Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Carmike enters the Oregon market

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 06-30-2004, 03:31 PM:

Today's Eugene newspaper has a large display ad for the new Carmike 12 in Corvallis. This looks like Carmike's first venture into Oregon, and it's kind of a surprise, since Regal had a "lock" on that area up til now. Unless Carmike totally botches this, I predict the aging Regal 4-plex in Corvallis will either be gone, or a dollar house, within a few months.

The Carmike ad says only "All Stadium Seating - Digital Surround Sound". Anyone have any idea what I can expect from a Carmike new build like this?

And is it "car-mike" or "car-mikey"?

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 06-30-2004, 03:56 PM:

Regal and Carmike are mortal enemies -did you not know that?

I am sure Carl and Mike (hence the Car-Mike) Patrick enjoy everytime they move into a Regal dominated market.

One of the nicest theatres in Knoxville, TN - is a Carmike Theatre......

[ 06-30-2004, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: Dennis Benjamin ]

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 06-30-2004, 03:57 PM:

Car-mike, deriving from the names Carl Patrick (chairman of the board) and Micheal Patrick (CEO and Carl's son).

Hard to say, if they get a decent manager it should be a very nice theatre. If some idiot takes it over, well, expect standard fare.

Sound will likely be a mix of DTS and Dolby Digital.

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 06-30-2004, 04:42 PM:

Every Carmike that I've ever visited here in western Pennsylvania is a dump. The parent company I work for used to own the Beaver Falls cinema until Carmike bought it about 1996 - 97. That place went from bad to worse. Sticky floors and messy auditoriums are the norm down there. Just this week my step-sister and I were talking about how crappy a presentation one "gets" at this particular theater. Carmike also owns another place in Cranberry Township (about 20 miles due east of their Beaver Falls location). That place sucks too and for about the same reasons listed above.

Carl and Michael Patrick always have seemed to be the type that are interested in turning a buck by only spending a dime. Since this theatre will be their first location in Oregon, however, it might not be all that bad. Expect a probably decent place in the begining that will go downhill as more and more Carmike Cinemas are built in your neck of the woods.

Note: My appologies to any Carmike employee who works his or her ass off for that company. I'm only speaking for what I've witnessed in the locations I mentioned in my post.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-30-2004, 04:53 PM:

The Carmike in Billings MT is a 10 screen. The biggest house is around 250 seats.

It started out all DTS but now 4 screens are Dolby digital. I don't know what kind of seats it has but the last time I was there, I observed several busted ones. They scratch film there.

They have 2 other locations in Billings - one a 7-plex (remodeled up from a 3, and now a dollar house) and another mainstream 7-plex. These two receive very little maintenance, I'm told.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-30-2004, 05:43 PM:

The quality of any Carmike-built theater in recent years is largely determined by its management.

I would say Carmike generally does a good job in the design and construction of its theaters that are built from scratch. How those theaters are maintained is another matter. Some have very caring staffs while others couldn't care less. The Carmike location here in Lawton is nearly 10 years old and still a decent theater. The Sikes Ten in Wichita Falls is not so great and it is only 6 or 7 years old. The big difference is in the management. Jack Connor has many years of management experience and has been the only manager of Lawton's location. He knows the theater very well, loves showing and watching movies, and works hard on keeping the theater maintained. Carmike's Wichita Falls location has seen managers come and go.

Some theaters, regardless of circuit, are so bad that the only way a maintenance visit happens is if a screen goes dark. Some of this can be the fault of upper brass in a theater circuit, but some of it also falls on the shoulders of a complacent manager that just doesn't check on things.

IMHO, the biggest thing which gives Carmike a bad name is all the old white elephant theaters they bought up in the late 1980's and early 1990's in a bid to become the first circuit with 5000 screens (they didn't achieve that goal). I don't think it matters how many screens a circuit has. I think it means more to have the best quality screens, regardless of number. Lots of old 1970's and 1980's era multiplex sites just need to be demolished. Most have no attractive decor, just a very function-only appearance. And most have puny screen sizes and seat counts (not to mention very thin, sound bleeding walls).

Incidentally, Carmike publicly announced plans they will upgrade their Lawton location to stadium seating in all auditoriums and possibly add two more screens. The two screens are needed because of the seat count that will be lost in the stadium conversion. It will be interesting to see how the process goes, and whether the theater will have any THX-certified screens when the process is finished.

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 07-01-2004, 02:10 AM:

I've heard many Carmike theaters are dumps and have poor presentation.

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 07-01-2004, 10:36 AM:

The one I worked at was a purchase from Plitt. It gives new meaning to the word "dump" and Carmike made it dumpier:

They replaced the normal carpet with these shit "carpet tiles" that looked like something from the dressing rooms of the Flip Wilson show. (1970's looking "J" symbols that connected to each other to form a pattern) These things would soak up soda spills like a sponge, and wouldn't come clean when Stanley Steamer came.

They had huge, nice screens. Even the smallest houses were common-height. All had curtains, too... until Carmike ripped them out. Can't show slides with curtains! It's a shame those screens are fed scratched films from projectors abused worse than [insert borderline-political example here].

Theaters had that wall-paneling (which probably looked VERY 70s, but I never got to see them) stuff to deaden the sound and provide that 70s Multiplex atmosphere. Some theaters were blue, some were red, and some were brown, with seats to match. Carmike ripped all that shit out, and siply hung ugly red drapes all along the cinder-block walls from cieling to floor. You can hear the neighboring movies with NO problem. And you have red drapes with blue seats that looks really tacky.

