You should consider looking into if there are any Dinner Theatre-style setups in your area. My wife and I like the Cinema Suites offering that AMC has. There are ~30 seats, all patrons are 21+, and they have food and drink service. It’s a nice mix of nearly living room comfort and cinema spectacle. It does cost more than a regular ticket, though, and I’m pretty sure you have to wear trousers/pants. Slightly more on topic, this presumably makes the theatregoers safer since there are still larger theatre rooms with more seats…
Also, I have a vague recollection that AMC dropped their policy against outside food and drink, but I’m not certain on that.
Haven’t most all the mass shootings involved someone walking in guns a blazing or with a sack of guns all Neo style?
Even if they detect a gun wouldn’t the shooter just have to start shooting slight bit earlier? Or is there a berlin wall style machine gun nest over the inspection table?
Stupidity + a .0001 chance of death = waste of time.
Really i don’t think its about safety or popcorn sales. It’s just a gut emotional reaction to events without the interference of reason. tens of thousands die of obesity related disease and they make the sodas bigger tens die of gunshots they institute a radical new policy to make everyone feel better.
I doubt this will actually happen at most theaters. My local Regal won’t even hire enough kids to sell popcorn or clean the place. There is no way they are going to spend money frisking people.
This seems to me like it’s an attempt at security theater to make worried folks feel safer, but I think it’s likely to have the exact opposite effect, to remind folks every time they visit the theater about mass theater shootings. If you weren’t already thinking about those incidents when you arrived, the new bag check will certainly make sure you are.
At least in Austin we have excellent choices of theaters. There’s now 4 or so Alamo Drafthouses with full kitchens headed by actual chefs and they are serious about taking your ass out if you are a nuisance (talk; forget to turn off phone, etc). Then there’s the Violet Crown with full menus and more intimate theaters where there are no bad seats (in fact, first row seats actually have ottomans!). The Arbor is also nice for your artsy type films (and rather neat; Berliner Philharmoniker concerts. Who knew?). Hum, last one does turn out to be a Regal theater.
I think you’re correct because I had the joy of sitting in front of a couple who brought in take-away Indian food. Now, I love Indian food but when you’re not at home or at a restaurant, the assault of the senses can be something.
Yeah, when I came out of the Regal theater on Thursday the guy taking tickets had 3 women waiting with all their purses up on his little stand and was asking one if she could open hers. I noted it because it seemed odd.
Don’t blame the theater chains for high-priced concessions, blame Hollywood. After the studios take their cut, the theater makes next to nothing from exhibiting films. They have to make money somehow.
I wonder how tough it would be to do automatic Online Social Media checks on people as they walk into an establishment.
Face recognition… name… email… then off to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, a general Google for blogs and forums posts. Done if a few seconds, searching for keywords and images.
It’s very possible to do. I would be surprised if no one is working on it.
I’ve wanted the movie theater business to be brought to it’s knees for nearly my whole life, because the cost is bullshit, and the product is often sub par, but this isn’t what I had in mind when I pictured the industry in dire straits. Sad.
Regal, of all theater chains, has the numbers to bargain with Hollywood for a better ticket split. The only reason I can think of for why they don’t, is that it’s not safe in the short term. There’s a chance that studios will just not take the deal immediately, and thus they just raise prices for everything, and now screen for ‘dangerous’ items. In the long term, they’re hurting their business, but who gives a crap about the long term? Corporate musical chairs
This is very likely the truth of the matter. The tickets are a loss leader for movie theaters, and they make their real money off of those ridiculous $5 sodas. They’ve always officially banned bringing your own snacks; I bet they’re delighted to have an excuse to actually enforce that.
Also note that, at least according to the article, they’re not planning to “search” your bags as Cory said; this is a bag check policy, as in “coat check” or “checked luggage,” as in the guy takes your bag away at the door and gives it back when you leave. So that’s actually worse, which marks a rare example of BoingBoing fact failure being less hyperbolic than reality.
