It seems like outdoor movie nights for families are becoming more and more popular. Outdoor movies used to be the drive ins or community events but I am seeing more and more families investing in projection equipment and building outdoor screens to have movie night in the comfort of their own backyard.
If you have jumped on the outdoor movie night bandwagon, I thought I would share a little twist that is so fun for kids and perfect for warm summer nights. A dive in movie night.
What is dive in movie night? It is an outdoor movie that incorporates the pool. You just set up the outdoor movie as usual and plan for guests to watch from the comfort of a pool float. This week it is going to hit 110 degrees in Sacramento so it is still 99 degrees or more at 9pm when the sun goes down. A dive in movie is something fun and different and perfect for this crazy, hot summer.
Our kids just love dive in movies. We actually first tried this at a hotel in Florida- Mom and Dad pulled lounge chairs right into the shallow end of the pool and the kids continued to splash and play and eventually float while we watched the movie. When they get cold, tired or hungry, just curl up on the grass with a beach towel and watch the rest of the movie.
We had a Dive In movie night recently and watched the new Anniversary Edition of Bambi. This is such a sweet and classic movie that some little ones may not have seen. The new Anniversary Edition has some extra behind the scenes clips and is now available as a digital movie.
So I opened the Bambi Bluray and entered the code provided in the case into my Disney Movies Anywhere account. That allows me to stream the movie from my phone. I connect the phone to our movie projector and Voila!
To make things more fun for the kids, we did different pool games with little prizes while we were waiting for dark. The kids love racing in pool floats in particular.
Now time for snacks. This was just our family so I didn’t go all out with party foods but candy is a must at any movie night (in my humble opinion) so I put boxes of candy and several glow in the dark bracelets in little treat bags for the kids and they loved it.
I also had berry baskets filled with popcorn and kettle corn and lemonade.
So the kids happily stayed in pool floats for the first part of the movie. I set up lawn chairs for my husband and I to watch plus extra pool floats on the grass for when the children were ready to come out of the pool.
I set out sweat pants and towels for the kids- some nights we get a little breeze- this particular night was a little breezy.
One last little fun touch for movie was some glow in the dark balloons I picked up. These were pretty inexpensive and they really glow amazingly well!
These were the prizes for the pool games- you just blow them up and they glow once it is dark.
And that is about it for our Dive In Movie Night. So fun and hopefully creating memories that will last a lifetime.
Here are the items I used for movie night:
Movie Projectors (this is the one we have) // Portable Speaker // Glow in the Dark Balloons 
And if you want to see some prior posts about outdoor movie nights- check out:
How to Build an Outdoor Movie screen
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