Hints and tips on how to save money on a family trip to the cinema
Are you running out of cheap ideas to keep the kids entertained at the weekend? A trip to the cinema is often a way to keep the whole family happy, but it can be expensive. Luckily, the cinemas are getting better at catering for the kids and are even better at making it affordable for parents by offering great discounts on blockbuster movies on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Many cinemas offer cheap cinema tickets, starting at as little as just £2.49 per ticket.
Several cinemas offer cheap weekend tickets for kids:
Your local cinema may well offer weekly screenings of cheap movies on the big screen at a special offer price, often on a Saturday morning, which is notoriously the quietest time for a cinema at the weekend and is a good way to get bums on seats when the rest of the cinema is quiet! The cinemas will offer you a cut-price family-friendly film, sometimes even free movies or tickets to pre-release date, or new films, and can be a great way to take the kids out and pay child prices for both the kids and adults as well (you do need to take a kid with you for a cheap ticket!) Children up to and including 14 years of age can normally use child tickets.
Participating cinema chains offering these cheap movie tickets include, but may not be limited to:
Odeon Cinemas offer £2.50 tickets every weekend morning, for movies usually starting at 10 am and every day during the school half term, and even better, the £2.50 a ticket price per person is not just for for the kids, adults/parents get it for this price as well. Sign up for the free My Odeon membership loyalty scheme to have access to these discounted kids prices as well as other offers and discounts throughout the year.
Vue Cinemas have their Vue Mini Mornings on a Saturday or Sunday morning, plus every day in the school holidays, offering kids tickets for £2.49, if you buy the tickets online or via the app, or £3.49 if you buy the tickets directly in the cinema at the box office. The adult tickets are also priced at the same rate as the kids.
Cineworld also offers the kids ticket prices of £2.50 for selected weekend performances, and also offers adults tickets for the same pric, however some of the newer releases you may find that the tickets are more expensive, at around £5.50 each.
Picturehouse cinemas offer kids movie tickets for £3.30 for selected films during the weekend, and like the other cinemas, they charge the adults the same price.
If you can't make the cheaper movie times, then there are other options to be able to grab cheaper tickets:
Sky VIP customers who subscribe to Sky Movies can claim two free Vue cinema tickets every month. These are for standard seats, but you can pay to upgrade your seats if you want to. The tickets can be used anytime; the app gives you two codes to use on the Vue website, and booking using this promo code doesn't incur a booking fee. Additional tickets are charged at the normal price. My mum and dad use this free admission offer every month as their monthly treat to watch a new movie on the big screen, which as OAP's they enjoy the fact its a freebie!
If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can get a code for to grab two Odeon cinema tickets for £10, or two Odeon Luxe recliner tickets for £15, once a month, but the tickets are only valid from Monday to Thursday, so can't be used at the weekend.
If you are an Octopus Energy user, you'll find that there is now an option to get two standard Odeon cinema tickets for £10, via the Octoplus rewards section the Octopus Energy app. Theres a £1 booking fee, per ticket, (so 32 for both tickets), if you use your codes online, but no fee if you redeem your free tickets directly at the cinema. You can also grab a free hot drink and sausage roll as well from Greggs, which might be perfect to enjoy while watching the film! You can claim all the Octopus offers once a week. You can sign up for Octopus as your energy provider via our referral link and get a £50 bonus credit once your energy switch has taken place.
Check your mobile phone providers' loyalty apps for cinema-related discounts. As I write this, Vodafone are offering two Odeon cinema tickets for £8, (£1 booking fee for online bookings), and O2 Priortity users were being offered two Vue tickets for £9 plus 20% off drinks and snacks as well. The tickets are available from 10 am every Monday while stocks last, and the offer then repeats the following week.
