Review

Movie theaters have it all -- even nightmare-free parking

By TOM ZUCCO

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 18, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- The theaters at BayWalk are everything you always wished theaters would be. The seats are so comfortable you want to unscrew them and take them home, the films are so vivid they should've handed out Dramamine when they showed The Perfect Storm, and at the food court (it's 100 feet long, too big to be called a snack bar) you'll find everything from chicken quesadilla to mocha latte, most of it for under $6.

More about that in a minute.

What you probably really want to know about the Muvico BayWalk 20 that opened Friday is this:

Is "downtown parking" an oxymoron?

Just how difficult is it to park? Is it worse than the mall? Will you have to refinance your car to pay for it?

This may come as a shock, but parking at BayWalk isn't a nightmare, it's at least as easy as the mall, and if you go at night, you park for free for the next 90 days. After that, night and weekend parking will cost $1 for three hours. Daytime parking will be at usual downtown rates.

What moviegoers in St. Petersburg will have to get used to is what moviegoers in most other cities already have mastered. Vertical parking. The best bet is to use the parking garage, which has space for more than 300 cars. You'll have to walk half a block, but it's not an ordeal.

At Friday night's grand opening, the lines into the garage were short. What makes the process easy is that you enter on Second Street N, which is one-way headed south, so you don't have to cross traffic going in the opposite direction. All cars exit the garage on First Street N, which is one-way headed north.

You also can park on the street, but pay attention to the signs. Some spaces have a 90-minute limit even at night.

Now, back to our movie(s).

There are nine ticket windows at the box office, so you're never waiting long. You soon will be able to buy your tickets on-line (at muvico.com) or in advance.

The lobby is the size of a ballroom, and everything is clearly marked. There's a patio area for those who want to eat in the lobby as people watch and private rooms for birthday parties. The restrooms are located at the entrance to each side of the complex. (Be warned: There's only one restroom on the second level.) Theaters 1-10 are on the left, 11-20 on the right. Simple.

If you've never seen stadium seating in a theater, the closest comparison is a lecture hall at a large university, where you'd find 400 kids trudging through Ms. Barksdale's Introduction to Biology class. Most of them are watching a monitor so they can see what she's doing to the frog.

Here there are just as many seats, but they're far more comfortable (even the armrests are padded), and what's presented in front of you is much easier to understand. And stomach. The wall-to-wall screens and digital sound could make even Aunt Edna's home movies look good. When Jim Carrey flashes his yellow teeth in How The Grinch Stole Christmas, you can't help but shrink back in your seat. In these seats, you can shrink pretty far.

The other bane of ordinary theaters is the view. Gene Shalit's Law of Limited Sight states that someone with Marge Simpson hair always will pick you to sit in front of. Here, the rows are far enough apart and the angle is steep enough that you almost dare tall people and those with big hair to sit in front of you.

But what sets this theater off from most others is the child-care room. It's open to children ages 3 to 8, and has computers (three), video games (two) as well as coloring books and play houses. The kids get an identification bracelet and the parents get a pager. Babysitters may stage protests, because this will surely cut into their business.

"I never thought something this nice would be here," said Sarah Windsor, as she and her husband, Richard, unlocked their car in the parking garage. "And I never thought it would be this easy."

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