Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Holiday Weekend Horror Stories

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Posted by Dan Zastrow (Member # 3796) on 05-27-2006, 05:12 PM:

Hey guys- I’m looking at a relatively quiet weekend at my little three-screen not-for-profit art house. Longing to hear some stories about the old days in the rough and tumble, big holiday weekend at the commercial multi, mega, giga-plex world. According to Gitesh Pandya at boxofficeguru.com X-MEN looks to be having one of the biggest Memorial Day weekends on record with a possible $125M+ for the four days. Let’s hear some of the horror stories. One of my faves from days of yore is the 8-year-old kid who stuffs so much candy, popcorn and soda down his throat that he projectile vomits across the lobby.
Except its green…we didn’t have anything green in the concession?!? [puke]

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 05-27-2006, 08:11 PM:

Someone peed in a cup during X-Men 3 today.

Also we've got a 3-hour Bollywood film playing to full houses, so the box office staff decide to sell a ticket to a woman who is known to reek of piss, and her part of the auditorium stinks accordingly.

Posted by Christopher Crouch (Member # 3784) on 05-28-2006, 06:10 AM:

Once worked at an 18 plex which was unable to turn off the cleaning lights (electrical issue), in nine of the auditoriums, for the first two sets on Thanksgiving day. Naturally, we had to cancel all those shows, as this is one of the only businesses where not being able to turn off the lights is a problem.

There is also that all too common issue of staff members not showing up for work on holidays. I don't think I've ever worked a holiday when there hasn't been a sudden outbreak of "illnesses" and "family emergencies" amoung staffers. I recall an opening concessionist once pulling a no-show on Christmas morining, then having the nerve to show up with his family to watch a movie that afternoon.

Posted by Pete Naples (Member # 761) on 05-28-2006, 07:14 AM:

For some reason everyone is breaking down this weekend, thankfully not in my patch, but the phone has not stopped all morning with people looking for advice or an engineer.

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 05-28-2006, 12:10 PM:

quote:
There is also that all too common issue of staff members not showing up for work on holidays. I don't think I've ever worked a holiday when there hasn't been a sudden outbreak of "illnesses" and "family emergencies" amoung staffers. I recall an opening concessionist once pulling a no-show on Christmas morning, then having the nerve to show up with his family to watch a movie that afternoon.

When I started at AMC many years ago they gave time and a half for holidays and a holiday bonus if you met certain minimum hour requirements. People not showing up was not a big issue when they did this. However, a couple years later they stopped giving those benefits and people not showing up became much more common on holidays.

It is hard to believe but when the company stopped treating the employees with respect, the employees stopped respecting the company.

As for horror stories, I have plenty but not many from holiday weekends. The worst holiday I ever worked was the day after thanksgiving of the year 2000, The Grinch. I was doing full time maintenence work at the time, when I say maintenence I mean changing light bulbs and cleaning. I arrived at 6am to the theater, first start was at 9am. By 7am there was already a line from the box office way out into the parking lot. At this point I begin to realize that I probably won't be doing maintenence work today. Sure enough by 9am I was stuck on a concession register. This complex had at least 45 concession registers and every single one of them was manned that day, but the lines were never less than 10 people deep. I sold popcorn until 6pm and the lines never let up. When the night shift people came in at 6pm they could not even change out the money in the drawers. Every single show sold out from open to close. I don't know the exact capacity off hand but the 4 big houses combined sat around 2,000 people and this was a 30 plex.

Posted by Dan Zastrow (Member # 3796) on 05-28-2006, 02:31 PM:

Caleb-I think every theater must have a “Pee Lady” or the same women moving from town to town!

Chris-In 1993 at a single screen theater seating 600 we had the only DTS system in the county when Jurassic Park came out. We had five shows a day and sold every one out for a week. The first weekend the programmer didn’t put enough air between screenings so the only way to stay on time was to push all the garbage to the front of the room. By the end of the day it was 4 feet high! Another favorite with this house was during a really powerful rainstorm at X-Mass the water started backing up into the theater. This room has a very steep slope so the first four rows were submerged but we still ran the movie. The reflection of the image off the ‘pool’ was surreal!

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 05-28-2006, 09:08 PM:

Somehow our system managed to sell more tickets than seats for a sold out show the last two days. Thankfully the customers in question were suprisingly gracious about it.

Ridiculously busy weekend for us, dread to think what some of the sites on our chain were like.

Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 05-28-2006, 11:47 PM:

Pretty busy at my local all weekend. I do think that we got hurt by the weather though as it was the first hot weekend of the year. I expect the same for tomorrow. Thankfully no real issues or problems. I barely had enough staff as all my HS seniors had their "senior celebration" which was only on Saturday yet some how they all needed the entire weekend off [Roll Eyes]

On the plus side EVERYONE forgot about the holiday because I did not get a single request off. So all those kids who took the weekend off to party are pulling double duty tomorrow [beer]

I think I might just play the lobby music extra loud tomorrow [evil]

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 05-31-2006, 09:31 AM:

Unbelievable weekend for us. Biggest single 3 day weekend since we opened the doors in August of '03. No "official" sell outs, but it sure felt like it.

Tripple features BOTH screens.
Ice Age 2 / X-Men The Last Stand / Just My Luck on Screen 1
Over the Hedge / She's the Man / An American Haunting on Screen 2

We borrowed a 40' concessions trailer from our local dealer since the one we ordered 8 weeks ago STILL hasn't arrived yet. Sold a ton of stuff from the trailer as well as most everything we had in the main building.

