|
|
This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Ready Theatre Systems
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
|
posted 09-12-2015 02:15 PM
I agree with most of the RTS observations here. My relationship with them has been a love / hate one over the years. On one hand, the company responded very quickly to my request that they find a way to put a number of tickets on one piece of paper (drive-in mode). Above all else, that sold me on the system. Rob is knowledgeable and responsive, when you can get him. The other folks there are sort of a mixed bag. They all seem to have their software strengths, but with a few of them, customer interaction is a toss-up. Being a broadcast engineer, I understand the problem. Some of the best techs out there have no business talking to the end user!
Agreed on other points as well... updates frequently occur for unexplained reasons and don't always cooperate with the local installation. Promised fixes take forever to implement and often-used features sometimes disappear without a trace. Given this is a subscription-based system, I would have hoped for faster implementation of fixes, features and functional updated versions. Documentation..... guess I'd best not go there. Their ability to log into the system has come in handy on a few occasions though.
I stopped trying to figure out the inventory section. My daughter runs that part of our business, so I've dumped that on her. Not even sure she's completely adopted it.
On their last major update, they added a number of handy reporting functions, but made the process much less intuitive.
On balance however, RTS has been a good fit for our triplex drive-in. We can get the stats we want, after a bit of work... they finally integrated split-tendering into the system and the time to process a card is comparable to cash. That's a critical point here for us.
As mentioned elsewhere, we now depend so heavily on card transactions that I'm becoming increasingly paranoid over having only one connection to the internet. Regardless of reliability, they all fail now and then. Murphy says that will be when I have lines going down to the street.
We don't use the built-in rewards or seating functions, but do use their gift cards. That works well.
There are still some details I'd like to see in the system, but over the years, they've become less-critical ones, so I don't talk to them as often as in the past. On-balance, a different system would have to be fairly impressive to get us to switch.
RTS was an early adopter of IP-based phones. Their customer service calls are routed through their system to phones at their employees' homes. That might explain some of the fun there.
Personally, I'd grade the overall RTS experience a B-.
At this point, my opinion of Sensible Cinema might be unfair, but it is what it is. We went with it at our indoor before we tried RTS. The early system had a lot of bugs and Rusty was hard to reach and not very responsive. Granted, he was the only person we ever talked with, so he may have been a one-person-show back then. We dropped his system out of frustration and never looked back. If his operation has improved at all over the years, I wouldn't know it... though if he's still around, one would hope it has. However, if I was tempted to switch, my past experience was so negative that I wouldn't consider going back.
In fairness, the system is/was a full-buyout package with no income stream for maintenance, updates or user ignorance... sort of the opposite of RTS in that regard.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Justin Hamaker
Film God
Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
|
posted 09-12-2015 03:12 PM
David
I'm curious how Veezi has matured in terms of item set-up and inventory management. When I tested the system about 2 years ago it was not really ready for prime-time. Item configuration was pretty limited. For example, you couldn't simply have a modifier that applied to multiple items. If you want to to record the flavors for each drink, you had to set up Large Coke, Large Diet, Large Sprite, etc. Rather than hitting Large, Medium, Small and then applying the appropriate modifier.
We never we never went beyond testing because of these issues, but every year we re-evaluate our use of RTS prior to opening our drive-in. If Veezi has improved, we would certainly consider them for next year.
One concern we did have was whether the terminals could operate in a stand alone mode if the internet connection went down. It's one thing to not be able to process credit cards, but it's something else entirely to lose your entire POS system.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
|
posted 09-13-2015 10:59 AM
quote: Paul Goulet
Jack, could you explain how that feature works? I work at a drive in that uses RTS, I'm just not familiar with that part of it
"Drive-in mode" is set up in the local computer settings. It does two things. First, it prints one ticket per transaction, rather than one ticket per patron. That comes in very handy if you have to walk up to a car to verify admission. In that case, you only need them to give you one piece of paper, rather than force every person to produce their individual ticket. We buy the heavy, green-striped RTS ticket paper and use it only in our boxoffice terminals. It's more sturdy than the Office Depot-type paper we use in the snack bar terminals, and the stripe makes it somewhat easier to locate.
The other feature that makes their drive-in mode work for us is the customer tally on the boxoffice terminals. Instead of showing the number of people admitted against seating count, like you'd see in an indoor theatre version, ours shows the number of transactions for each screen, which we translate into "number of cars". That gives us a lot better idea how many we can get into a given field. Our back lots don't have poles (yet), so size of cars and how they park and who's monitoring them can affect total numbers, but the screen gives us a good enough idea that we know when we need to keep an eye on how many more we can get in. We have no use for patron counts on the terminal screens, which is what you'd see on an indoor version, although it is still used for per-cap calculations and boxoffice reporting.
While it certainly is possible that other systems have adopted these features, none offered them at the time we were looking to switch from cash registers and impact credit card terminals to a computerized system. At the time we asked RTS to consider it, we were already using their system at our indoor house. As soon as they got that done, we put their system in at our drive-in and got them out to show it at the next drive-in owners' convention.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic