WICHITA, Kansas -- When you live with an autistic or mentally handicapped child, watching movies is a totally different experience, one many kids may never get to try, if it weren't for a friendly suggestion made to the staff at Warren Theatres.
"Brought the attention that how many autistic kids are in Wichita metro area, it's a little overwhelming," says Warren Theatres Vice President of Operations Dan Gray.
It's a statistic that led to the creation of a sensory sensitive movie showing at Warren Theatres.
It's provided for autistic or mentally handicapped kids who have a hard time watching movies with the general public.
"It's something you just never knew what certain families or kids were deprived of and now it comes to the lime light and you know, this is gonna be pretty good," says Gray.
The lights won't dim as low, the sound level turned down.
Gray says, "For some kids the sound level we think is great, it hurts them or the lights coming down too dark scares them so these things we're able to offer and make it more relaxing for them."
Those aren't the only differences.
"We're also going to allow the kids to get up, move around, dance, sing if they want to with the movie and have fun and not have to worry about bothering anybody else in the auditorium because that's what it's made for."
The first sensory sensitive showing is still more than a week away, but the staff at Warren Theatres is already hearing from excited families.
"She has a grandson that's autistic and has never been to a movie so this'll be his first experience watching movies in a movie theatre, she was just overwhelmed and excited about it that she'll be able to do in her lifetime, now her grandson is able to do it too," explains Gray.
The sensory sensitive movie will play Saturday morning, November 17th at the Warren West on 21st Street.
Tickets can be purchased starting the Wednesday before.
If it's successful, staff at Warren Theatres say they'll host a similar showing every month.
