9 premium screens
San Diego
There are 9 premium screens in San Diego, across IMAX, Dolby Cinema, 4DX and ScreenX. The biggest picture is at Fleet Science Center — 634 m² of lit screen, 285% more than the next room.
No room here can show the full 1.43:1 IMAX frame. Every screen in San Diego crops to 1.90 or wider, so a film shot with IMAX cameras will be missing about a quarter of its picture wherever you see it.
Worth knowing before you book: Edwards Mira Mesa Stadium 18 & IMAX never lights 16% of its screen. The fabric is bigger than the picture, which is why the ranking here is by lit area rather than by the dimensions cinemas advertise.
One of these is a dome, scored on projected surface area — not a like-for-like comparison with a flat screen, and noted as such on the pages.
4 of 9 publish their dimensions; the rest are scored on an estimate and marked as such. No projector here is yet confirmed by two independent sources, so treat the scores as indicative.
Ranked
Scored on the picture each room actually lights, not the fabric it is painted on. A tilde means the projector rests on a single dated source.
- Fleet Science CenterIMAX Commercial Laser23.2 m domeA
- Dolby Cinema at AMC Mission Valley 20Dolby Cinemasize unpublishedB
- Dolby Cinema at AMC Palm Promenade 24Dolby Cinemasize unpublishedB
- Dolby Cinema at AMC UTC 14Dolby Cinemasize unpublishedB
- AMC Palm Promenade 24 & IMAXIMAX Commercial Laser17.7 × 9.9 m165 m² lit pictureC
- Edwards Mira Mesa Stadium 18 & IMAXIMAX Commercial Laser17.5 × 11 m161 m² lit pictureC
- not
rankedRegal Edwards Mira Mesa4DXsize unpublished - not
rankedRegal Edwards Mira MesaScreenXsize unpublished - AMC Mission Valley 20 & IMAXIMAX Digital Xenon15.1 × 7.9 m119 m² lit pictureD
Not sure what separates these? The screen is not the picture →