How to Have a Disney + Movie Night During Lockdown

Many cities across the nation are going into lock down to help stop the spread for the holiday season. There has been this insane rise of super spreader events lately (even some in our own small town). Cases are blowing up like crazy and have overwhelmed our health department. They will quickly overwhelm our hospitals with the very limited amount of ventilators that we have. It is truly scary stuff in our town (which has many anti-maskers). It is just a really crazy time, BUT there is some light at the end of the tunnel this holiday season in the entertainment area.

We miss our annual movie theater trip:

We have been in quarantine for about 240 days now because we are social shielding for the extremely high risk. I have talked about this a lot on the blog so if you have been around a little while, you know. If not you can read more about it here. BUT we have been missing the movie theater. Sounds a little silly right? With everything going on, that one thing we miss is the movie theater? It sounds silly just to type it out…I am more of a “suck it up and get over it” kind of person with things I think of that I miss from the pre-covid era.

This time I am sharing with you for the purpose of also sharing the “solution”. So, usually every November around Thanksgiving my daughter and I go to the theater to see a fun kids movie. We get a HUGE bucket of popcorn, a frozen coke, and a few boxes of candy. Yea, we go all out for these trips because they are a big deal. She brings her doll in matching cloths and we get all dressed up. We even take tons of photos in the theater. It is a big event for us! But this year we won’t be going on our fall theater trip.

Disney + to the Rescue:

Luckily, we can have plenty of home movie nights with tons of awesome movies just a click away (on any device we want to watch them on) with Disney +. This is such a great program. My daughter has the kids profile, and I have the adult profile. But lately we have been flipping though the adult profile because it offers more of the Pixar movies as well which include things like Inside Out, The Incredible’s, and UP. BUT one thing we have found that is even better than the movies is the “short movies! They very in length from 5 minutes to about a half our but they are little spin off’s of some of our favorite movies mentioned above! There are spin off;s for so many of the movies. I HAD NO IDEA! I really don’t watch TV, so when my daughter an I were watching Disney we mainly just watched on her kids profile. BUT now we have been exploring this whole new world of short films! There are so many options with the Disney + program it feels unreal. While it isn’t exactly a replacement for the movie theater seeing fun new movies does help!

Roku

I mentioned you can watch Disney + on any device. Our device of Choice is the big TV screen with the ROKU box. You can get one off amazon here. It connects your TV to the internet and allows you to have all those awesome subscription features like Netflix and Disney+ as well as free stuff like PBS kids and more! My daughter can so easily maneuver around the Roku program between the different programs and even navigate the Disney + or Netflix at just 5 years old with the simple remote it comes with! This is an added bonus if you are cooking and have raw meat or something on your hands so you cant help with the TV remote. It is so easy a 5 year old can do it! If you don’t have one for your TV I would recommend it for this new season of lock-down! You can order it through Amazon prime with 2 day shipping try it free for 30 days here! It is a great sanity saver.

MAKE IT A MOVIE NIGHT WITH THE SNACKS

Make it like a real movie theater night with the snacks. This is really important. A huge part of our movie going experience was the snacks. (Yes a huge part was also the theater, but you can’t have everything in a pandemic, so you might as well make the most of the life you have). We got some really amazing snacks! Obviously, we have the basics: Popcorn, marshmallows, trollies, and sour patch kids. Then we got stuff to make our own FROZEN COKE!

If you are planning for an extensive lock down, or maybe you have been in an extensive social shielding for awhile. YOU NEED A SNOW CONE MACHINE. Now let me tell you why. We have had out snow cone machine for a year, so it is a pre-covid thing for us. But since haven’t been able to just run to the gas station and grab frozen drinks any more, our snow cone machine is the go to! I know many people still eat out and things, but as part of social shielding we do not. We only eat home cooked food, and things that can be cleaned very well, or something that would be packaged on an assembly line by a machine. Anyway, I discovered the other day that amazon had COLA snowcone syrup. Which is totally awesome! I was really excited about this! We can now have frozen cokes with our movie nights just like at the theater. It is really just the icing on the cake of exciting over here.

One thing this pandemic is teaching people, if anything. It is to appreciate the little blessings. I know this is true for me. Just like that little bottle of Cola snow cone syrup, you don’t know how exciting it was when it came in the mail (and after the bottle was wiped down and cleaned and sit for while) and we were finally able to try it! It was just SO amazing! It is just the little stuff in life that really make a world of difference. You really start seeing the little stuff and appreciating it so much more.

So, if you haven’t grab a snow cone machine and some fun flavors from amazon for the upcoming lock-down! You can order them from amazon and Ill link them here:

ZOOM Tips:

When you do your movie night during lock-down over the Thanksgiving holiday keep it just you and the kids. If you do want to share with family and friends ZOOM has an awesome share screen feature where you can share your screen with the people you are zooming with. So you all could watch the same movie over zoom. So, you could have a lock-down movie night this way. You can still talk, and virtually hand out, but help everyone stay well. Also for 24 hours over thanksgiving Zoom is giving Unlimited meeting time for Unlimited participants to your zoom call. For the free zoom plan you usually get a 40 minute zoom call with more than just you and one other person. SO the whole family can hop on a zoom session and play FUN games over screen share or watch a movie, have a virtual meal. Make it a good time. Make the best of it even though it is different. Being alive and apart for a Thanksgiving or two is better than seeing your whole family this year and visiting the grave site next year.

Thanks for stopping by for these holiday tips!

Brie