Valley 6
Auburn, United Drive-In
Marquee, late 1997 season. Note that the paint is peeling off the the theater numbers, to reveal the original "1," "2" and "3."
This place built their first screen in 1968; by the 1972 season they added two screens, but for some reason they built a new projection booth/snack bar and new parking in an adjoining 1000 by 1000 foot section. I suspect it was because the first building couldn't handle any more pairs of projectors, and they had to build a whole new building and lot until single-projector platter technology came along. The original screen is in the northeast corner of the southeast lot, and the 1972 lot is to the northwest.
In 1980, the season after the El-Rancho closed, they filled in the lots by adding one new screen in the northwest corner of the newer lot, and two screens on either side of the first screen on the older lot. The two story 1968 booth appeared to already be on the very back of its lot in 1978, thus they would have had to have cleared out some parking again. The three new lots lack a center asile between the speaker posts, which were never built with speakers but with clip-on AM radio CineFi sound in the first place. You have to find your own path between the cars to get to the back.
The first screen was the only one with playground equipment under it, at least in 1978, when I saw The Muppet Movie. Also, all three of the older screens were decorated with colorful floodlights shown on the screen before the movie, now no longer used. The corrugated iron 1980 screens were never adorned. By now the paint on the five newer screens is peeling badly, but the first screen, screen 4, is holding up nicely, with some tile seams.
I finally went to this place again within a couple of weeks of getting a car. I went to see Bullworth at screen 4 of the Valley, or at least I tried to see it. I know drive-in screens aren't as bright as indoor screens, but this one was way worse than I remembered. I could look around to three other screens from where I was sitting, and all the other screens seemed to be suffecintly bright. Screen 4 is the biggest screen on the lot, so by using the same light intensity as the others, the light for screen 4 is too dim.
As bad as Bullworth was, the second feature was in a wider screen format, and so the light source was stretched even more thin. The second feature was Dark City, and dark it was. I could barely see anything, and the sound on this feature was even more distorted than it was for Bullworth. There were advantages to seeing this movie in a drive-in, though. In the movie, when it turns midnight, everything in the city stops and people go to sleep. The second time this happened, twenty minutes into the movie, I glanced down at my car radio's clock, and it really was midnight. Because everyone has to turn on their radio to hear the sound, the theater lot was a sea of blue dashboard clocks all showing midnight in time with the movie. I braced myself for the always distracting announcement during the second feature that the snack bar is closing. When it came, it happend when Murdoch and Emma were talking with each other over a jail visiting room window telephone, and so some cross-talk with the snack bar annoucement seemed to fit.
That was the same month that Godzilla came out, and so they anticipated the crowds they thought they would have by splitting it off onto two screens. Screen 1 showed Godzilla and Men In Black, while screen 6 showed Men In Black first, and then Godzilla. From lot 4, I was in a position to see both screens, and since Men In Black was shorter, I could see different scenes of Godzilla simlutanously. I even saw Matthew Broderick on two screens at the same time, if you can fathom that.
I came back to see other movies at the Valley, and the image was better at the other screens. When I looked back at screen 4 the presentation had gotten worse, with a misadjusted Cinemascope lens showing people and trees standing up diagonally. The Valley doesn't seem to be too concerned about cultivating an audience for the future. They also don't have fresh-popped popcorn.
I saw one movie on screen 5 where the audience faces to the southeast. When I walked to the back of the lot, I noticed from there that the moon had already risen from behind the screen, as it soon would from where I was parked. I actually had to use the sun visor to block out the moon to see the movie. I noticed that most drive-ins try to avoid facing the audience to the southeast for this very reason. Also, this screen had mold streaks running down the corregated iron in the upper-right corner of the screen. At one point the movie showed a Venetian blind, which so perfectly meshed with the mold streaks that it created a checkerboard effect.
The Valley was built before it was owned by United Drive-In, so the screens were hidden instead of being painted in eye-catching colors.
Not the friendliest sign in front of a business.
