It absolutely irks me that theatre chains once went across the land, plopping down IDENTICAL theatres.
Where does that GCC Window lead?!?!?! Most GCC Manager's I've ever spoken to won't let me through the door without a ticket.
Seriously, the best one-way security window I've ever seen was in a little independent in KY. On the lobby side, it was one sprocket hole in a big mural of a film strip.
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Better Projection Pays!
"It absolutely irks me that theatre chains once went across the land, plopping down IDENTICAL theatres."
Once? Don't many still do this. At least every new AMC that I have been in is the same basic design. 4 large houses circling a main lobby with two giant wings each with 8 - 13 screens each.
Where's the originality people. I love older theatres that have character, I wish they made more that way these days.
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Dave Cutler
"Do or do not, there is no try."
"At midnight when the moon is full, I turn into a wolf. Yea, you and a thousand other guys!"
I enjoy finding out which OLD theatres are identical to each other. I know of THREE in my area that are the same design, but different scales.
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Scott D. Neff
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www.cinema-west.com
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Better Projection Pays!
That reminds me of a story... A friend of mine was the manager at a large 'classic' theater in New Jersey. They video-projected a heavyweight fight there sometime in the late 1970's. It was pretty much sold out.
Anyway, the TV projector broke in the middle of the fight, and the people rioted. The crowd chased him and two other staff members to the office, where he was able to barricade themselves in with a filing cabinet. Through a small peep-hole on the door, he watched them totally destroy the lobby, boxoffice and candystand. For some reason, they didn't go for the booth.
He called the cops, but they told him there were 60 to 100 rioting people outside, and there was no way anyone could get to him- he was probably safer where he was.
After about an hour, they were rescued.
Scott D: Are any of these old GCCs now AMC?
Regarding identical theaters, I know two Regal theaters that were Cobb designs that have nearly identical lobbys, but the hallways are slightly different. And I know two Regal designs that are identical except one is a 16-plex, the other is 18. Other than that, I don't know of any identical designs. Regal uses many of the same features in most of its theaters (depending on what vintage the design is), but the designs are usually pretty different from one another.
A lot of theatres have them. They often look out from the manager's officce. That way (s)he can sit in his office and see how buisiness is going.... or look out and see which employees are loafing... OR... in case of trouble, he can see what's going on from the safety of the office and call the cops. They are made of one-way glass, not just for "stealth" reasons but simply for privacy. How would you like to be sitting in your office in front of a window so that the whole world can see what you're doing? It'd be like working in a fish bowl.
Just about every Cinemark theatre I worked in had a spy hole in the lobby somewhere.
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This one time, at Projection Camp, I stuck a xenon bulb....
Many older Loews theaters had a kiosk in the middle of the lobby and that was the manager's office. That would drive me insane trying to do my work and having customers come up asking constant questions that any staff member could easily answer.
This really needs to be in to Ground Level as this is a non-projection nor technical discussion.