Cinema Tickets

[Wynter]

...okay so my wife thinks this is trivial but is anyone else disappointed that cinemas are starting to hand out tickets that look like receipts instead of the nice little card ones?

[Deranged]

...okay so my wife thinks this is trivial but is anyone else disappointed that cinemas are starting to hand out tickets that look like receipts instead of the nice little card ones?

I'd be more worried about the price - is that £7.50 on the Hellboy 2 receipt (that is just so not a ticket!)? Think adult entry up here in the poor north east of england is about 2 quid less than that!

[Wynter]

£7.50 indeed - and they have cut back on the times at which the trusted student card can be used - but then it's a Screen cinema and they get more art-house fair (and if would have cost more to pop into Southampton for the Odeon)

The £5.80 for Dark Knight at Odeon includes student discount - I was too excited to wait for the Orange Wednesday thingy although Wednesday is generally our cinema night.

[Jonny Rojo]

It's £6.10 for an adult ticket at my local here in Lancashire.

The style of ticket depends on what kind of printer system the box office has installed and I'd imagine cost factors in to equation too. If you're printing out thousands of tickets every week you're going to want them to be relatively inexpensive to produce.

I really doubt that anyone in upper management really cares whether the customer wants a nice keepsake of their visit in the form of a little card, more to the point I'd wager 99% of the customers don't care either.

[Leatherface]

With my student card I managed to get to see TDK (The Dark Knight) in IMAX format for only £6 - not bad at all.

[bigandya]

£6 - £7.50 for a cinema ticket is ridiculous!

And then £2 - £4 on top for a hotdog/popcorn/drink (unless you smuggle your own sweets and a can in)

And then you get the people who won't stop talking, the constant procession of idiots who need to walk past you to go to the toilet, the ushers telling you to move along so the family of 5 who missed the start can all sit together, and the big fast bastards who come along and choose to sit right in front of you when there's at least 100 seats left elsewhere.

Oh, and then you get the insulting "Its illegal to copy this film on your mobile phone" ad and 20 mins of crappy adverts before, finally, the out of focus, tinny sounding, film begins.

No thank you, I'll stick with the DVD which will be less than the price of the cinema admission 3 months down the line :)

[Leatherface]

I still reckon the price I paid was pretty good - it would hae been double otherwise!

But I agree, for the most part, I am happy to wait for DVD. Unless of course it's a movie I just have to see immediately - TDK, for example.

[Deranged]

It's £6.10 for an adult ticket at my local here in Lancashire.

I really doubt that anyone in upper management really cares whether the customer wants a nice keepsake of their visit in the form of a little card, more to the point I'd wager 99% of the customers don't care either.

Absolutely - I work opposite a 10 screen multiplex and sometimes it's like walking to work on a carpet of confetti due to the discarded tickets.

I can't say I'm fussed about keeping cinema tickets - I have some film festival tickets but general run of the mill tickets go straight in the bin.

[Jonny Rojo]

...finally, the out of focus, tinny sounding, film begins.

Andy, you do know that I'm a projectionist don't you? There's no out of focus, tinny sounding films at my place I'll have you know! I'm quite proud of the presentation of the films where I work and we do our best to make sure every show is as good as can possibly be.

If you're getting substandard shows at your local you should complain to the manager. :)

[MarcMorris]

The cinemas I go to are all fine - if they weren't I'd complain for sure, especially at London prices.

A good cinema easily beats my 1080p HD projector any time.

[bigandya]

Oh I've complained alright...

"Its a kiddies' film, you can't expect them to keep quiet all the time" they told me at The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

"The screen's always been like that, we can't do anything about it" they said at The Ring Two

"Forget it, I'll bring my own" I said when they tried to charge me £5.10 for a coke and some popcorn - and then looked daggers at me cos I walked away after they'd poured it out for me.

I'm sure some projectionists take their jobs seriously. I'm sure London Cinemas are a pleasure to visit (I've always enjoyed my experiences there, though they have been few and far between), but the Cleethorpes Parkway is a shoebox run by morons and staffed by 18 year olds on minimum wage.

Bring back the old ABC I say :)

[SicCoyote]

You can't read signs I guess before ordering? I'm not surprised they looks at you with daggers, just from the tone of your writing that I've seen you're probably the kind of customer I'd like to see the back of (when I worked in a cinema 5 years ago)

But on the subject of people who make a noise in the cinema, there's not much the cinema staff can do, we can't punch them all.

If you don't like the price of the food and drink, either go without it for a whole 2 HOURS(OMG HOW?) or as you've said smuggle it in maybe in an inside pocket.

There's nothing more annoying than people who take a big obvious sainsbury's bag full of stuff then cry foul when they're asked to leave it outside the auditorium. I'd love to see what happens when they turn up at the pub with a six-pack(of beer).

I don't buy food at cinemas myself, I just do what I suggested above.

It's nice to have a card ticket from when you've been to the cinema but there's the old question of money, boxes of card tickets cost more than rolls of receipt paper.

Thing is the whole thing could be automated.
Ticket Machines
Food & Drink Machines
Turnstiles to get to the screens
All you'd need is one or two security guards, a couple of cleaners and a couple of projectionists(or one if it's all digital)

[bigandya]

You can't read signs I guess before ordering? I'm not surprised they looks at you with daggers, just from the tone of your writing that I've seen you're probably the kind of customer I'd like to see the back of (when I worked in a cinema 5 years ago)


And that is EXACTLY the kind of attitude that prevails in my local cnema! Is there any wonder I choose not to go?

The prices of the food are so poorly advertised you would have to have telescopic vision to see them, and customer service is so horrendous as to be non-existent. When I ordered a coke and popcorn I expected to pay a small premium, perhaps £2 - £3 the pair - but £5.10? Surely you must admit thats taking the piss?

