Lion King in Kindergarten - a largish group of parents and kids were going and we joined the group. I don’t think my (or the other kids) kids watched much of the movie, they were too busy playing hide n’ seek in the dark!
My oldest is 30 so born in 1988. When did Lion King come out? I’m thinking that was her first or the first for my son born in 1992. I guess that movie is just MY earliest memory of going to see a movie with a child!
Went and looked it up. Lion King was 1994. So that was probably son’s first movie. I don’t know about my D1. We def watched a lot of Little Mermaid but not sure if we ever saw it at the theater.
I will also say - this is a well known fact in my family - that I really don’t like animated movies! No Disney movie stack at our house! All of our kids Disney exposure was at our in home child care provider who loved Disney.
Still don’t like to see animated movies. Exception is Toy Story which is not quite animated.
Lion King. D1 was 2 1/2 and D2 was 12 days old. H took off work and we all went. D1 wore a Lion King dress from the Disney Store. D1 "played"Lion King all summer with me holding D2 up like baby Simba. My baby Simba turns 25 next week!
My son’s first movie in a theater was Lilo and Stitch.
I have no idea, but I do know that my older son saw The Lion King with my boss when he was around four. She was dying to have grandchildren and her own children had not yet provided her with any. I think they both enjoyed it.
The first movie I remember seeing with younger son was the special edition release of Star Wars in 1997. He was five and spent much of it sitting in my lap clutching me. But he loved it while being scared. I think he spent the next year watching the VHS tapes every day.
I seem to think for my son it was Milan, which he loved so much and unfortunately for d I believe it was a Barney movie.
Hands down the worst kids movie was some pikachu movie.
My D was obsessed with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Someone gave her one of those Snow White storybooks with the sound effects (you press a button at certain points of the story and you get singing, or clapping, or cackling.)
So naturally when Disney re-released Snow White we took her to the theater to see it. There’s a point in the story, towards the end, where the dwarves are chasing the evil witch up a mountain, and she slips and falls to her death.
The whole movie theater is silent, until my D pipes up “HA HA HA! And she tumbled to her DOOOOMM.” You guessed it - that’s one of the audio clips from that storybook.
Still cracks me up to think of it. She still loves going to the movies and we love going together.
My Ds first movie in a theater was Aladdin, she was close to 4 1/2 - she was very good during the film, and was really engrossed. When we came out she said she “needed” to go to the park, so we went, and she sang the words “a whole new world” over and over again while playing. After that she insisted on “Jasmine hair” - the long ponytail with all the colors of scrunchies running down it. It was a magical day…for us both.
D’s first movie was Hook in 1991. She was about 6 weeks old and I nursed her under a shawl and she slept the rest of the time.
I didn’t take the kids to see Lion King when it first came out and they were 2 and 3, but only because I was hugely pregnant with child 3 and didn’t want to sit in the theater. When we finally got the tape, I was horrified about the death scene and H and I would fast forward through that scene. By the time S17 came along, he was watching Jurassic Park at age 2…
I remember H took the 2 oldest to see Pocahantas and they came home and tried to play John Smith and Pocahantas. Fun… The other movies I remember seeing with them around that time (1995-ish) were Balto, Babe and Toy Story, Babe is still a family favorite.
The 2 younger boys were all born after a friend of our bought a movie theater so they saw everything. I think middle kid’s first actual movie was Toy Story, he was 15 months old. S17’s first time at the theater was to see “the Iron Giant” for D’s 8th birthday party. He saw his first movie and got his first communicable disease - chicken pox - at the same time.
The first movie I ever saw in a theater was “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” which was actually a bizarre choice for a Jewish child who attended a yeshiva. The next two movies I saw were “Sound of Music” and “Mary Poppins.”
I don’t recall the very first movie in the theater for my kids. What I do recall is that when they were in the early childhood years (they are now 30 and 32), each year, a new Disney movie came to the screen…Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Aladdin. And we saw them all. Then, we owned the videos of all these and more Disney movies and they were hooked on them. One had a Beauty and the Beast birthday party for age 4 and dressed as Belle. Their first Broadway show was also Beauty and the Beast. I also recall at home on video, my oldest, when about 2 years old, was obsessed with the movie musical of Oliver and watched it over and over. I remember listening to the cassette tape in the car of Lion King soooo many times. Currently, my younger daughter is collaborating with Elton John on a project and when she first met with him, I told her to tell him how many times she listened to The Lion King songs in the car as a very young kid, but I am pretty sure she did not mention it to him!!
Land before time. We had talked up the movie but when son walked in theater he didn’t want to go it. All went well 
For our older child (born 1989), it was Beauty and the Beast when she was 2. Before that, she had only seem VHS movies, so she said - “I am ready now, you can start it”.
This Christmas the kids bought us tickets (for last weekend) for a local dinner theater “Beauty and the Beast” - it was fun!
I mentioned my d first movies earlier. But thinking about my dad just now reminded me of my first movies with him as young child. Matinees at the Darlington Cinema in Pawtucket RI.
Son of Flubber series, herbie the lovebug and Worlds Greatest Athlete with Jan Michael Vincent. I recall.
Saw every James Bond and Pink Panther movie there as well. A few at the drive in wearing pajamas and falling asleep half way through too. Lol.
First adult movie I saw with him as a child other than Bond was Jaws. Scared the blank out of me I recall.
My mother took me to see The Sound of Music in a theater in downtown Lewiston, Maine. I must have been around 5 or six, but I still remember it.
The Barney movie. It scarred me for life. The next movie I took my oldest to was Madeline, which was much better. We ended up buying the videotape (remember those?) when it came out.
Also, slightly OT, but my kids both say that the most frightening movie of their childhood was the Truman Show. They still talk about it.
Bad Mom that I am I only remember D1. The Little Mermaid. No clue for the other two.
When one of our dogs die I do recall the two oldest having my husband play the music from the Lion King when they buried our dog in our yard.
Spouse always liked National Geographic shows on TV, and together we both like movies in an IMAX theater, so what could be better than a first movie for a 3 year old of something National Geo-related in 3D! Seeing the lions chase and then eat the lagging gazelle in 3D on a huge screen is really something. Kiddo wailed and averted eyes for most of it.
I remember my S’s first movie in a theater so well! He must have just barely turned three, because his birthday is at the end of November. . It was a week or two before Christmas, and we went to the Westport Audobon tree farm to get our Christmas tree. It was mid afternoon, and starting to snow lightly. We walked all around the farm, looking for “the perfect tree,” as we told S. Finally we found it, and H cut it down. We dragged it back to the parking area, where it was tied to the roof of our Taurus station wagon. By this time it was getting dark. We set off for home, and hit the Post Road just by Bertucci’s, the wood oven pizza place that had replaced The Clam Box, a restaurant where I had eaten many times as a kid. My mother had “cured” for TB at Gaylord, the same place Eugene O’Neill was treated, with the original owner’s wife before I was born. We decided on the spur of the moment to stop for pizza, never having been there before. There were few people there, and we were seated by a window near the brick wood-fired ovens, with the snow drifting down outside. Part way through our (great) pizza, I thought of checking what was on at the Wilton Playhouse. We must have looked at a newspaper or called them on a payphone, because there were no cells. Aladdin! And perfect timing. We drove to the theater, which was at that time the old-fashioned kind with one big screen and curtains, even. When the curtains drew back and the opening credits came up, S, between us, sat bolt upright on the edge of his seat and gasped, “It’s a BIG movie!!” He stayed on the edge of his seat the entire time.
It was a magical thing.