Staying the Night at a Drive-In Theater ~ Harvest Hosts

Sometimes an overnight spot is just a place to rest between travel days, and sometimes it is a destination itself.

When we were traveling planning our route south, we knew we needed to split up our travel. One of our goals was to not have a ton of back to back travel days, and to stay under 300 miles on travel days, especially when we are leaving a job location. With a holiday weekend also thrown in the mix, a 65 mile travel day to stay at Malta Drive-In, a Harvest Hosts location, sounded perfect!

We found this one in Malta, New York, just outside of Saratoga Springs, where we had stayed earlier in the month. We were able to arrive early and choose our spot based on the movies we planned to see. The bonus is that there was a double headers on the screen. And drive-in movies are getting harder and harder to find these days, so it was great to make memories at such a cool piece of history! (Find out more about this drive-in’s history and showings on their website HERE )

The downside was booking our reservation before knowing what movies were out–but it was a holiday weekend and we needed a place to stop either way. We missed ones we wanted to see by a few days, but were not disappointed getting to see Lilo & Stitch live action and Mufasa, since we wouldn’t normally have gone to a theater for those.

When the concession stand opened, we went in and grabbed food and snacks for dinner–love it when I don’t have to cook! We also just paid for our stay/admission at the same time. The usual expectation with a Harvest Hosts is to spend $30 for your stay, even if not using any hookups, so it worked out perfectly.

It was a neat experience to tune the radio to the movie station and turn our seating around to watch out the windows since it was raining outside. This did present a visual issue for us since our windows are tinted and there’s a bar in the lower half, but we positioned our seat right and it was fine. Since the second movie was later, we set up the bed and were able to watch the movie then go right to sleep, which was also kind of neat. We would love to have watched it outside, but were happy to not have to leave like many did when it started raining.

It was a neat experience for sure! If we choose to stay at another drive in theater, we will probably wait to book until the last minute to make sure the movie and the weather are more conducive, so we will just have a back up spot if it doesn’t work out.

If you aren’t familiar with Harvest Hosts, it’s a camping membership that allows you to overnight at local businesses all over the country for a small fee. We’ve stayed at wineries, breweries, restaurants, museums, farms, drive-in theaters and many more, all as part of our membership. If you are interested, you can sign up and earn us credit towards next year’s membership at no cost to you using our Harvest Host Referral Link (Boondockers Welcome is a part of this and if you like golf, chat with me before signing up)! You can also check out other ways to save on our savings page at https://barnesonmove.com/savings/