Movies at Fairlane Dearborn MI - WaterWinterWonderland.com

Info Updates:

2/12/2006 - Steve Bielawski

The interiour picture you have shows the gate in front of the lobby. The concession stand was off to the right as you enterred. From the lobby, you would walk down a corridor to the right, and all five auditoriums were off that hallway on the left. As I recall, the largest auditorium was the furthest from the lobby. In a quirk of geography, the original box office was actually across the hall to the left of the lobby (from the angle of this picture). The hall led to the back, where there were elevators, rest rooms, and the malls business and security offices. There were rest rooms for the movies, located at the back of that lobby. When the ice rink closed, the movies expanded to include the former rink space, which was downstairs from the original five screens. They built a new. larger lobby downstairs to serve the downstairs auditoriums and kept the old lobby to serve the upstairs auditoriums. At some point shortly after the downstairs auditoriums opened, the upstairs box office was closed and replaced by a box office downstairs, near the entrance to the mall. That box office was a booth in the middle of the walkway, just in front of the hall that led to the entrance to the downstairs auditoriums. If I remember, Mr. Bs Pub was in front of the entrance to the downstairs movies, and the box office was just in front of Mr. Bs. The downstairs box office had a light bar with mylars of the movies and the showtimes under the mylars. All the movies, both upstairs and downstairs, had the aisle in the middle of the auditorium. The best place to watch a movie was just where there were no seats. I cant help wondering why people didnt think of side aisles earlier. The auditoriums had a fairly steep incline, and most were rather narrow but long, leading to some smaller screens and less-than-wonderful viewing. As much as I miss the places of my youth, I have to say that modern theatre seating and auditorium layouts are definite improvements. When UAs lease ran out, in 1997 or 1998, the movies closed, and so did Mr. Bs Pub. The part of the mall which housed the rink, the movies, and the pub was torn down, and the outside of the mall was patched. The Star Theatre Fairlane was built mostly in the parking lot of the old movies. The Star is huge, compared to the old Movies. The Star takes up a lot of the old parking places. As Ann Marie mentioned, the Star is unattached to the mall; this means that people arent walking through the mall to get to late-night movies. I suspect that mall security is glad of that.

2/11/2004 - Ann Marie

When the mall opened in the 70s, on the second level there were 10 movie screens, and on the lower level, there was an indoor ice rink. The ice rink wasnt very profitable, so they turned it into an indoor roller rink. Also not profitable. By the early 80s, the movie complex had expaned to use the lower level as an additional 10 movie screens. When United Artists pulled out of all the local malls, the property sat empty for a while. In the 90s, the property was torn down, and the Star movie complex was built, taking up the previous space of the complex, plus some area of the old parking lot. There is no connection into the mall directly into the theatre, to discourage teens from hanging out. (You have to exit the mall & walk a short distance outside.)

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Movies at Fairlane - Dearborn MI