My D-Box Seat Experience

My local theater, the Century at Tanforan XD, finally got D-Box seats and I decided to give it a try. Are Dbox seats worth it? Let’s find out.

What is Dbox at Cinemark?

For those that don’t know, D-Box seats are a premium experience that lets you “feel” the movie with the aid of moving seats. Movies themselves have to be encoded with the movement information to be sent to the seats. That way the action on the screen stays synced with what your D-Box seat is doing. I’d heard about these seats for years and never really saw any theaters near me with the DBox seats installed. There was actually a demo in the theater lobby, but I didn’t need to try it since I was going to get the full experience. I finally had my chance to try the immersive experience myself this weekend with Independence Day: Resurgence.

D-Box Seat Price

I’m usually cheap and try to get to the theater for the first showings of movies. It’s about $6.50-7.00 for the basic movie. I usually pay the $4 premium for 3D movies on top of the cheap rate since the big screen is the best place to see 3D. The DBox Seat experience commands another $8 premium on top of that. My ticket to see Independence Day: Resurgence this weekend was $19.50. Matinee’s pricing for the D-Box Seats is $21.25 and in the evening it is $23.50.

D-Box Seat Configuration

D-Box seats are reserved. Not too many people are paying for the experience yet, so I got to pick nice seats in the front row of the two rows of installed seats. There were only about 26 seats installed in the theater; two upfront that are wheelchair accessible, and two rows of 12 each about halfway up the theater. We had seats J-10 and J-11 up in the front row. The D-Box seats are about eye level with the middle of the screen. Each seat has a touchpad where you can change the intensity between 4 levels from low to high. There were people behind us that sat in D-Box seats that they didn’t pay for, but the experience is not activated for the seat unless it is paid for.

D-Box Seat Experience

Independence Day: Resurgence was a great movie to try out the D-Box seat experience with. There was gonna be a lot of action with many things flying around based on the previews leading up to release. I’m not going to spoil the movie, but I will point out some memorable parts. The beginning of the movie involved a little flythrough of space. The seats slowly swayed to give one the sense of floating. I was actually a tiny bit nauseated as I wasn’t expecting it but immediately recovered. Later on, there were helicopter scenes where the seat banks as the helicopter banked. There were lots of scenes with other flying vehicles and explosions and combinations of both that made me feel like I was riding along.

Final Thoughts On D-Box Seats

My D-Box Seat experience with this movie was great. The seats moved during action and vehicle scenes. The seats didn’t move during parts that were unnecessary. The D-Box seat movements weren’t overused at all. I don’t feel that it distracted me from my movie experience. It really did add to it, but at the same time, the $8 premium could be put to better use in seeing another movie. As for my dbox review? Are Dbox seats worth it? I am unsure if I would pay for the D-Box experience again, but maybe, I think it really depends on the movie.