This place is protected from development from the north by the Green River, and a dairy farm, which adds its own olfactory dimension during shows. It was protected from Auburn to the south only by space, which has recently been filled by creeping development. Now many apartment units at the south end would appear to have a view of several screens. The City of Kent is building its new 277th Street Bypass along the north side of the Valley, and this road may very well turn its intersection with Auburn Way into a major commercial center, to which King County's only remaining drive-in may not be able to compete.
The Valley is by the side of a hill under view homes and the Kent Cemetery. This view was taken from an undeveloped lot near the Scenic Hill neighborhood.
Update: I went on April 8, to see The Road to El-Dorado and Galaxy Quest. I got to see a fireball fall in the sky behind the screen during the second feature (bigger and slower than a meteorite), and I could have seen a Coke trailer with a reference to the classic "Let's all go to the lobby" film, but on all three screens they used the wrong format of that film. They used the scope print at the end of my flat-format film and they showed the flat version after scope movies on other screens. Did I mention that they are probably going to close after this season?
The next visit was May 26, the first visit since the 277th Street Connector opened. The Valley has always been three air miles from my house, but now it is three road miles as well. 277th is aimed like a cannon at screens 2 and 3, as the five lane divided freeway narrows down to one lane in each direction, plus a turning lane, along the north side of the theater. The city must figure that the theater will be closed by the time they do the next phase of construction anyway, probably because the new road will spur development of this intersection. Because my movie was in the south lot, I couldn't get around to see if cars from the new road were shining lights on screen 3. Even cars exiting lot 4 shine lights on screen 3, so some drivers might not resist flashing their high beams at screen 3.
I went to see Jackie Chan's Shanghi Noon on its opening night, which was also the season's opening night of the Valley's south lot. They kept playing the same dumb song on repeat play before the movie, and it was so loud that it kept playing through the quiet parts of the movie. Worse, they assembled Shanghi Noon out of order, in what turned out to be 1, 3, 2 and 4 with no further incident. If you've heard of walk-outs, well here I saw some drive-outs. I wanted to stay to see the second movie, and try to ignore reel two as reel three so they could get back to the tense standoff in Carson City that they inturrupted. No passes were issued for the inconvenience, but it was interesting to walk through the lot to hear people try to rationalize the "plot twists" to each other: "But, see, he had the chopsticks before this scene...." The screen image on screen 5 was dim, and when I looked back at another screen where they were starting Mission Impossible 2, they started the show with an out of frame splice between the generic policy trailer and the first preview. A stellar presenation all around. Bring on the bulldozers.
Driven into the sunset; Lights out? Last of the area's drive-in movies will give way to development, say LA-based owners, Morning News Tribune (Tacoma) August 19, 2001. (No longer available on-line.)
At the Valley 6 Drive-in Theatre, you can still have a ‘uniquely American’ night, Seattle PI, with photos, September 30, 2000. This article says that the Valley still has three to five more years to go. Submitted by Steve Fitzgerald.
South County Journal article on Valley 6; April 2, 1999
Now showing at the Valley, courtesy of the Seattle Times.
See? The well-lit Puget Park screen really is bigger than the dim Valley #4 screen. So says this Seattle Times list of the largest movie screens in the Seattle area, including drive-ins and their parking capacities; October 15, 1998. (The total capacity for all six lots in the Valley adds up to 2800.)
See the Don Sanders depection of the Valley (including photos that are more skillfully composed than mine) in his Washington drive-in tour
What's planned for the Valley Drive-In Site? See this City of Auburn Open House notice. (PDF file)
Satellite view of Valley, from Microsoft Terraserver
1-6: The numbered lots of the Valley
T: Ticket booths
x: Exits from the lots
M: Location of marquee on Auburn Way North
R: Residence
Next to the exit from lot 5 is the maintence shed, where the play equipment from under screen 4 now sits in storage.
Detail of Sectional Aeronautical Chart for visual navigation by looking for such landmarks as drive-in theaters.
USGS Auburn, 1949, 1968 and 1973
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