I Was Unfaithful

I spent my movie night at a different theater this evening. You see, ever since November, I have been seeing trailers for The Other Boleyn Girl and I have been salivating over seeing it. It was coming out this weekend and for some stupid reason, MY theater didn't have it listed!!! They currently have re-releases of both There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men as well as the continued showings of Juno, which, granted, are all VERY good movies, but come on....give the new ones a chance to get out there!

So I felt it absolutely necessary to give my money to a competitor tonight. Yes, I found myself at one of the larger multiplexes. It had its good points and its bad. I will do the unusual and list the bad first...

Bad points (compared to my "regular" theater):
* They didn't know me.
* They charged me full price for a refill on an icee. MY theater, when you buy a large icee for $5, you can either get a refill of soda for free, or a refill of an icee for 50 cents. This place charges you $ 4.75 for a large icee which is nowhere near as large of a cup and is not plastic...so cup breakthrus are potential and there is no such thing as a refill. And the cup says all over it "icee" so there is no pretending that you get a free soda refill.
* The cinnamon pretzel was hard and stale.
* The popcorn was actually pretty good, but I ordered it with extra butter layered and the guy dumped half of the contents back into the bin and handed me the bag and pointed to where the butter was on the island (with the ketchup and the mustard) so I had to figure out how to distribute the butter evenly and then I guess I was supposed to go back up there to get the rest of the popcorn to fill the large (because when you buy a large, you do actually get unlimited free refills of that) but the lines were starting to get long and I really didn't feel like having to deal with the pissed off people that I would be cutting in front of to get the rest of my money's worth of the popcorn, so I basically paid for a large but got a small.
* Besides getting a bit gypped on the price of the popcorn, it also made me sick. Thank goodness there was a 45 minute gap between movies because most of it was spent in the bathroom. I will not be getting popcorn from there again.
* I guess because they do a lot of business, the bags of popcorn are already fixed and it's kinda like going to McDonald's when you order a hamburger and it's already sitting there....and the nachos are prepackaged in boxes as well...just waiting for someone to order. I guess I like that personal touch of the fresh popcorn being made every half hour or so and the helper scooping it out and fluffing it into the bag...oh, and putting the butter on it for me...layering it as they put in the additional popcorn. (Hey, if I wanted to put the butter on the popcorn, myself, I would stay home and pop it. I'm paying for a product and a service, and I shouldn't have to figure out the mystical combination of getting the stupid butter machine to dispense the butter so that it comes out evenly.)
* When I first got to the window, everyone ahead of me didn't seem to have a problem getting their tickets, but when it was MY turn, all of a sudden the guy's speaker isn't working very well and he claims he can't hear me, so I'm having to shout to him that I want to see three movies and as I am telling him each one slowly, I am having to repeat myself. And then after telling him the movies, I asked for a brochure and am pointing to it (as it is inside the glass, which I cannot reach thru glass), telling him that I would like to become a member of their particular movie club and after three times of pointing and shouting and he finally understands what I'm saying, I have now felt completely stupid. I honestly did not think that I was that difficult to understand, but perhaps I should have written down what I wanted on index cards to give to him and that would have made it much simpler.
* I got inside and handed the girl my tickets and she ripped all at the same time and then proceeded to tell me that Penelope would be playing in theater 13 and was to my left. Well, honey, that was all well and good, but THAT particular movie was the third one of the evening and wouldn't do me much good until I had seen the other two first. This place only had one more movie room than my normal but because of the way they were split up, I actually got lost trying to figure where in the hell I was supposed to go.
* The locks on the bathroom stalls would not all stay latched properly, probably because of all the slamming that people do when they close the doors....why they feel this is necessary is beyond me, but as I was doing my thing, every single time someone else would go into another stall, she would slam the door and then slam it again and I guess it wasn't quite latching, so she would slam it again and the whole time all of this slamming was going on, the walls on MY stall were shaking and the latch on my stall was slowly inching to the left so that another couple of slams, it would have come unlatched completely and then I had this fear of the door swinging open and being put on display.
* This theater, while close to my work, is not that close to my house, so it made the late night drive home a much longer journey.
* At my theater, the last time I was there, the manager waited on me at the concession stand and recognizing me as a regular, he not only gave me a FREE icee refill (of which I would have been more than happy to pay the 50 cents) but he ALSO refilled my small popcorn bag for free......only the large popcorn is where you get the free refills. Not gonna get that kind of treatment at one of those huge multiplex places until you've been there a hundred times or more.
* And the last thing...my movie experiences tonight will not count towards my rewards at my theater, so I guess that puts it into the category of "wasted money". ? (Good thing all three movies I saw were excellent and worth seeing again.)

Okay, now the good things about this other theater:
* There were a LOT of seats in every movie room. And it seemed that they were all huge. (My theater depends on which room you're in as to how many seats there are.)
* I'm pretty sure that every single room had the digital sound (again, mine doesn't have that for all showings.)
* All of the seats are flat and when you put the arm rest up, you can actually put your legs up or lie down (or, if you're with someone, you can cuddle together) and you're really comfortable.
* I could be mistaken, but I think the screens were all bigger. I still sat in my normal three rows from the front, but it was a more "in your face" kind of thing for me at this one.
* The trailers were different versions than I had seen of both Get Smart and Sex And The City. Both movies I had already decided that I really want to see, but the trailers at this moviehouse were MUCH better.
* Instead of 15 minutes of previews, it's 20 minutes.
* They dim the lights completely as the first trailer is starting. Mine they wait until the actual movie is starting before it gets that dark...I think it's more enjoyable to watch the trailers when it's pitch black.
* I only had bundle myself in my coat this time for extra comfort...not because I was freezing to death like I always do in my theater.
* Because the rooms are so huge, sitting in the third row from the front, I don't have to worry about hearing the bratty teenagers laughing and/or making out in the back of the theater. Because I simply don't hear them unless I turn around and make a conscious effort to listen in.
* The bathrooms had paper towels. Oh, that was SO nice! I absolutely HATE those stupid hand dryer things. First of all, it takes FOREVER to get your hands dry, and then you're having to drip from the sink to the dryer - making the sink all wet - and because there are no paper towels, the sink tops are always wet everywhere, which means I have to put my coat and my purse on the floor if I don't want them to get wet while I am washing my hands.
* Parking was a lot nicer. I parked not directly in front of the theater, but in the side part of the parking lot and it still wasn't that far away when it was time for me to leave. My theater, sometimes it's about 50 paces to get to my parked car at the end of the evening. This one it was about 5.

Bottom line, though. Like most infidelities, it was a nice change, but it makes me appreciate what I already have. I am quite happy with my place and will only be going to this other as the exception, not the rule. AND it is kinda nice when they know that I am there to see several movies at once and I don't get the shocked look or the disgusted "what? you have no life?" expression when I start rattling off all of the movies I am seeing for the evening. In fact, now, as I am standing at window, as soon as I say my first movie, whoever it is at the register patiently waits while I figure out the next movie title and time on my list of movies to watch because everyone there knows I will be viewing more than one.

Actual movie reviews for the evening will be done at a later time. I have an early day ahead of me and need to get a few hours of sleep.

Vixy :]