Friday night, one of our kitchen cooks passed out from the heat in the kitchen and we had to call an ambulance to come take care of her. About 10:30 we reached the bottom of the 600lb. ice bin.

Saturday - the Ice Man cometh about 6:00 p.m. with 700 lbs of ice, and it lasted until midnight. One of our concessions girls collided with another one and the result was a hot pot of coffee down one arm. Sent her home with a red swollen arm. The last 30 minutes of "She's the Man", I walk past booth #2 and hear the film cinching against it self. Platter motor on the center deck died and resulted in a nice brain wrap about 3/4 of an inch thick around the brain. Disengage the motor and spun it by hand until it unwrapped itself. Spun it by hand the rest of the movie. During intermission, I had the lot guys phsically swap platter decks around so we could avoid using the center deck for the third show.

Movies finally let out at 2:10 a.m. and we get it all cleaned up and get the employees out of there. The concessions trailer we borrowed this weekend was actually a NASCAR Hauler with a living quarters in the front end. My kids crawled up in the top bunk and slept there while my wife and I crunched numbers at the kitchen table. I really have "BIG trailer envy" now.

Woke up Sunday morning to a clear blue sky and all was well, and we went home to clean up for the Sunday night shows. About 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, we experienced a weather phenomenon here in Middle Tennessee called a "Super Cell". 60 mile an hour straight line winds and hail from out of nowhere. The combination of the wind and hail ripped the 20 foot retractable awning off the side of the trailer and bent the metal support arms like pretzels. Estimated replacement cost for the awning is right at $1,200.00. The ice man came again Sunday with another 600 lbs to get us thru the weekend.

Monday, met the cinema tech at the theatre at 4:00 p.m. to work on the dead platter motor. He replaced the brushes on the motor and all seemed to work fine. Didn't find out until after I started the 3rd show he failed to re-time the motors. Ended up spinning "An American Haunting" by hand until about halfway thru until the platter speed was slow enough for the machine to catch up on it's own. The ice machine finally recovered on it's own as well.

So... as you can tell, another "fun filled weekend" at the drive-in.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-31-2006, 11:18 AM:

Barry,

I live for the kind of stuff you are describing. I hear those types of stories and wish I had the money to open a Drive-In. We had a busy weekend at our little four plex. We had the typical holiday where certain employees didn't show up and we also had to borrow some dry goods from a neighboring theatre. Other than that - it was busy but uneventful. I live for those days where people are running into each other behind the stand and you are up for half the night counting the money. That's true excitement.

Posted by Ken Russell (Member # 2491) on 05-31-2006, 12:18 PM:

Barry, Enjoyed meeting you Sunday night. I understand why you didn't have a lot of time to talk. I think you and your crew did a phenominal job holding it together. That rain in the afternoon definitly threw you a curve.

Ken

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 05-31-2006, 01:35 PM:

Dennis.. you spoke of "borrowing dry goods". I ended up driving to the local 10-plex 15 miles from our place and borrowing a 35lb bib of coconut oil for the popper. We went thru 3 35lb boxes over the weekend.

Another "incident" with the popper had us all dismayed. Saturday night rush during intermission, steamers going, coffee brewing, corn popping, fryer buzzers going off, and somewhere amid the madness of intermission I start to smell something that has the familiar smell of melted and/or burning plastic . I looked all around the kitchen couldn't find a thing, and in about 10 minutes the smell went away.

About 5 minutes after that one of the concessions girls standing in front of the popcorn machine hollers out "Has anybody seen the little plastic scoop for the Flavacol?" [Eek!]

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 05-31-2006, 04:44 PM:

Hey Barry

Hopefully no-one compained about 'a strange plasticcy taste' in the burgers.

[Wink]

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-31-2006, 05:54 PM:

... maybe the popcorn was a bit more chewy?

Glad to hear you had a good weekend, Barry.

Posted by Jeff Arellano (Member # 3249) on 05-31-2006, 10:26 PM:

That flood story reminds me of AMC Montebello 10.

It was winter, busy week, and the theatre was just a couple years old. Well the rain started havoc, and all 10 theatres were raining inside. We had to go out on the roof with a broom and push water puddles off the building before they came to take a look at it.

Same day, there was no drain for this one area of the walkway..
It flooded.
With water up to my waist (I am 6 4).
And it seeped into auditoriums 1 and 2.

with waist high water in the theatre since it was sloped differently. needless to say, we had to close all but 7 rows of the theatre and sold only a few seats for the shows. People were pissed, until they tried sneaking in and saw waist high water.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 05-31-2006, 10:46 PM:

I'd be very reluctant to open the building with flooding like that.
At the very least (dark humor here...) I'd look into the auditorium to find one of my employees floating facedown in the auditorium. [Big Grin]

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 06-01-2006, 07:15 PM:

Could have put Titanic on and sold it as an experience ride [Big Grin]

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 06-02-2006, 09:05 AM:

It was not a holiday weekend here but still distaster rained, man made flood in the ladies ,well i guess girl made flood , they filled the sinks up with hand towel and turned all the taps on full.It too looked like a good setting for Titanic.James cam,eron would have been impressed.

and a projectile vomit from small boy who ate large skittles! , silly boy did he not know that know one actually eats skittles they are only for throwing around the auditorium!