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Author Topic: Carmike enters the Oregon market David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 06-30-2004 03:31 PM                        Today's Eugene newspaper has a large display ad for the new Carmike 12 in Corvallis. This looks like Carmike's first venture into Oregon, and it's kind of a surprise, since Regal had a "lock" on that area up til now. Unless Carmike totally botches this, I predict the aging Regal 4-plex in Corvallis will either be gone, or a dollar house, within a few months. The Carmike ad says only "All Stadium Seating - Digital Surround Sound". Anyone have any idea what I can expect from a Carmike new build like this? And is it "car-mike" or "car-mikey"?  |  IP: Logged Dennis Benjamin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1445 From: Denton, MD Registered: Feb 2002 posted 06-30-2004 03:56 PM                        Regal and Carmike are mortal enemies -did you not know that? I am sure Carl and Mike (hence the Car-Mike) Patrick enjoy everytime they move into a Regal dominated market. One of the nicest theatres in Knoxville, TN - is a Carmike Theatre...... [ 06-30-2004, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: Dennis Benjamin ]  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 06-30-2004 03:57 PM                     Car-mike, deriving from the names Carl Patrick (chairman of the board) and Micheal Patrick (CEO and Carl's son). Hard to say, if they get a decent manager it should be a very nice theatre. If some idiot takes it over, well, expect standard fare. Sound will likely be a mix of DTS and Dolby Digital.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Mehocic Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 804 From: New Castle, PA, USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-30-2004 04:42 PM                     Every Carmike that I've ever visited here in western Pennsylvania is a dump. The parent company I work for used to own the Beaver Falls cinema until Carmike bought it about 1996 - 97. That place went from bad to worse. Sticky floors and messy auditoriums are the norm down there. Just this week my step-sister and I were talking about how crappy a presentation one "gets" at this particular theater. Carmike also owns another place in Cranberry Township (about 20 miles due east of their Beaver Falls location). That place sucks too and for about the same reasons listed above. Carl and Michael Patrick always have seemed to be the type that are interested in turning a buck by only spending a dime. Since this theatre will be their first location in Oregon, however, it might not be all that bad. Expect a probably decent place in the begining that will go downhill as more and more Carmike Cinemas are built in your neck of the woods. Note: My appologies to any Carmike employee who works his or her ass off for that company. I'm only speaking for what I've witnessed in the locations I mentioned in my post.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-30-2004 04:53 PM                        The Carmike in Billings MT is a 10 screen. The biggest house is around 250 seats. It started out all DTS but now 4 screens are Dolby digital. I don't know what kind of seats it has but the last time I was there, I observed several busted ones. They scratch film there. They have 2 other locations in Billings - one a 7-plex (remodeled up from a 3, and now a dollar house) and another mainstream 7-plex. These two receive very little maintenance, I'm told.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-30-2004 05:43 PM                     The quality of any Carmike-built theater in recent years is largely determined by its management. I would say Carmike generally does a good job in the design and construction of its theaters that are built from scratch. How those theaters are maintained is another matter. Some have very caring staffs while others couldn't care less. The Carmike location here in Lawton is nearly 10 years old and still a decent theater. The Sikes Ten in Wichita Falls is not so great and it is only 6 or 7 years old. The big difference is in the management. Jack Connor has many years of management experience and has been the only manager of Lawton's location. He knows the theater very well, loves showing and watching movies, and works hard on keeping the theater maintained. Carmike's Wichita Falls location has seen managers come and go. Some theaters, regardless of circuit, are so bad that the only way a maintenance visit happens is if a screen goes dark. Some of this can be the fault of upper brass in a theater circuit, but some of it also falls on the shoulders of a complacent manager that just doesn't check on things. IMHO, the biggest thing which gives Carmike a bad name is all the old white elephant theaters they bought up in the late 1980's and early 1990's in a bid to become the first circuit with 5000 screens (they didn't achieve that goal). I don't think it matters how many screens a circuit has. I think it means more to have the best quality screens, regardless of number. Lots of old 1970's and 1980's era multiplex sites just need to be demolished. Most have no attractive decor, just a very function-only appearance. And most have puny screen sizes and seat counts (not to mention very thin, sound bleeding walls). Incidentally, Carmike publicly announced plans they will upgrade their Lawton location to stadium seating in all auditoriums and possibly add two more screens. The two screens are needed because of the seat count that will be lost in the stadium conversion. It will be interesting to see how the process goes, and whether the theater will have any THX-certified screens when the process is finished.  |  IP: Logged Ken Layton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1452 From: Olympia, Wash. USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 07-01-2004 02:10 AM                     I've heard many Carmike theaters are dumps and have poor presentation.  |  IP: Logged Thomas Procyk Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1842 From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 07-01-2004 10:36 AM                     The one I worked at was a purchase from Plitt. It gives new meaning to the word "dump" and Carmike made it dumpier: They replaced the normal carpet with these shit "carpet tiles" that looked like something from the dressing rooms of the Flip Wilson show. (1970's looking "J" symbols that connected to each other to form a pattern) These things would soak up soda spills like a sponge, and wouldn't come clean when Stanley Steamer came. They had huge, nice screens. Even the smallest houses were common-height. All had curtains, too... until Carmike ripped them out. Can't show slides with curtains! It's a shame those screens are fed scratched films from projectors abused worse than [insert borderline-political example here]. Theaters had that wall-paneling (which probably looked VERY 70s, but I never got to see them) stuff to deaden the sound and provide that 70s Multiplex atmosphere. Some theaters were blue, some were red, and some were brown, with seats to match. Carmike ripped all that shit out, and siply hung ugly red drapes all along the cinder-block walls from cieling to floor. You can hear the neighboring movies with NO problem. And you have red drapes with blue seats that looks really tacky. Management was the worst. The booth was the last priority by far. They wouldn't even air condition the booth to save money, and I would be denied the request to turn it on when I asked even though I was forced to wear three layers of long-sleeved clothing in the Florida summer all day --- and ended up passing out. Forget spending a dime to make a dollar. These guys would try to pay the rent with food stamps, if they only could. =TMP=  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-01-2004 11:51 AM                        Sounds like I better hope Car-Mike ["Even our name blows!"] never comes to Eugene...  |  IP: Logged Steve Scott Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1300 From: Minneapolis, MN Registered: Sep 2000 posted 07-01-2004 02:32 PM                     The Carmike 15 in Apple Valley up here has two main problems: -Cleaning the lobby. The ushers never really can make the transition of cleaning tile vs. cleaning carpet in the lobby, and often times the auditorium hallways are really messy. Auditorium cleaning is average, but many times I saw ushers there worry more about folding up the armrests, rather than sweep up all the popcorn. -Presentation. The DTS half of the theater is almost never running in digital. Prints get dirty, often scratched, and the SMART mods (or Panastereo.. I forget what my tech said they use) aren't calibrated very well, so its often a lackluster analog performance. Their #8 THX ceritifed house has a terrible echo and is the only house that uses both DTS and Dolby (this new OR carmike might have one such auditorium). The trailers typically run in dolby, the THX trailer in DTS, and then something defaults incorrectly and the film plays in SR off their CP500. I had plenty of frustration seeing films there, but if you went on the first couple weekends of a release, you got an alright show. I remember their head projectionist came over to my theater to deliver a standee and he was in awe of our kelmar table. He said he wished he had as good of a table as that.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-01-2004 11:36 PM                     "I've heard many Carmike theaters are dumps and have poor presentation." _________________________________________________________________ That is an undertatement by about a mile and a half. They are the absolute bottom of the barrel . Even our local Consolidated chain rises above the likes of Carmike. I think Dave Williams would agree with that assesment. Mark  |  IP: Logged Richard Fowler Film God Posts: 2392 From: Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 07-02-2004 12:04 PM                     I have tech friends at Carmike.....for a short period about ten years ago they tried to do an boot strapping economy version of their standard outfitting of cinemas and had to backtrack....so they could be worse  |  IP: Logged Nick Engstrom Film Handler Posts: 23 From: USA Registered: Dec 2003 posted 07-03-2004 11:48 AM                    I used to work at a carmike for years, we would be lucky if we could get a tech in there once a year, closer to every 1.5 years for a PM. Most of the time he spent fixing sound or platters instead of actually doing a PM. Then again, our theatre has always been the red-headed step child of Carmike that no one cares about, off in a far distant land. On that note, I heard that Boleman got canned, whats the story on that? If your scared because you know carmike reads this board, PM me the info, I am definately interested and everyone I talked to about it, don't have any information (gotta love the way that works)  |  IP: Logged Nick Engstrom Film Handler Posts: 23 From: USA Registered: Dec 2003 posted 07-09-2004 11:01 PM                    no takers? Come on, I know someone out there has this information. Just send me a private message or something if you afraid of getting busted by 'carmike's security team' ha! 'we have cameras in every office to spy on our managers'  |  IP: Logged Joshua Waaland Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 800 From: Cleveland, Ohio Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-09-2004 11:57 PM                     David, I used to work at a Cinema World that was bought out by Carmike. Cinema World were some of the cheapest people I ever met. Couldn't get a tech to save your life or parts for that matter. Carmike then bought them out and we had high expectations , but they never changed a thing. They finally broke down and bought 2 dts systems a few years ago. My buddy still works there and I talked to my old manager and she told they would be shutting down this year to make the existing 8 theaters stadium seating and adding 7 more screens. They have been promising that for 5 years now so we will see what happens. It is a pretty shitty theater but has a special place in my heart because that is where I learned the ropes. Plenty of sticky floors there! Since Cinema World built it I cannot tell you what to expect from a "new" Carmike built theater. Josh  |  IP: Logged

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