only was it her first time cinema in general, it was our first time in the Spanish cinema. She turned 7 and had never seen a cinema from the inside before. We thought it was time to take her and did so on her birthday. We picked a movie that we hoped we would all enjoy and went to "Momias" (Mummies).
We gave her popcorn and a slushpuppy drink and she sat there enjoying the movie to the fullest with a big bucket of popcorn on her lap, haha. I totally expected some language issues, but it turned out I could understand most of the movie and even laugh about the funny moments. She said she also understood most, which kind of makes sense as they speak Spanish to her in school as well.
She really loved the big cinema thing and I think we will pick a cinema moment more often from now on when we find a movie worth watching in the cinema. Compared to her older sister, we have some catching up to do in terms of cinema visits, lol.
This first time experience turned out great and I'm looking forward to the next movie we will watch in a Spanish cinema. I will refrain from picking the original audio and go for Spanish all the time now that this one turned out great.
What do you remember from your first time cinema visits?
Can you recall which movie you saw first? Or is your memory a bit blurred like mine? Maybe you do remember the first time visits with your child(ren) and want to share these? I'd love to see some comments below.
Thank you for stopping by and next week I'll be back with another edition of Cine Kids.
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