Mendon Twin Drive-In — Attraction in Mendon

I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever return here after the experience I had this evening. I just want a refund for how ripped off my experience was.

I’ve been here many times with extremely pleasant experiences. Tonight I took my fiancé on a date to see the double feature of Barbie & Legally Blonde. With how popular Barbie has been, we were one of the first cars to arrive (at 7pm) for the movie starting at 8:45pm. This was to ensure we’d get a good spot & a radio.

The employee who scanned our ticket was kind & informed us that the drive in recently got many new radios, and suggested we get one to avoid our car’s battery being drained (which I always do). A radio rental is $5 on top of the $36.99 it costs for one car to view a double feature. As soon as we parked the car I went to rent our radio.

After killing some time having drinks & eating snacks, we finally turned our radio on while the commercials/previews were playing. The audio was a solid 10-20 seconds behind the video on screen. I went back to the snack-shack which is in charge of radios, and was told by the employee that he couldn’t get ahold of his manager and to try waiting it out (he told me it was a station issue, not a radio issue). There were several other people in line having the same issue as me.

I waited 5-10min before approaching the counter again, trying to “wait it out”. This time I requested a different radio, but instead a different employee helped me. He offered me a refund and I told him I just wanted to watch the movie and wanted a different radio as I’ve never had this issue before. Instead of fulfilling my request, he put new batteries in my radio and told me to try again. I had to go back outside, leaving the long line, to see if it was working because it was too noisy in the shack.

This time, my radio was playing the audio from screen 1 (Barbie) layered with the audio of screen 2 (some movie I did not pay to see) despite being on the correct station.

FOR THE THIRD TIME, 30minutes into the movie which I paid good money to see, I approached the counter about my issue. Not as calm as my previous visits. An employee who I assume to be the manager, John, again denied my request for a new radio. He turned the volume up and said “this is the Barbie audio”. I told him that it was not. He walked outside with me where things were easier to hear, and the radio was CLEARLY playing the audio from both screen 1 & 2 no matter how he adjusted it. I said “do you understand my problem now?” to which he replied “no, go ask for a new radio”. I was seeing red at this point.

I walked past the long line, set my radio on the counter, and grabbed a different one myself. The radio I grabbed was one of the old ones I’ve used during previous visits, not one of the newer ones which was giving myself & many others problems.

After I watched the movie that I had already I missed so much of, I made sure to be first in line to return my radio & request a refund. The employee told me they don’t offer refunds, and called John back to the counter. John claimed he never offered me a refund. I told him, yes he did, and I deserve one after missing so much of my movie. I was being gaslit! He walked away without a word, and returned with a card/coupon valid for “one car” to see a movie on “any night excepted Fri-Sun & excluding special events”. I was so mad I just took the card and walked away.

It’s rare for me to have the time off to enjoy a date night and this experience ruined it for me. I still want my money back. For the radio & the one-car ticket I paid for. I didn’t get to see my movie in it’s entirety and was treated terribly no matter how kind (or firm) I approached staff...

It pains me to write this review, as the Mendon Twin Drive-In holds a very special place in my heart. My fiancé and I have been coming for many years and have so many special memories there, including our engagement last October (the staff were kind enough to play a video that he made for the proposal during the previews). Unfortunately, though, our experiences have been far from positive recently.

For one, every time we come lately, we end up having a rude teenage employee race up to our car on a golf cart and ask to tie down our hatchback (which I always lower on my own upon parking, but somehow lately they always complain and ask me to put it “an inch lower” for reasons unknown), and they always start touching our car before getting our approval. On our most recent visit, the employee actually almost hit my car. I drive an old car, and the electronic hatch back is very finicky. If it needs to be “an inch lower,” I’m happy to do that, but I don’t want someone touching and potentially damaging my car without my permission.

Additionally, if staff are going to be sticklers about my hatchback needing to be a single inch lower, I would appreciate if they would enforce the rules about people keeping their engines and lights off - I’ve missed parts of my movies during my last three visits because I had to get out of my car and ask other patrons to stop blowing exhaust in my face and/or turn their car lights off so that I wasn’t blinded.

Most disappointing of all, however is that the drive-in has taken to fear-mongering in order to get every patron to spring an extra $5 on a rental radio. I have never seen this kind of conduct before at any drive-in, and I have been to dozens of drive-ins all over New England and California. Of all my trips to any drive-in, I have only ever needed a jumpstart once (which happened to be at the Mendon Twin), but I always felt reassured knowing that every drive-in offered the service in case of an emergency. During our most recent trip to Mendon Twin, though, before the show started, an employee came on the loud speaker reminding all guests to rent a $5 radio to avoid “having to call a tow truck” because they “do not do jumpstarts anymore.” Even worse, they emphasized how “nobody wants to have to call a tow truck at 1am” and urged every customer to rent a radio for $5. Even though my car battery has been perfectly fine at almost every single visit I have ever taken to any drive-in, I fell victim to the INTENSE (and inappropriate) fear mongering and paid for a rental, because they talked about tow trucks so much that I was terrified to take the risk. I observed almost every other customer doing the same.

This is so disheartening, and Mendon Twin has lost a loyal,...

Just making one thing clear: bring your own food. I promise you, you won’t regret it. Based on reviews, I played it safe and got cheese fries and popcorn. The fries tasted like they could have been cooked longer and the cheese was mediocre but it wasn’t horrible! The popcorn was actually pretty decent. I enjoyed it but I didn’t like the butter I got on the side. Nonetheless, I still think you’re better off bringing your own food. At the end of the day, you know what you enjoy, it will probably be cheaper and it will most certainly taste better. No offense to their snack shack.

As for customer service; if it wasn’t for one very sweet woman at the register, it would’ve probably been ruined for us. The lady at box office was dull but at least informative of where to go. The woman serving us food was something else! Either she hates her job or she’s just trying to DO her job and make the line go as quickly as possible. She could really be nicer though, what would it cost her?

Again, thanks to that very nice lady at the register in the snack shack our first experience at the drive-in was nice. She was so sweet! What an impression she left on us.

For the actual drive-in, I loved it! We brought a Jeep and sat in the trunk with the seats folded down and it was nice. I rented a radio to be safe and it went very smoothly. I’ve watched Hocus Pocus plenty of times but I laughed more tonight than I usually do. I absolutely loved the entire experience of watching a movie on a screen outside. The freshness of the outdoors with the comfort of being inside the car eating and drinking to my delight was wonderful. If only we had a drive-in closer to home.

I highly recommend it! Except for the food. I did read the reviews and many others said the food was basically trash. It is. Bring your own. They should really consider upgrading the quality of their food. We didn’t have ice cream though. Don’t think we would if we returned.

Oh! The people driving around checking the area was kind of annoying as well. Nothing worse than bright lights flashing when you’re watching a movie in total darkness. But it didn’t happen too often. I would...