Summary: Old seats, no such thing as a ""good seat"" for viewing, scrubby speakers, tiny screens, poor picture quality, poor sound quality, poor management.
I just endured what was literally the worst movie-going experience I've ever had. I'm on vacation with my family. I drove 40 minutes to make it to this theater. After a curt speech from the staff member, who'd been charged with crowd control outside of the theater, we made our way inside our theater for a 2D showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
1.) An audience member spilled a cup of Coke at our feet. The staff came to clean it up. They used an enormous amount of water and only managed to dilute the soda. We got paper towels to mop up the excess water.
2.) The previews were out of focus and stretched weirdly so that the picture did not touch the sides. The sound was so low that the cycling of the air conditioner could be heard easily.
3.) The movie itself jumped randomly every ten-fifteen seconds for the first ten minutes of the film. An audience went to complain and that was rectified.
4.) The picture quality and the sound quality were continuously poor and distracting.
5.) A staff member came through the theater swinging a red light as he walked up to the front, and then up the stairs to the back.
6.) The picture segmented weirdly, so that the top of the picture was on the bottom and the bottom of the picture was on the top. It continued this way for several minutes growing worse to the point that again it was unwatchable.
7.) Abruptly the movie shut off. The lower-level staff member who?d sold us popcorn, came into notify us that they were attempting to fix the problem. He sounded amused and wholly unaware of how inadequate this theater was. A manager never came in to address the audience. The staff member suggested that audience members ?go to the bathroom, get more snacks!? Customers rushed from the auditorium to do as he suggested. 40 seconds later the movie was back on the screen and people were still out of the room as his suggestion.
8.) The movie starts unexpectedly and is so disorienting that by the time we caught on to what was happening the moment had passed.
9.) The staff member returned again swinging the red light through the theater.
10.) The picture quality was inconsistent. The sound quality varied on what were obviously old speakers.
11.) Guy with the swinging light.
12.) The sounds starts to get scrubby as if the speakers were going out.
13.) When I spoke with the manager following the end of the movie she claimed to be completely ignorant as the problems experienced in theater 8. An employee chimed in that the sound quality was just how the movie was. The manager acted as if it was the first she?d heard of any problems. She told us to hold on a moment and walked away. She apologized and gave us tickets. But it didn't seem sincere, because she already had our money. The fact that she denied any knowledge of problems in the theater is problematic.
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