This is topic Advance Tickets and Customer's Expectations in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 05-09-2002, 07:12 PM:
Does anyone else have the problem, when selling advance tickets for any feature, customers having the expectation that all shows are going to be sold out for that opening weekend? We experienced this for Spiderman where we got dozens of phone calls asking if we still have tickets available. I think that it is pretty safe to say that we lost business from people staying away because of their belief that they would not be able to get tickets.
Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-10-2002, 02:16 PM:
When advance tickets are advertised strongly for any particular movie that many people want to see, it is like saying, "If you don't like the hassle of buying your tickets early and showing up an hour early to get in line to get good seats because of the crowds that will be here, wait until a weeknight of the following week to see this particular movie."I admit that I've been spoiled by the lack of attendance at the theatres in the past few months. I've been used to being able to show up 30 minutes before the start of a movie and be the first one in the auditorium. I've become so spoiled by the lack of attendance that I tend to avoid weekend openings of movies that are going to be huge grossing, when I can wait until Monday night and not have to deal with crowds and lines.
I've had such bad luck with seat kickers, talkers, and cell phone users that I prefer less crowded nights to see movies. The way I see it, the more people, the more chance for distractions. I'll bet other customers see the advance ticket advertisements the same way.
For years, when a high-grossing movie has come to Huntsville, and Hollywood 18 was our group's theatre of choice for an opening night show, we've typically sent someone to the theatre at lunch to buy our tickets for fear that the shows would sell out.
And Brad, below is an example of the URL link getting messed up after editing a post (that I mailed you about the other day). It showed up properly before I edited this post.
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Evans A Criswell
<A HREF="http://hsvmovies.com/" TARGET=_blank>Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site</A>
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-10-2002, 03:09 PM:
Evans said: "And Brad, below is an example of the URL link getting messed up after editing a post (that I mailed you about the other day). It showed up properly before I edited this post"I've occasionally had the same thing happen to some URLs when I go back and edit a misspelled word in a posting. It even has happened to the URL in my signature information. Doesn't seem to be a pattern of when the jumbling occurs.
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-10-2002, 03:57 PM:
Evans, are you trying to use html in your signature? That's a no no.
Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 05-10-2002, 04:59 PM:
One of my co-workers has a friend who works in a multiplex. According to this "Multiplex Maven", advance tickets for Star Wars Episode 2 are easy to come by and the midnight show on 5/16 is not sold out.OTOH Fox is using the hype over Episode 2 as cover to engage in hardball tactics on more routine product. This is from a special page on the AMC MovieWatcher website:
"AMC is not offering online or telephone tickets for Unfaithful because the film’s distributor, 20th Century Fox, demands to be paid most of the nominal service charge that is collected for online and telephone ticketing. AMC uses the service charge to defray some of the costs of providing remote advance ticketing. AMC cannot continue to provide affordable online ticketing without dedicating the fee to the cost of providing the service."
(Unfaithful opened Wednesday in NYC/LA and goes national today.)
Posted by John Scott (Member # 520) on 05-10-2002, 05:25 PM:
Fox's requirement for the lions share of the service charge on advance tickets is nothing new.
Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-10-2002, 05:35 PM:
HTML in sigs a no-no? It's worked until about two weeks ago. Anyway, I changed it. Let's try again.Edited the post after making it.
All seems well now.
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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site
Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-10-2002, 06:08 PM:
Off-topic, but I too had this messed-up link issue come up after editing the text part of a post (as you know Brad). We tentatively blamed IE6 for the problem. At your suggestion, I downloaded and installed Netscape v6.2.2. At the risk of starting another unwanted "who makes the best browser" debate, all I can say is Netscape is behaving FAR worse than IE6 for me. Netscape will NEVER download all the images in a picture warehouse link -- about half of the images show up as broken. The green and red icons to the left of each forum heading are never right and sometimes they don't show up at all. I can't use the "back" button to return from a forum to the list of forums -- have to click on the "FORUMS" button in the left panel to get back to the beginning. I got so frustrated with it that I went back to IE6, which for the most part seems to work fine with film-tech, at least for me. I am being extra-careful when editing posts though.
Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 05-11-2002, 10:04 AM:
Back on topic (maybe, depending on the dominant topic of this thread), does it really matter if people stay away that first weekend because of a fear of lines or not? During Episode 1, we didn't sell out many shows at all, but the movie stayed around forever. It would stand to reason that if they don't come right away, they're gonna come eventually and there are some benefits to not selling out. One is that people are more comfortable in the auditorium, two is that concession lines should be shorter and more people will get in them, third is that if people wait a couple weeks and then come, you'll get a higher percentage of the box take. ------------------
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" - Homer Simpson