Management was the worst. The booth was the last priority by far. They wouldn't even air condition the booth to save money, and I would be denied the request to turn it on when I asked even though I was forced to wear three layers of long-sleeved clothing in the Florida summer all day --- and ended up passing out.

Forget spending a dime to make a dollar. These guys would try to pay the rent with food stamps, if they only could. [puke]

=TMP=

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 07-01-2004, 11:51 AM:

[uhoh]

Sounds like I better hope Car-Mike ["Even our name blows!"] never comes to Eugene... [puke]

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 07-01-2004, 02:32 PM:

The Carmike 15 in Apple Valley up here has two main problems:

-Cleaning the lobby. The ushers never really can make the transition of cleaning tile vs. cleaning carpet in the lobby, and often times the auditorium hallways are really messy. Auditorium cleaning is average, but many times I saw ushers there worry more about folding up the armrests, rather than sweep up all the popcorn.

-Presentation. The DTS half of the theater is almost never running in digital. Prints get dirty, often scratched, and the SMART mods (or Panastereo.. I forget what my tech said they use) aren't calibrated very well, so its often a lackluster analog performance. Their #8 THX ceritifed house has a terrible echo and is the only house that uses both DTS and Dolby (this new OR carmike might have one such auditorium). The trailers typically run in dolby, the THX trailer in DTS, and then something defaults incorrectly and the film plays in SR off their CP500.

I had plenty of frustration seeing films there, but if you went on the first couple weekends of a release, you got an alright show. I remember their head projectionist came over to my theater to deliver a standee and he was in awe of our kelmar table. He said he wished he had as good of a table as that.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-01-2004, 11:36 PM:

"I've heard many Carmike theaters are dumps and have poor presentation."
_________________________________________________________________

That is an undertatement by about a mile and a half. They are the absolute bottom of the barrel [thumbsdown]

.
Even our local Consolidated chain rises above [thumbsup]

the likes of Carmike. I think Dave Williams would agree with that assesment.

Mark

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 07-02-2004, 12:04 PM:

I have tech friends at Carmike.....for a short period about ten years ago they tried to do an boot strapping economy version of their standard outfitting of cinemas and had to backtrack....so they could be worse [Cool]

Posted by Nick Engstrom (Member # 2100) on 07-03-2004, 11:48 AM:

I used to work at a carmike for years, we would be lucky if we could get a tech in there once a year, closer to every 1.5 years for a PM. Most of the time he spent fixing sound or platters instead of actually doing a PM. Then again, our theatre has always been the red-headed step child of Carmike that no one cares about, off in a far distant land.

On that note, I heard that Boleman got canned, whats the story on that? If your scared because you know carmike reads this board, PM me the info, I am definately interested and everyone I talked to about it, don't have any information (gotta love the way that works)

Posted by Nick Engstrom (Member # 2100) on 07-09-2004, 11:01 PM:

no takers? Come on, I know someone out there has this information. Just send me a private message or something if you afraid of getting busted by 'carmike's security team' ha!

'we have cameras in every office to spy on our managers'

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 07-09-2004, 11:57 PM:

David,

I used to work at a Cinema World that was bought out by Carmike. Cinema World were some of the cheapest people I ever met. Couldn't get a tech to save your life or parts for that matter. Carmike then bought them out and we had high expectations , but they never changed a thing. They finally broke down and bought 2 dts systems a few years ago. My buddy still works there and I talked to my old manager and she told they would be shutting down this year to make the existing 8 theaters stadium seating and adding 7 more screens. They have been promising that for 5 years now so we will see what happens.

It is a pretty shitty theater but has a special place in my heart because that is where I learned the ropes. Plenty of sticky floors there! Since Cinema World built it I cannot tell you what to expect from a "new" Carmike built theater.

Josh

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-11-2004, 10:41 PM:

I'm surprised Carmike is going to convert that existing theater to stadium seating (and presumably digital sound in all auditoriums as well). Many older theaters have walls far too thin to contain the dynamics of digital sound. In most cases it is better to tear down and rebuild.

Regarding the overall tone of this thread, which seems to be one of Carmike-bashing, I don't think there is a theater circuit in operation without at least a few "dumps." Carmike is not alone at all on this. I have been to theaters run by most major chains in this country that I would never visit again due to poor show quality. The one good theater in my area is a Carmike. That may seem odd and contradictory to some, but it is still a fact.

Carmike still has a lot of older theaters they bought in years past to boost their screen count and I think that is where Carmike has a majority of their bad theaters. Most of Carmike's better managers (as well as resources for technical service) go to the better, newer locations. The company's recent struggles under bankruptcy, as well as some shakeups in corporate management have widened the gap between newer locations and older aquired sites. Carmike wanted to move Jack, the manager of Lawton's Carmike site, to a big 16-plex in El Paso, but he wanted to stay in Lawton for family's sake and I feel lucky he's still here after all these years.

You can build a good theater, but it takes a good management staff to keep it in good shape.

Posted by Travis Hubrig (Member # 1745) on 07-13-2004, 12:34 AM:

Carmike's new builds seem to be very nice...

the management makes the difference. This being a new construction should keep Upper Management around and in the picture. Whoever runs it will not be allowed to screw up anytime soon. After working for Carmike for 7 years, I got the impression that they definitely have a priority list of their theaters. This one should rank high.

Posted by Nick Engstrom (Member # 2100) on 08-15-2004, 12:26 PM:

I wish someone would send me a private message at least telling me what happened to boleman. This is my last ditch effort, don't worry power driven mods =)