posted 08-22-2014 05:19 AM                    

quote: Dennis Benjamin

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I've been poking around the Megaplex website and I was surpised at that fact that I could go through all of their shows starting and see how many people were there watching movies. Like - the one dude that was catching the first matinee of "The Expendables 3". I find this sorta odd.

What are your thoughts about this?

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quote: Claude S. Ayakawa

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Reserve seating sucks when they tell you where to sit when you enter the theatre like they do at Condolidated's Ward 16 in their TITAN XC house. If they asked me where I would like to sit by showing me a sitting diagram of the auditorium when I buy my ticket or when I enter the theatre, I would have no problem with that but when they tell me where to sit when they take my ticket without allowing me to choose my seat is not right.

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Don't they have ticketing machines in the lobby that let you choose your seat just like you could do on-line? I guess they don't let you choose your seat at the counter because it would hold up the line too much if everybody did that.

Reserved seating is a bit of a mixed bag. Generally, I have started to like the concept, if it's done right. The main advantage obviously being the fact that you don't need to be there an hour before the show. The biggest downside is that it reduces spontaneous decisions to almost zero.

Besides that, there are tons of other issues, most of which seem easy to fix, but I guess I'm the only one complaining out loud:

- Reservation fees, handling costs, etc. Especially if you pay your ticket on-line. They're saving on box office workers here, so tickets should be cheaper, not more expensive.
- The possibility to reserve a seat and pay it at the box office later. This is often taking up good seats that nobody will claim later on and will then go out to the "late comers" (if there are any). If you reserve a seat, you should pay or at least commit to buy immediately.
- If you do not know the auditorium, you might inadvertently ending up choosing suboptimal seats. Those pesky seat reservation maps usually tell you nothing about the real layout of the room.
- You're not able to choose your neighbors. Then again, you're also not able to choose the neighbors that enter later in a free-seating arrangement.
- Half-assed systems where you can choose your row, but not the seat number in the row. I don't mind systems that try to fill in the gaps that occur if everybody can choose their own seat, but those row-based systems are awkward.
- Theaters that fail to explicitly mention to their patrons they're using a reserved seating system and causing tons of discussions.
- Theaters that fail to enforce their own reserved seating systems.
- Theaters that use ambiguous labeling for rows and/or seats. Examples: One large chain decided to put their row numbers on the threshold of the rows. Nobody seems to be able to figure out the right row number without starting to count, the confusion is increased by the fact that in the bigger auditoria there usually is a very wide row somewhere just below the middle without seats, designated for wheelchairs (and not really indicated as such), but this row is also a designated walkway. Another chain decided to put the seat numbers on the cup holders but failed to put something like an arrow next to it. Nobody is able to figure out if their seat is left or right of the indicated cup holder.

Besides those little issues, reserved seating is just fine .