Free Trial of Blockbuster Total Access Can Save You Money this Summer Movie Season

The one month free trial of Blockbuster online movie rental and the two week trial probably aren’t news to you. I’ve covered them in the past but I wanted to take a look at how the free trials could save you money this summer movie season.  The movie industry makes at least a third, sometimes even 40%, of it’s box office sales off of summer blockbusters. There’s a whole list of movies coming out this summer:

• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• The Incredible Hulk
• Speed Racer
• Hancock
• The X-files
• The Dark Knight
• Get Smart
• The Love Guru
• Wanted
• The Foot Fist Way
• Kung-Fu Panda
• Son of Rambow
• The Wackness

Wow, isn’t Indiana Jones old enough to retire by now?  And how many versions of the Batman movie can they possibly come up with?  Anyhow, most people can find at least one movie they’d like to see in this list of comedy, cartoons, dramas, and fantasy films.

Costs of Going to the Movies
The question is how much money are you willing to spend to see these movies in a theatre?  Don’t get me wrong, spending a hot summer afternoon nestled in the cool darkness of a movie theatre watching the latest new release can be quite enjoyable.  However, now that my wife and I have outgrown our student id discounts, the price of going to the movies is more than we like to pay.

Movie tickets and refreshments add up pretty quickly and suddenly you’ve dropped a bundle for two hours of entertainment.  Of course, our young son has only added to the expenses of movie going.  Tack the cost of a babysitter onto the grand total, alongside ever growing gas prices, and the final bill for the theatre experience is just too much for us.

Renting Movies on Demand
If there’s a movie we really want to watch, or we simply want to veg out for two hours, we just rent DVDs from Blockbuster.  They’re also ramping up for the summer movie season and offering a free trial for new users.  It’s much cheaper and we can watch the movie on our own schedule instead of having to make it to a certain viewing time at the theatre. Blockbuster offers some pretty cheap packages for people like us that only watch a few movies a month.  Of course they also have options for hard core film fanatics but we just don’t have time for those.

Of course there is a certain draw for some people to seeing a movie right away and if you’re really into catching the latest release on the silver screen then online video rental wouldn’t help you much.  There are a lot of movie sequels these days, for example “The Chronicles of Narnia”, “Indiana Jones”, and “The X-Files” all have previous versions you might want to catch up on before seeing the latest in the series. 

The Blockbuster trial might actually work well in these cases, if you’re going to spend the money to see the new ones at the cinema, you could order the prequels ahead of time and refresh your memory for free.  You might also get them for free by checking out your cable stations to see if they’re showing any of the previous movies ahead of the new release.  It seems like TBS or a similar channel did that for the Star Wars and Lord of the Ring movies as they rolled out new ones.

Save Money on Movies
So if you have the patience, you could save some money this summer by avoiding the new releases in the theatre and signing up for a free trial of Blockbuster’s Total Access.  To avoid being charged for movies after the trial ends, make sure you have your DVD’s returned before the last day of your trial period.  Enjoy!

Ben Edwards, the founder of Money Smart Life, saved up enough to buy a Nintendo back when he was 12 years old. When he used the money to buy shares of Wal-Mart stock instead, he knew he wasn't like the other kids... His addiction to personal finance has paid off for his family and now he's helping you to afford the life that you want. Check him out on the web at Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

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