Paradise By The Dashboard Light

When we were living out in the California mountains, one of the things we liked to do on occasion was drive down the hill to the drive-in movie theater in Santee. It was always a fun time, with families enjoying an evening out on the cheap. They showed relatively new movies, and you always got a double feature, which meant, for example, that you could follow up SWAT (a perfect drive-in movie) with The Grind, one of the worst movies ever to grace the silver screen. We usually picked up Mexican food on our way in and enjoyed a nice evening, with the baby (usually) sleeping in the back seat. It was a lot of fun.


Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

We never made it to the drive-in last summer; I think that we figured our girl was at the wrong age for it -- too old to just sleep in the back seat, but too young to sit still and watch the movie. Now, though, with the kid pushing three, I think we'll be heading out to see what central PA has to offer in terms of drive-ins.

My research (which consisted of visiting Drive-Ins.com) turned up four screens nearby:

* Haar's Drive-in, US-15, Dillsburg, 432-3011. Tickets are $7 for adults, $2 for children 3-7. This weekend they're showing Spider-Man 3 (woo!) and Are We Done Yet? (currently rating an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately they have a link to this fruitbat news site on their site, which is enough to make me not want to patronize them.

* York Drive-In Theatre, 334 Carlisle Ave., York, 792-5223. Tickets are $8/$6. As of this morning, the website and phone message are still touting last week's movies (Meet The Robinsons & Wild Hogs).

* Sky-Vu Drive-In, Hwy. 25, Gratz, 365-3816. Tickets prices aren't shown on their website and there was no message when I called. This weekend they're showing Spider-Man 3 and Perfect Stranger.

* Cumberland Drive-In, 715 Centerville Rd, Newville, 776-5212. The website still shows them as "closed for the season" but the phone message is updated. Tickets are $6/$3. This weekend they're showing Spider-Man 3 (big surprise) and Premonition.

See you at the show!