The insurance company Compare The Market offers its Meerkat Movies deal, where if you purchase a qualifying insurance product, you are given access to 2-for-1 cinema tickets, which can be used every Tuesday and Wednesday. Obviously, you need to buy something from the company first to get this deal. However, that doesn't have to be expensive. I did a quote for a day trip travel insurance to France, selecting all the default options given, and it gave me a price of £2.11, and this included the Meerkat Movie offer, so even though I wasn't actually going to go to France, I could pay £2.11 and then grab 2-for 1 movie tickets for a year, which is a good investment for me, if I wanted to head to the movies! That doesn't mean you should make up an insurance policy requirement to get the deal, the site is the perfect place to get a quote on all your insurance needs, and you may find its actually offering a good deal on your insurance need anyway, with the benefit of the cinema deal included as well!
If you're disabled and need extra assistance at the cinema, a CEA Card (developed by the UK Cinema Association) costs just £6 a year and allows you to get a free ticket for someone else accompanying you to the cinema, which can be a family member, as long as you are paying full price for your ticket.
Tesco Clubcard users can swap their points for cinema tickets. You get 2 times the value of your Tesco Clubcard vouchers to spend at Cineworld or Picturehouse cinemas, so if you have £5 of Tesco Clubcard points, you'll have £10 to spend at the cinema. You can use your Reward Partner code online or at the cinema counter to pay in part or in full for cinema tickets, snacks or refreshments.
Check your local cinema's website as you may find they have special prices or a limited-time offer for a family ticket to see a movie, rather than having to make a more expensive purchase of movie tickets by purchasing the tickets separately for each member of the family.
If you are a big movie fan, most cinemas offer the ability to pay a monthly fee for a season pass to watch as many movies as you like every month. This is normally only financially viable if you watch 4 or more films per month, it wouldn't make financial sense for just a one-time use per month, but as these season passes often also include discounts on snacks and drinks as well, it can be a decent saving for avid film buffs. I used to have such a pass when I didn't have such a busy life, and I enjoyed going to the movies a couple of times a week, often in the morning when often, I had the whole cinema to myself and found it to be a really good value for money as the pass wasn't just for select movies, it was valid for every movie being shown, and every performance, although you did have to pay an excess if you wanted a VIP seat. These days, I tend to settle for watching a film on a streaming service for time reasons, and may pay extra to watch a movie that still on theatrical release in cinemas, for convenience, but obviously the better place to watch a new film is the cinema!
The discount app, Kids Pass, offers 30% discount on cinema tickets, which can be a great saving if the whole family to the cinema. You do have to pay £3.99 a month, or £39.99 a year for use of the app, however with all the other discounts you can get a wide range of stores, attractions and restaurants, it pays for itself pretty quickly. You can use this link to get a month's use of the app for just £1, which you can cancel if you don't want to pay the £3.99 a month afterwards.
🍿 Top Tip: Remember that cinemas often charge high prices for snacks and drinks. This is because they only receive an incredibly small slice of the ticket sales and admission charges you pay to watch the film. Most of the tickets sales revenue goes to the film companies, and so as these vast cinema complexes need to pay the rent and the bills, so they make use of the huge margins they earn on your purchases of buckets of popcorn, pick and mix/bagged sweets and drinks you purchase from the foyer.
Most cinemas will allow you to bring your own drinks and snacks with you, so you can save a fortune by planning in advance and bringing these with you from home or from a supermarket. The cinemas will normally stop you bringing in hot and/or smelly food such as burgers and pizza etc, so its best not to turn up with the kids and a load of happy meals, as the cinema may say no!
If you do decide to purchase snacks at the cinema, look for combo deals or kids' snack packs that offer discounts on popcorn, drinks, and sweets when purchased together. These are often cheaper, and you can buy a combo and share it with your family to help keep the cost down!
Look at cashback apps to save some money as well. Cineworld has a 7% cashback rate on both the JamDoughnut and Cheddar cashback apps as I write this blog post, and you'll earn that 7% by purchasing a gift card (which you can purchase at the till when you're paying for your tickets/snacks as its fast to come through to you), for the cinema and then use the unique code on the gift card to pay.