The Roseville Skating Center to upgrade OVAL scoreboard midsummer for its 15th summer season of Roll In Movies. 

By Kinsey Gade 

The Roseville community can anticipate another summer of family-friendly movie nights at the OVAL scoreboard, according to the city of Roseville website. The center plans to show three movies this summer, including “Wicked” on July 11 and “Moana 2” on August 1. 

This summer, the center is upgrading the scoreboard to a larger and better scoreboard screen, which will be up and running in July for the second movie showing, according to Kevin Elm, the superintendent of the Roseville Skating Center. Elm said moviegoers will have a better experience with the new screen. 

“The new scoreboard screen will be bigger, and the pixels are eight millimeters, so it’s going to look just like your TV at home,” Elm said. 

The park played a few films during the summers of 2008 and 2009 on an inflatable screen until they received the OVAL scoreboard in 2010, according to Elm. The Disney-Pixar film “UP” was the first movie to officially premiere on the big screen. 

The films quickly gained popularity amongst the community and consistently averaged about 400 attendees each movie, according to Elm. The largest turnout was the 2018 showing of “Frozen,” with an attendance of almost 700. 

Inspiration behind the movies came from Jill Anfang, who at the time was the assistant park and recreation director, who wanted more family-based events for Roseville. 

Anfang said seeing the program thrive even after her retirement in 2018 has been encouraging, and she is excited to see how the program will progress in the future. 

“It’s always good to see things have a life and know that it was a good idea,” Anfang said. Elm said that the consistency of the films is largely due to the positive feedback from the community. 

“They love it,” Elm said. “A lot of people who come thank us, and typically, if they come to the first one, as long as their schedule works, they will come to all three of them. They keep coming back until their kids age out of it.” 

Photo credit: Entrance to the John Rose Minnesota Oval. Photo by Kinsey Gade.