Kevin Mitchell of ShowBiz Cinemas says watching a movie in the new motion simulation seats in his movie theatre is like taking your family to a steak dinner.
“I mean you’re not going to take them out to filet mignon every night, but you may do it once in a while,” said the CEO/President. “That’s what this is.
It’s the closest thing to 4D that you’ll get. It really brings you into the movie.”
The new D-BOX motion code seats, available in two rows in the movie house off US 281, were installed last week.
“Real Steel” played in the D-BOX seats starting Friday.
“This is our second theater that we’ve done with D-BOX,” Mitchell said. ‘It’s cutting edge technology. I tell you, when they gave me the demo I was sold on it.”
Mitchell had already installed D-BOX seats in his movie theater in Waxahachie. He said the success in that theater encouraged him to install the motion code seats in the Marble Falls theater.
“One thing I hear in the smaller markets is ‘We’re too small or too country for that,’ but that’s not the case. We believe in bringing the full movie experience to our customers,” Mitchell said.
D-BOX has motion simulation seats in 12 theatres in Texas and 66 in the entire United States. The Montreal based company is expanding into the international entertainment realm.
“It’s not for everybody, but there’s certainly an audience for it,” Mitchell said.
D-BOX seats work in sync with movies especially coded for motion simulation. Mitchell said D-BOX designs at least one movie per month for theatres. They also code movies, video games and television shows for entertainment seats.
Though the theatre will debut the D-BOX seats with action movies first, Mitchell said the motion simulation seats work for many kinds of movies.
In a demo Thursday afternoon, D-BOX seats vibrated, skewed, bumped and trembled with the story line of The Polar Express family movie.
“There will be family movies, and some Christmas movies I can’t talk about just yet,” Mitchell said.
Viewing a movie in the seats will cost an additional $8 per ticket, but Mitchell said it is worth it.
“It won’t bounce you around the whole movie,” Mitchell said. “It’s not like those amusement park rides where the whole intention is to scare you for 10 minutes.”
Mitchell said the seats shiver and shake occasionally as a special effect meant to intensify the movie going experience.
D-BOX works in more arenas than commercial movie watching. They also make motion-simulation programs for government branches such as NASA, for educational purposes and for video games and home theaters.
“It’s not something the average movie-goer is going to do every time they come to a movies,” Mitchell said. “It’s something special.”
