The movies

Raul, Isabel and I just returned from spending a week in El Salvador to celebrate his aunt's 75th birthday.  While we were there, Raul and I had the luxury of having an evening out to ourselves, and along with dinner, decided to go see a movie.  Given how starkly different the El Salvador movie experience was from a recent trip to the movies in Granada, I thought it was well worth a post.

First, the Granada experience.  Granada has one movie theater.  It is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday and only shows one movie per weekend at 6:45 pm.  The cost is only a buck or two ( I can't remember), and you can get popcorn, soda and hotdogs cheaply.  The movies are fairly recent but unfortunately are dubbed.  The theater itself is very old--I don't know for sure but guessing 1940's or 1950's, has NO airconditioning in this heat, and has wooden chairs that do not move.  The audio system is poor and there are a couple of resident bats that swoop through the theater and in front of the screen throughout the performance.  They were showing "The Croods" last month and went as we thought it would be nice entertainment for Isabel.  Isabel was completely hooked on the experience and loved every minute, asking for several days after to go back again.  This was her very first trip to a movie theater and what better way to be broken into the movie experience than in a retro theater, complete with live bats as extra entertainment.  We are anxious to go back again, but unfortunately the recent movies have all been quite violent and not family-friendly.

Next, El Salvador (or more specifically San Salvador).  Iron Man 3 was in theaters there before it opened in the US for some reason. Being a huge Robert Downey Jr. fan, this was the movie choice for me and one I knew Raul would also be willing to watch. The first thing that surprised us was that in one theater, you had 3 choices of how to view your movie--in 3D, wtih subtitles; in HD with subtitles; or in HD dubbed.  We went for HD with subtitles and after dinner (and picking up Raul's cousin), went to the theater to get tickets, which was our next surprise.  When buying tickets you actually choose which seats you want to sit in, and receive tickets with assigned seats.  How great is that? No getting stuck down front or split up!  After getting some pocorn and soda (which are also supersized as in the US, but thankfully only a couple of dollars), we went to our theater to get our seats.  It was very nice, laid out like most theaters in the US, complete with the requisite 10-15 minutes of previews.  Unfortunately we did not have any bat friends, but the other thing they did have, which I thought was great, was a large number of booster seats outside of the theaters for children.  I have to say, San Salvador is much more kid-friendly in their malls, theaters etc.  than the places that I've visited in the US.

So there are our two very different "developing world" movie theater experiences (fully recognizing that the two countries and cities are at very different economic levels).