The past year has brought forth many changes to our lives, with one of the main things being our ability to gather, especially among the community. On June 4, in Colton, residents were able to take one small step towards getting back to their old lives, as the decades-long tradition of “movies in the park” finally returned. A limited capacity crowd showed up to Rich Dauer park in Colton to watch “Trolls: World Tour," the first of at least four movies that the city will be showing this summer, a big change from the past year where the entire program was on hold due to Covid-19.
According to City of Colton Recreation Manager Heidi Strutz, the changes to the program reflect the changes in our lives over the past year.
“We had to require registration, which this was the first year that we have ever had to do that,” Strutz said. “Also, we had to create gathering areas for families to associate together while also respecting social distancing between them and other families. So that limited our attendance, which was unfortunate.”
Along with social distanced seating, the city also provided sanitizing stations throughout the venue and followed mask-wearing protocols, seemingly taking every precaution to make the event as safe as possible.
Strutz said that they hope as the weeks' progress, that the state and local officials will allow for more and more residents to come out to future movies in the park events. Although not a lot of people were able to register for this event, the ones that did were simply happy to finally be out of the house and among one another.
“Just to be able to get the kids out and do something different, they all miss the movies in the park so this was perfect.” Colton resident, Leanna Martinez said.
Along with the showing of the movie for free, the city also had water, popcorn, and snacks available for purchase and even brought in two real-life “Trolls” for residents to take pictures with before the movie, which was a hit among the children in the crowd.
With many of the children only having only seen “Trolls," at home due to it being released during the pandemic, it was a night that many people had planned for a while.
“Our son hasn’t even been to a park or a movie theater before because of Covid, so this seemed like something he would like, we're definitely looking forward to the rest of them this summer,” said Rosanna Gaitan of Colton.
Registration for “Trolls” was filled well in advance of the showing and the registration for the next event is almost full as well, according to Strutz, as the summer progresses and more people are able to register for the events, the program is hoping to add on two additional movies in August.
For now, though, the lineup for the rest of summer consists of a June 25th showing of “Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch," at Rich Dauer Park, followed by a July 16th showing of “Raya and the Last Dragon” at Veterans Park in Colton and a July 30th showing of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse.," also at Veterans Park. All movies will begin at sunset and require registration at apm.activecommunities.com/colton.