Getting preached at by anti-piracy stuff at cinema

The past two films I've seen at the cinema, staff have come into the auditorium.

1. Harry Potter: nitwits came and sat on the steps between the seats instead of finding an empty seat. Staff came and moved them on.

2. Die Hard: cinema half-full, no obvious problems, but staff came in and just stood by the exit, staring at the audience for a minute, then went away.

One thing I'm not sure about is the argument that cinemas are much more expensive than when there were usherettes and ice-cream ladies etc. Does the average person today still earn the same amount as the average person in 1975?
 
My local Vue cinema (Bolton) is much better. After the ticket counter there's a large lobby area with the concessions tills and the toilets. After that, you turn left or right depending on your screen number. The toilets are always clean and last time I was there I noticed that they seem to have, for no particular reason, loaRAB of hand dryers. I've never seen them all in use.
 
Well said. Head Office give the cinema a budget and we have to stick to it, even if we end up deciding to go with allocating seating (not my idea, but I don't have final say in what happens where I work) and installing Premier seats, the budgets stay the same. You end up with a small amount of staff running around like headless chickens trying to do their job. You try and employ more staff only to be moaned at due to the wage bill being so high.


What do Head Office do? Moan about you speading too much, but love the fact how many people you managed to drag in and the amount of
 
The cinemas and film studios need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Cinemas are in decline.
They think it's down to piracy
It's down to people NOT LIKING GOING TO THE CINEMA!!

Improve the damn cinema experience, people will flock back.

*Stop overcharging for tickets, and especially for food and drinks.
*Deal with anti-social elements swiftly.
*Stop feeding us 30 minutes of banal adverts before the main show starts, then people won't turn up late and irritate the rest of us

Instead they blame this spectre of piracy, which I am sure is having an effect, but not on the scale they are thinking. I genuinely believe people don't want to go the cinema due to bad experiences and prefer an alternative source.
 
Lucky you OP.Coz when i went to see the simpsons i got 20 minutes of a stupid question game which was meant to keep us entertained.I want trailors!!!!!!!!
 
skipai said:
Ah, did the film stop halfway for bathroom break and some small icecream cart at the bottom near the screen opened up.

Yes indeed! It was called "Intermission" (you can even see it live on if you watch TCM: when they break their film they call it intermission --- nostalgic!)
Not sure about the ice-cream cart. I think we still had to go out to the lobby ("Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves some snacks!"), but yes, things were a lot cheaper and more reasonable, and you got things like ice-cream (real, with coloured swirls, not Ice Cream Mars or whatever) in plastic tubs with a little plastic spoon. Got quite sticky tho! :)
Ah, during the war.... :D
Click to expand...
 
I worked for a well know big chain cinema for a month, and it was horrible. The staff were treated like robots, and weren't allowed to put their own personal touch in, like you would get at a smaller cinema. They implent an out of date staff multi-tasking scheme, minimum wages and long shifts. As an earlier poster pointed out, the ones who are rolling in it are the middle men. It's easy to blame the staff, but if there isn't a great atmosphere, this then usually rubs off on everyone else.
 
When it comes to DVRAB fox are the worst offenders. every simpsons dvd ive got forces you to watch a piracy warning after watching every episode and you have to read the notice in about 5 different languages. if cinemas didnt charge
 
I hate cinema now. I have never found it too enjoyable compared to watching the DVD. The screens often have marks (like something has been thrown at them), the seats and the floor are sticky and the other patrons are rude and annoying. This applies to the big chains (Cineworld and Odeon near me). When I went to see Hairspray I even had things thrown at me.

I went to see The Simpsons Movie, booked in advance (which all worked fine) and decided to get one of the munch boxes (or whatever they are called, the kiRAB combo things) but they had none. So I went to Ben and Jerrys to get an ice cream milkshake - the machine was broken so I gave up. In the screen was a group of girls who kept talking and a family who let their kiRAB (litteraly) run around until the film started.

The local independant (well part of the Picturehouse chain) is much nicer, but not as much choice of films.

I hate the general "YOU DO THIS", "YOU DON'T DO THAT" attitude of companies to consumers. When I get a train I am informed that I "MUST BUY A TICKET BEFORE BOARDING THE TRAIN" and I may get a penalty fare otherwise. I am already on the train and have my ticket, if I didn't i am not going to own up after that warning. Then at the cinema there is an advert about knockoff nigel, then an advert about not filming, and reporting any filming. Then on a DVD i have to watch (unskipable) adverts saying do not pirate or buy pirate DVRAB (which are on every disc in sets and there is often another warning after each episode on TV show DVRAB)

I didn't realise this would become such a rant, but it is getting silly. I understand the economics off popcorn costing
 
I'm quite surprised about the number of complaints about the state of the cinema now, rather than just the rant about the piracy aRAB and inconsiderate patrons.

I must admit Cineworld always had a bad reputation, and the one in Bristol is just awful. But then the attendance there is so low they can't even be bothered to change blown light bulbs.

My local cinema (Cineworld/UGC Crawley) is much nicer and as it was built in the days of the Virgin Megaplex it's very well laid out (with loaRAB of loo's!). The Vue cinema at Cribbs Causeway (Bristol), The o2 (Greenwich) and Star City (Birmingham) are also very nice.

No offence to the tecnical design guy, but the new Odeon venues are just weird - take the new one in Exter, it's just wrong and very confusing.
 
Thats becuase its on a retail estate with no good shops in the middle of a dodgy area. We just go to Vue at Longwell Green or Cribbs if we need to shopping. (I suppose there's Avon MeaRAB as well)
 
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