We sit in the theater to watch… oh, what was it… oh, yeah! Arrival! That was good. Anyway, we sit in the theater to watch Arrival and we realize that people pick their seats when they buy their tickets now. When did *THAT* happen?
Part of me wonders what the main thrust of picking seats when you buy tickets is going to be… is it to keep big hit movies from having long lines? Is it to make sure that people will be able to avoid the whole “bro seat” thing? Is it… to maybe be able to charge an additional two bucks for the center seats in the sweet spot that isn’t exactly the front row, but the front row of the part above the walkthrough area? I mean, it makes sense to say that someone who sits in the waaaaay left seat in the veeeeeery front row shouldn’t have to pay the same ten bucks as the guy who sits in the best seat in the house, right?
They’ve been selling play tickets like that for forever. Are they going to start doing that for movies?
Of course, that also allows for a bit of gamesmanship when it comes to the movies that were brand-spanking new a month and a half ago, if you pay for one of the cheap seats and there are only 7 of you in the theater, why *NOT* slink down to the good chair? It’s not like anyone else is using it.
Anyway, we went to see Arrival and picked the best two seats in the house and one of the trailers that caught our eyes was La-La-Land.
For different reasons, of course.
I sat there thinking “Holy cow. Maribou is going to want to see this movie and I am going to not want to see it. I hope that it will be finishing its playtime somewhere around the time that has another movie that I’d want to see would be ending at the same theater.”
After the trailer ended, I turned to Maribou who had this large grin on her face still from the trailer and she asked me “you probably don’t want to see that, huh?”
So we’ll see what happens.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Oh, and Merry Christmas.)
Note that my grin was at least half because I knew how terribly Jay would not to see it. It is third on my list of stuff I’d like to go see though…. good thing I’ll be ALONE for two weeks. (One of the few reasons it’s a good thing.)
Also, @jaybird honey, they do do that for plays. We just go to a lot more itty bitty there are only 20 seats and they all cost 10 bucks each plays than we do big theater plays. Or at least, I drag you to more of the former, and tend to find other company or just go by myself for the other ones. Because I know that, for example, you have zero interest in going to a live performance of Mary Poppins.
I’ve been reading a lot of comics and a lot of kids’ books, and also catching up like whoa on podcasts. I also watched the End of the Tour because even as flawed as it is purported to be, I really like Jason Segel. And I enjoyed him in it. And now I want to go back to reading David Foster Wallace, of whom I have read quite a bit already. But probably not this week.Report
I know they do that for plays. They’ve got a blue section, a green section, an orange section, and the brown section that we normally buy tickets from.
It’s just that movies, as long as I’ve been going to them, have always had “festival” seating.Report
Oh. I was thrown off by your statement that they don’t in the OP. Perhaps I missed your tone.Report
OH JEEZ! I changed how I was thinking about phrasing it without actually changing what I wrote!Report
Ahem…if one of those three happens to be Rogue One, and if you’re viewing happens to occur over that two weeks, I will totes go with you!Report
Out here, it’s more and more common to pick movie seats when you buy the tickets online. When we had the work outing for 11 of us to see Rogue One, it was a theater that didn’t offer that, so we expected to have the scatter to find seats. Luckily, the place didn’t sell out, so we found a big-enough open space towards the front. (Rouge One was his sled.)
My daughter wanted to see La La Land, and dragged both her boyfriend and her brother. They all wound up enjoying it.Report
Part of me wonders what the main thrust of picking seats when you buy tickets is going to be…
I don’t know. What I do know is that since I figured out how easy it is to lock in your seats (for only an additional $3/ticket convenience fee!) I simply can’t NOT do it. (My wife: “Let’s just get the tickets at the theater. Come on, let’s go.” Me: “Have you gone temporarily insane? It’ll take two minutes. I’ll just jump on moviefone here and …”) So they’re getting a bump on every ticket purchase I make.Report
That’s how they get ya!Report
If you’re going to see a new-ish popular movie, the extra half hour you save not waiting in line for the doors to open to get a good seat is totally worth it. My wife and I saw Rogue One, arrived about 2 minutes before the lights dimmed, and walked right to our seats. Printed tickets at the electronic kiosk (which, for some reason, is still totally unused in the year 2016, even when the line for the box office is long). No waiting in line anywhere.
If only there was another type of ticket you could buy that required that you had to pass some sort of “don’t make noise for 2 hours” test.Report
Finally saw “Deadpool”. Lotta fun! The kinda super hero movie I can get into.Report
My theater, which we switched to several years ago, you select the seats. There’s no different charge for “sections” I suspect because of enforcement concerns and like, also demand in theaters is simply too spongy.
I love assigned seating, it’s the shit. No jockeying for location, no dealing with the tools who’s thrown their jackets across a couple of seats. No doom if you don’t get there early to claim turf. Seat selecting is the bomb diggity.
Merry Christmas Jay and to the rest of ya.Report
By evening, whatever was on my phone. 50 mph straight-line winds (gusts to near 70) took out cable and internet about 4:30 pm, power about 6:30 pm.Report
Dan Aykroyd not knowing he’s in a movie.
(Threatening people with paper bags is normal for the dude.)Report