{"id":64,"date":"2009-01-29T13:06:45","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T13:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/?p=64"},"modified":"2009-01-29T13:07:36","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T13:07:36","slug":"the-cry-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/2009\/01\/29\/the-cry-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cry Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

While disruptive children are\u00a0often portrayed as a modern hassle of movie going,\u00a0this problematic issue has\u00a0likely been around as long as parents have been taking\u00a0children to the movies. These days, the problem is generally taken for granted or occasionally addressed through\u00a0alternative\u00a0admissions programs\u00a0(21 and over\u00a0only, “mommy Mondays”, etc.). However, there was once a\u00a0rather simplistic answer to this issue, the “cry room”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
The first theatre to utilize the idea is lost to history, but, beginning in the 1940’s,\u00a0many\u00a0cinemas featured\u00a0a small, soundproof,\u00a0room or booth, in the back of their auditoriums, that allowed parents with disruptive children to watch films without bothering fellow moviegoers. These cry rooms, usually seating no\u00a0more than a half dozen people,\u00a0featured a large viewing window and often an\u00a0independent audio source. Occasionally, the space was set up in a more casual “living room” fashion, but, more often than not,\u00a0they provided amenities that mirrored the\u00a0adjoining auditorium.\u00a0This seemingly ideal feature never caught on as an industry standard, but, for\u00a0several decades, the cry room was a luxury amenity for many modern cinemas.<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
\"Rancho<\/a><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
By the\u00a01970’s, cry rooms went the way of “smoking lounges”,\u00a0loge seating, and other luxury\u00a0features; virtually disappearing by the end of the decade.\u00a0With the advent of the multiplex,\u00a0cinema operators began to approach their venues\u00a0with an eye towards economically efficient use of square footage (AMC, somewhat notoriously, began utilizing an attendance per square foot formula in their theatre design\/operation). “Cry rooms” were simply viewed as a waste of space in the efficiency model of the multiplex era.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Over the ensuing decades, this idea has popped up from time to time, as a novelty,\u00a0and, even\u00a0today, there are chains which have revisited the concept, as many operators search for ways to recapture fickle audiences. In Orange County, the sole remaining example can be found at the Rancho Niguel 8<\/a>, in Laguna Niguel;\u00a0a late 80’s, Mann\u00a0build, that\u00a0features a number of novel design features (for the time), including an early attempt at stadium seating. Considering that disruptive children remain a common complaint among movie goers, and that theatre operators have begun to look back towards their showmanship roots, one wonders if the “cry room” might just make a comeback in the near future.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While disruptive children are\u00a0often portrayed as a modern hassle of movie going,\u00a0this problematic issue has\u00a0likely been around as long as parents have been taking\u00a0children to the movies. These days, the problem is generally taken for granted or occasionally addressed through\u00a0alternative\u00a0admissions programs\u00a0(21 and over\u00a0only, “mommy Mondays”, etc.). However, there was once a\u00a0rather simplistic answer to this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}