Joel A.
Yelp
First, the positives: the food is good (if a little over-priced, but what else do you expect at such a venue?), and the movie-watching experience itself is the best I've had in a long time. Instead of annoying, useless ads as a lead-up to the trailers, they have funny videos playing. That's cool. The movies they play are out of the ordinary, more than just the typical big-budget stuff you see at AMC. I took my son to see an obscure foreign film, and it was great to see.
OTOH, this is like going to a theater run by The Soup Nazi. The first sign of trouble was the website passive-aggressively lecturing me about being on time TO A MOVIE I JUST BOUGHT TICKETS FOR. Basically, it was a warning saying that you can't go in to the theater if you're late. The actual wording is "We would love to see you thirty minutes ahead of showtime." WTF? I understand them not wanting to interrupt the show for others, but if you pay $10 and they lock you out, they're ripping you off. And nobody needs to tell me to be on time. I'm the most punctual guy on the planet. I'm also a friggin' adult. I know what a schedule is. I've even been to movie theaters before. I don't need to be told to be on time. They certainly don't need to say "We'd love to see you" or "it would be great if..." Just post a rule and say "Please take your seat ahead of showtime." Or "No admittance after showtime." Even "We recommend..." would be better than "Gosh, I guess you'd better show up ahead of time OR ELSE..." Jeez.
So then we get to the theater, and the decor is really nice, and the people in the lobby are nice. I go to the bathroom (where there are signs telling you how to throw away the paper towels), then get to my seat where I am immediately confronted by the waitress. Honestly, I didn't even know it was that kind of theater, I just wanted to take my son to see the movie he wanted to see, so I didn't even know there was a menu. The waitress asks to see my tickets, and I show her my phone. She says we're in the wrong seats, but it's okay, and then explains the complicated seat numbering system. Every other theater since Aristophanes puts the row number (or letter) on the end of the row, and then the seats are numbered. This theater has a four digit code attached to each seat that is apparently very useful to the waitstaff but must be deciphered by the people who buy the tickets to sit in the seats. So she says we're in the wrong seats, but it's okay, but we're in the wrong seats. So, should we move? I ask her, to which she says we're in the wrong seats but there's just one other couple in the theater, so it's okay, but we're in the wrong seats. Should we move? NO, she says, it's okay. Oh, and by the way, there's no texting no talking, no using your phone, no generating any kind of light or sound allowed. We will throw you out, she tells me (in a theater with four friggin' people in it).
"I'm just doing my job," she tells me in an overly-sweet voice about five times.
Then she explains the procedure for ordering the food, and it's about all I can take, so I ask her politely if she can come back in a few minutes so I can look at the menu. "I literally just sat down. I'm not even all the way into the seat. I've never been here before," I say, to which she replies "Well, that's the way we do things here. I'm just doing my job."
As soon as she leaves, the procedure is repeated on the screen in a manner that mimics the waitress's super-sweet demeanor. I'm starting to feel like I'm in a Candy Land POW camp. My son and I decided to relocate to the seats we paid for because it had a better sightline anyway. And we would have done that before if the waitress hadn't been too busy asserting her authority and arguing with me.
Once we ordered, the food arrived quickly and without any unnecessary conversation. I didn't want to use the bathroom however, because the movie was good and I was honestly afraid they wouldn't let me back into the auditorium.
I don't know who the people are who want to be treated like children in a kindergarten classroom. I'm an adult and I expect to be treated like one. I keep hearing about how the younger generations are crying out for authoritarianism and this is honestly what it felt like at this theater. I left the waitress a 15% tip hoping she would learn not to lecture the customers, but honestly it feels like this is a company-wide culture thing (I'm assuming this one very young waitress didn't write the copy a national theater chain's website). I mean really: AMC has the same rules, Regal Cinebarre has the same procedures, but you just go in and figure it out. They don't threaten to throw you out or lock you out of the movie you paid for. That's just rude.