Heidi M.
Yelp
Another one of my go-to theaters. I did have one pretty shitty experience, however, but I'll get into that at the end. Bare with me!
A few notable things:
Location: At first, this theater was super inconvenient since it's a TREK and a half from the nearest subway station... but ever since my boyfriend moved to the LES, it's a pretty easy, straight-shot bus ride (M15 or M15 SBS) back and forth. It's also right next to a Fairway if you need to get some shopping done after a movie (lol) and there are great restaurants in the area.
Theater Size/Reclined Seating: The movies I tend to watch here are usually in the bigger rooms upstairs, so it feels like the classic theater-watching experience (unlike Village 7 or downstairs where it's much more intimate). With that comes more seat options and it doesn't sell out as quickly as Village 7 does. Overall very big + open space and the reclining chairs are the absolute BEST. When choosing showtimes for movies I prioritize rooms with the AMC Signature Recliners... I won't watch a movie without them.
Food/Drinks: Pretty standard overpriced stuff. Not amazing, not terrible. I'd recommend packing your own snacks if you can.
Cleanliness: Also pretty standard. Not sparkly clean but not gross either.
Now...
Customer Service/Management: Usually fine. My boyfriend uses discounted movie vouchers he gets from work to exchange for movie tickets in person, a few days before the actual day we watch the movie to reserve our seats before selling out. It's usually a straight-forward, seamless process. However there was this ONE time where the staff f*cked up pretty badly but then sorta redeemed themselves...
Back in August of 2018, my boyfriend went by to pick up tickets for Crazy Rich Asians a few days before our screening, as he usually does. He chose our seats, got our tickets and left. When we showed up a few days later for the movie, we realized the 2 seats that were sold to us (let's say Seats J7 + J8 - I don't remember the exact numbers) were SEPARATED by this big empty gap inside the theater! Obviously my boyfriend had chosen 2 seats that were TOGETHER when he picked them up a few days prior -- Did the box office just print out the wrong tickets for him?? AND IN ADDITION to this huge problem since it was a sold-out screening, the 2 seats (J7 + J8) were DOUBLE BOOKED!! That's right, other people had bought these seats too somehow. We swear we went on the right date + time that was stated on the ticket. There was a girl sitting in J7 already with her friend(s), so my boyfriend went to management to see if we can somehow just have J8 + J9 instead, even though the other ticketholders for these seats were probably on their way here.
After some waiting, the manager basically told us to just sort it out with the people that also bought those seats once they arrived, then left us to fend for ourselves. Are you KIDDING ME! This was clearly AMC's fault if they sold us tickets that were not only separated, but double booked. We couldn't even sit apart from each other if we wanted to!
Long story short, we ended up just letting the other ticketholders have "our" seats even though we were there first (and probably bought those seats first). The party that eventually came for J8 was a group of 3 so we were nice and let them stay together. None of our dumb asses (manager ESPECIALLY) thought to look at the TIME STAMP of when all of our tickets were bought. If we had thought of that and brought it up to the manager, I'm sure we would've been able to prove that my boyfriend bought his tickets before everyone else, and accommodated us.
To compensate for the inconvenience, AMC rebooked us for a later screening (which still meant having to go all the way home and then coming back out later that night), REFUNDED the tickets so we were able to see it for free AND provided 3 complimentary vouchers for any future AMC screenings. I guess all that is better than nothing! I'm grateful, but having to relive this as I'm typing it out now gave me a bad taste in my mouth and I almost want to dock another star off my rating. I'll be nice and fair though, we've continued to come to this theater after this incident and all of our other experiences have been solid. Just don't screw us over like that again pls...