Beds in cinemas – a great idea?

This is a thought I had in the usual place last night after a family trip to the cinema to see the first episode of the current series of Dr Who. We were in the cinema at 7pm and left just shy of 10pm (and had a jolly good evening). My youngest son, who is just four, was struggling to stay awake by 10pm. I was also feeling a bit restless after 3 hours in a seat.

Last night’s Dr Who event

After we got home, my husband and I decided to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother in bed with tea and toast before going to sleep. Watching TV from the comforts of a duvet and fury blanket is bliss. I love watching TV in bed. So, it occurred to me then, why hasn’t anyone thought to fill a cinema with beds?

If there were beds in cinemas we could take our children along in the evening knowing that if tiredness over took them they could just lie down for a while and have a short nap. I would also love the opportunity of forty winks during the fighty bits of certain films. I have a bit of a reputation for falling asleep at the cinema (AI, Wreck It Ralf, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I to name just a few) but that experience would have been far more pleasant with a duvet and pillows rather than sitting upright in a chair.

That lovely beast the Internet tells me that there is already a cinema that has six double beds in its interior.  It is in London and it is called the Electric Cinema. I need to go there.

The Electric Cinema

The closest I can find to a cinema containing just beds was an event that happened a few years ago. The Parisian music hall, Olympia, was filled with beds from Ikea to promote mattresses from that lovely yellow-and-blue furniture shop for a one-off cinema screening event.

Comfy cinema viewing here

There is also a chain of Indonesian cinemas which offer ‘velvet seating’ which would offer an even more pleasant experience for film-watching than lying in my own bed at home.

Velvet heaven

So it seems I’m not the first person to come up with this idea. But Indonesia, and even London, are just that bit too far away for a night at the pictures. I just wish Cineworld in Shrewsbury would sit up and listen.