MOVIE THEATER MAYHEM Patron Booted ... WOULDN'T SIT IN ASSIGNED SEAT?!?

[Randy Stankey]

I think the idea is okay (IR cameras) but it sounds like trying to kill flies with a Howitzer.

[Bobby Henderson]

I have mixed feelings about assigned seating, but have accepted it as the new normal in premium priced auditoriums and other kinds of art-house and upscale venues.

I am very picky about where I sit in a cinema auditorium. Normally I arrive with more than enough time before the show to visit the snacks counter and get my seat to relax a bit. Arriving early is usually added insurance against finding someone else in the seat(s) I reserved online. Still I've had a couple experiences of finding people sitting in my spot. I make sure not to sound threatening, but I'm still direct when I tell the person, couple or whoever they need to move. I'm not taking no for an answer either. We can escalate to theater management or even the police if need be. With as much as weight lifting as I've been doing in recent years I don't have much fear of someone wanting to suddenly step up to me either. Thankfully the confrontations haven't come to anything like that. Still, I get looked at like I'm the asshole for making them move. I don't care. Move.

The biggest on-going peeve I have with reserved seating in cinemas is that it enables people to procrastinate. The theater will be dark, well into the pre-show or even into the beginning of the movie and there will be late-comers entering the auditorium, stumbling their way in the dark, blocking the view of customers on the way to their seats. This is one of the biggest reasons why I prefer seeing movies in off-peak times rather than Fri-Sat nite shows opening weekend. Many live stage theaters will not allow patrons to enter after the show has started. I wonder if reserved seated theaters, particularly those charging luxury prices need to do the same thing.

It must be considerably more difficult for newer theaters to enforce seating assignments. So many multiplex sites are staffed at minimal levels and even lack security personnel. They've done away with the long 2nd floor booth connecting to all auditoriums in favor of sticking the projector and other gear in a tiny closet up in the back center of the auditorium. That forces staffers to physically walk all the way into auditoriums to check crowd behavior. I don't know how many theaters have surveillance cameras watching the crowd

[William Kucharski]

I guess I'm the only one happy to see this happen.

He bought a seat, he won't play by the rules, he's out.

Now, if only more theaters adopted the Alamo Drafthouse maxim of you talk, you text, you're gone.

[Martin Brooks]

Movies are something that people enjoy because it gives them a two-hour vacation from the cares of the world.

No rules. Nothing to worry about. Just sit back, relax and turn your brain off while you watch the show.

How do assigned seats play into that? They don't!

The "Social Contract" theory doesn't hold water, here. You can't say that people will willingly give up some of their right to comfort in the name of preservation of comfort for all because part of the entire reason for going to the movies is "total comfort." Assigned seating takes away part of that comfort but doesn't really preserve anything.

The only people who receive benefit from assigned seating are the employees of the theater who don't have to work as hard, helping people find seats. The theater saves money on employee labor/payroll while the customer only receives inconvenience.

When a person goes into an auditorium, they will look around, not only to pick the best seat to view the screen from but to be near or away from other people as they see fit.

What if I go there and discover that there is somebody I know? I might want to sit near them. Assigned seats prevent it.

What if I end up sitting near some fat, smelly asshole who smuggled in a six pack of beer? What if I brought my kids to see the movie and, now, I'm stuck.

What if that "fat, smelly asshole" decides that he doesn't want to sit next to my and my family of kids? With assigned seats, he can't move to another spot.

What if I'm just the kind of person who likes to sit in the back row and snooze? I just want to be alone for two hours. Now, that's likely out of the question.

With assigned seating, you don't know who you're going to be sitting next to. It's not possible to tell who's already in the auditorium just from looking at a chart.

Even if I got to the theater early so that I could carefully pick my seat, there's no guarantee that some shithead, latecomer won't pick the seat right next to me and start talking on his cell phone.

Movie theaters hold out the promise of relaxation and comfort. Assigning seats rips that promise away. It's especially bad if people didn't know that a particular theater assigns seats until after they get there. They'll probably sit through the movie then leave, never to return.

Movie theaters are having a hard enough time attracting customers. All it takes is one or two news articles about people getting into arguments over stupid things like this to convince people to avoid going to the movies.

We are in the middle of a cultural shift, away from theaters as a venue for entertainment.

Why are theaters doing everything they can to cut their own throats?

There's positives and negatives. The positive is that with reserved seats, I know I'm going to get an ideal seat and I don't have to get to the theater early. I can get there right when the trailers start (or even later) and definitely after the pre-show.

One negative is that sometimes I can't judge the ideal seat from the crappy seat diagrams on theater websites. So I do sometimes pick a seat that's either too far back or too close and I want to move. Obviously, if it's not crowded, it's not a problem. I once went out to the service desk to change my seat and they told me to just sit anywhere I wanted because there were plenty of empty seats.

Another negative is something that someone pointed out in a Facebook discussion. Teens want to meet up at a theater and sit with their friends, all of whom are making separate reservations. That never crossed my mind before. I have a feeling that AMC may have some website function that facilitates that, but I don't know that anyone else does.

I don't see how assigned seating takes away "relaxation and comfort". Quite the opposite. I'm not comfortable when I get stuck in a bad seat which sometimes happened when I couldn't reserve seats in advance. Except perhaps on a Saturday night, it's not like theaters are filling all the seats. Even before the pandemic, AMC averaged ticket sales of only 94 tickets per day, per screen. If there's four shows a day, that's fewer than 24 tickets per show. There's plenty of seats to move to if some smelly guy sits next to you.