WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — The Cycle Cinema spin room inside B&B Theaters offers a big screen spin on spin class.
“We run a virtual course or a live course,” Nick Walton of Cycle Cinema said. “Right now, we are actually biking around the world. It’s Norway tonight and then Canada for the next three days.”
Inside Theater Five, all seats were removed and replaced with stationary bikes. The cyclists sit in front of the screen, with surround sound, to pedal and sweat.
“COVID was the spark that led to this,” Walton said. “Everyone was trying to figure out what they were going to do with the movie theaters because movies weren’t being produced. Everyone is getting creative and this was the idea that we ran with.”
Walton described his unique approach to the spin room further.
“We want to go top of the line everything,” Walton said. “From the bikes to the booking system to our instructors, everything is super high-end. That was the standard we set from the beginning.”
When the cinema isn’t going around the world, they hold movie-themed nights. For example, classes were dedicated to “Creed III” and “Mario Kart.”
“We can do different things. For the Rocky movie that came out, we did a montage of training scenes with the fight music and the inspirational music that comes with that,” Walton said.
Cyclist Jenn Tussing explained the feeling of pedaling in front of the big screen.
“With the full screen, it makes it a whole experience instead of just working out. It makes it an experience of visiting somewhere else in the world that you couldn’t make it to,” Tussing said.
Cycle Cinema offers two classes daily, morning and night, at 45 minutes each.
“I’m not a gym rat, but this keeps it kind of individual, but you get that mix of a community,” cyclist Sonia Thorn said.