Of course I'm the kind of customer you would like to see the back of. Why? Because I refuse to be taken for a ride, and will complain when I'm being ripped off. And why shouldn't I? Its my right as a consumer.

I will always pay for good quality service, and always give very good tips in restaurants where the standard of service is decent.

I'll bet you wouldn't want to see the back of me then, eh? ;)

[ForestFilmsUK]

2 tickets for £5 at my local private cinema on Mon-Wed.

Not bad really, although they can never seem to get the sound right on anything they ever show.

[SicCoyote]

I will always pay for good quality service, and always give very good tips in restaurants where the standard of service is decent.

I'll bet you wouldn't want to see the back of me then, eh? ;)

Don't care, cinema staff don't get tips.

[Vaughan]

...okay so my wife thinks this is trivial but is anyone else disappointed that cinemas are starting to hand out tickets that look like receipts instead of the nice little card ones?

Yes, this is very petty.

It had to be said. :D

Next week they'll start rubber-stamping your forehead.

[SicCoyote]

I just LOL'd thinking of that image.

[WilsonBros]

My local fleapit still has the little coloured thick cardboard ones - still the place is a sh1thole - the roof began to leak a few months ago and they closed it for several weeks.

My brother, his other half and I went to see Wall-E there when it reopened and all they have done is rope-off half of the auditorium! :eek:

Kev W

[Companero]

£6 - £7.50 for a cinema ticket is ridiculous!




My local cinema--which is a Cineworld--allow you to sign up for an "unlimited Pass". Costs £11.99 a month and you can go as many times as you want ;)

[Jonny Rojo]

Thing is the whole thing could be automated.
Ticket Machines
Food & Drink Machines
Turnstiles to get to the screens
All you'd need is one or two security guards, a couple of cleaners and a couple of projectionists(or one if it's all digital)


We have 9 screens all running 35mm and on a normal weekday there's only 1 projectionist at a time on duty. I guess it's easier for us as the projection box is one big room, it'd be harder to run if the projectors were split over a couple of rooms on different levels I guess.

Didn't Stelios try out the automated idea with his 'Easy Cinema' idea? I'm not sure how well that took off but seeing as I've never seen an 'Easy Cinema' in any town or city I'm guessing it hasn't taken the country by storm.

[Wynter]

I was reading an article a few days back that spoke about industry hostility to change that cited 'Easy Cinema' as a victim in that he was unable to book (implied that people were unwilling to supply) the type of films needed to make the business a success.

[SicCoyote]

I've worked in a projection booth and I have to say if you've got 10 screens and one projectionist, when do you go to the toilet?

[Jonny Rojo]

I've worked in a projection booth and I have to say if you've got 10 screens and one projectionist, when do you go to the toilet?

There's plenty of time to nip to the loo.

All the films are on platters so once they've started there's not much else to do until the film finishes and there's always a point where all the films are playing at once so I go during that window.

[bigandya]

My local cinema--which is a Cineworld--allow you to sign up for an "unlimited Pass". Costs £11.99 a month and you can go as many times as you want ;)

That would appeal to me, if the cinema was a little closer.

I also used to love late night shows, all night themed shows and double bills.

Now its in and out quicker than a £20 whore. :)

Whatever happened to the theatricality of it all in the provinces?

[Vaughan]

My "local" cinema is a fifteen minute drive. It's out on an industrial park surrounded by restaurants and night clubs. There is no public transport there. So it's drive for fifteen minutes, or take a cab.

It's no wonder I never go. Doesn't Tall Dude have one of those passes? Someone here does....

[SicCoyote]

I just have a friend who gets me in free.

[MarcMorris]

I just walk in backwards ;)

[Oscar Deutsch]

Easy Cinema failed because distributors weren't at all keen on the idea that early bookers could get their tickets for 20p - the vast majority of the ticket price, in the first few weeks at least, goes to the distributors.

The power of distributors is quite alarming - time was, you'd get one print of a film and if it was a hit, it would run for months. Then they decided they should try for all the money as soon as possible, hence why the trend started for multiplexes to show several prints of the same film at staggered times. Trouble was, they would insist you took the 4 prints of Harry Potter or whatever for a minimum of 3 or 4 weeks, so by week 2, most of them would be playing to empty halls. This is what killed the concept of choice at the multiplexes - when Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter came out around the same time, those two films would take up 7 of the 9 screens at the Odeon I worked at...

(Incidentally, it was an old-fashioned cinema split up over the years - those 9 screens were worked from 7 highly scattered boxes, although there would still be only one projectionist to cover these once the last shows all went on - if the alarm indicated a print had fallen off the platter in the furthest away screen, it could take ages to run down there, pick the film up and get it back on!)

Anyways, as the cinema business consolidated and merged, we arrive where we are now with Cineworld, Odeon and Vue the three main chains left, and companies like Showcase and Empire lurking on the fringes. The companies went over to venture capitalists, who sold off the older high-street sites to release their valuable city centre freehold value. That £11.99 a month Virgin/UGC/Cineworld card also served to effectively kill off any other cinemas within a reasonable distance of any of those cinemas. Good deal for the consumer, bad day for choice.

For the last few years I worked there, at least, the decision on what films went on was taken at head office, not locally, so smaller arthouse hits that used to be picked up (the likes of Reservoir Dogs etc) later by the Odeons no longer had a look-in.

I go to the cinema about once a year now - seems little point when it now costs as much to see a film as the DVD will be a few months after release, and the fare offered is almost without exception confined to the mainstream.

[tall dude]

My local cinema--which is a Cineworld--allow you to sign up for an "unlimited Pass". Costs £11.99 a month and you can go as many times as you want ;)

Me and my two sons have had these for a couple of years now,and have saved an absolute fortune. Who'd have thought it!;)