Your ticket will tell you when the gates open – typically 45 minutes to one hour before your movie starts which will give you plenty of time to find a spot and enjoy your picnic!

We’ve tried to keep things super simple by having just two ticket types:

Adult: 16 years & over

Child: from 5 up to 16 years

Little people aged 0 up to 5 years are free.

All seating is general admission, so once you have had your ticket scanned at the gate, you just find your spot, get comfy and enjoy the movie.

Your favourite picnic set up - a picnic blanket, some yummy food & drink, and something comfy to sit on! Bean bags are great, otherwise please bring LOW chairs. If you bring a high chair we’d ask that you sit towards the back and that you’re mindful of blocking other people’s views.

If you’re watching an afternoon movie don’t forget to bring plenty of water, a hat, and some sunscreen.

This year we are BYO picnic - no food trucks just yet.

Absolutely! What’s a movie with no ice creams? We have the most delicious selection of Duck Island Ice Cream flavours on sale. We will have mobile Paywave to keep life easy.

Please park with consideration for the residents of the area. You may find that you’ll have to walk a few hundred metres so if you have a load of picnic gear and bean bags, maybe the driver can drop you off close to the entrance and then they can join you after parking the car. And if you’re watching the evening movie, please be especially quiet when you’re leaving. Thanks.

No there aren’t! We love our parks and we want to keep them beautiful (and safe for the kids) so we ask that you take any picnic rubbish away with you to recycle at home. Please don’t leave rubbish in the park. We’ll have free compostable waste bags for you to use and take away.

Rain? In Hawkes Bay? Seriously, though, no need to worry! Picnic Cinema has a refund/come-again system and this is how it works: If it rains while the movie is showing* (or if we’ve had to cancel the screening for some other reason) and you’ve bought your ticket in advance via Eventfinda your money will be automatically refunded. If you’ve bought your ticket on the day using EFTPOS/PayWave at the gate we’ll ask you to bring your receipt to the entry marquee. We’ll then give you some “come-again” vouchers allowing you and your friends to come back and see any Picnic Cinema movie you like, whenever you like.**

THE SMALL PRINT

* Picnic Cinema uses an electronic rain gauge to measure rainfall. In order for there to be a refund/re-book activation, there needs to be a minimum of 0.5mm of rain falling between the start of the movie and 15 minutes before the end of the movie. If this happens, the movie will be temporarily paused and a notice will be shown on the screen. The determination of what constitutes sufficient rainfall is entirely at Picnic Cinema’s discretion.

** The “come-again” vouchers will be valid for any Picnic Cinema movie until 31 December 2023. The vouchers are not redeemable for cash and cannot be used to book a movie in advance. Entry to a movie using the vouchers is subject to availability at the time when the voucher is presented.

To skip the queue! If the movie isn’t sold out we’ll be selling tickets at the door. The best thing about booking in advance, though, is that if we have to cancel the movie, you’ll be messaged in plenty of time so you can make other plans.

We’re trying really hard to reduce our environmental impact. Yes, we do have to use a diesel generator to power the screen but we only do that because the screen takes a huge amount of power and there is no practical alternative. So… we offset our carbon emissions with the help of a company called [https://ekos.co.nz/ ] Ekos. What that means is that we’re paying Ekos to plant a bio-diverse, permanent forest filled with native trees. That forest will suck up way more carbon than we’ll ever emit and because the forest will remain forever and that carbon will be locked up out of the atmosphere. Forever. But wait, there’s more! Chances are you came to Picnic Cinema by car… so we’ve taken that into account too. Ekos has calculated the amount of carbon emitted by all the car journeys needed for our audience to get to Picnic Cinema then back home again. It’s only an approximation, of course but all that carbon emitted by those journeys is being sucked up into Ekos’ biodiverse native forest. Interested in finding out more, and finding out exactly where the forest is? (Actually, the forest is in the Takaka Valley in Mohua, near the Abel Tasman National Park…). Check them out at ekos.co.nz.