Blue Starlite Drive-in Central — Local services in Austin

THIRTY-FOUR DOLLARS for two people?! This was a 3-star until my husband told me the price. If it were $5/pp, it’d be a fairly cute, slightly sketchy, retro experience that’s bad-in-an-ironically-fun-way. But if you’re charging MORE than a normal theater, you get compared to that. The small screen where we saw our movie is like a 6x6 ft sheet poorly duct taped to the side of an old tow-behind. The sheet is wrinkled at all times and blows freely in the wind. At one point half the screen folded up on itself. The larger screen was much bigger but not nearly as large as you’d expect for a drive-in theater. The concession stand had stale pre-bagged popcorn and was completely overgrown with weeds. The area around the bathrooms was also overgrown and my husband stepped in a stinging nettle bush, the pain of which he compared to a wasp sting. If there were paths through the weeds we couldn’t see them. Also there’s no world in which this location is “central”.

We went to the old location of Airport years ago and it was awesome. Sad to see this is what they came to when they moved. And again - if the price was fair then the novelty and quaintness might win out. But it’s so expensive that it almost feels like...

We really tried to like this experience, but it was just not good in any way. Could forgive, or even appreciate the backyard meets burning man vibe of the place, unfortunately…

Let’s talk about the screens, they are smallish which would be okay but the one we tried to watch was waving in the slightest breeze and had something pressed against the back that made it less than flat.

The audio was awful, my car has an excellent stereo system but the audio coming over the radio station was so distorted that a lot of the dialogue was inaudible.

Focus, the projector was out of focus, not so bad that it was unwatchable but super annoying.

Concessions wise the popcorn was okay but the drinks were basically room temperature.

Considering all the negatives, $35 for two people is outrageous. We agreed that it would have been a better experience to sit in our car in our driveway with an iPad on the dashboard. We left after 20min in order to not ruin the movie. There was one positive, everyone working there...

Tried to watch the new Mean Girls here on Thursday. The main screen is smaller than a typical drive-in screen, and the fabric appeared to be hung incorrectly with wrinkles badly distorting the left third of the picture. The projector was in a large white van which blocked part of the screen for anyone who didn’t get a front row spot. The audio was static-y, and about 30 minutes in began cutting in and out badly. For a musical, this ultimately made the movie unwatchable. We left early and saw Mean Girls for cheaper at an indoor cinema over the weekend. I do not plan to return to this location.

While I definitely had a one star experience, I’m giving two because I think you could like this location if: you’re seeing an older movie that you’ve seen before, you watch it on one of the side screens (smaller than a classroom projector, but more importantly not wrinkled), and you’re willing to pay more for the novelty at the expense of...