I was in the movie theatre three weeks ago and paid almost 10€ for the ticket only to be forced to watch - I kid you not - 30 minutes of commercials + another 20 minutes of movie trailers before the movie even started. And when you reserve a ticket, you are forced to be there 30 minutes before the movie begins, otherwise they released the seats.
That was a waste of 50+30 minutes of my time, which was more than half of the entire movie. And I even paid 10 freaking bucks for it.
This was the moment when I realized that I probably won't go to a movie theater more than once a year from now on.
This doesn't mean that I now will go on and pirate the movie. There's still iTunes and I don't need to see a movie on release day, but it was a great example for how companies mess up the user experience.
The irony is that some theaters show something like a self-commercial with the saying "Cinema - that's what movies are made for".
Disclaimer: This happened in Germany. The movie-watching experience in the US was way better to me. No commercials, only a few trailers.
You should find a smaller cinema then. In my experience only huge ventures like Cinestar can afford to behave so badly to their customers, whereas independent cinemas have excellent service (and sometimes are even cheaper!).
Same thing here in Austria. They cancelled most of the 2D features, leaving only ~10€ 3D movies - which I don't like, because the screen seems to be too dark as to compensate for the polarization filter of the glasses. Also, a small bottle of soda costs 3,40€ at the vending machine.
That was a waste of 50+30 minutes of my time, which was more than half of the entire movie. And I even paid 10 freaking bucks for it.
This was the moment when I realized that I probably won't go to a movie theater more than once a year from now on.
This doesn't mean that I now will go on and pirate the movie. There's still iTunes and I don't need to see a movie on release day, but it was a great example for how companies mess up the user experience.
The irony is that some theaters show something like a self-commercial with the saying "Cinema - that's what movies are made for".
Disclaimer: This happened in Germany. The movie-watching experience in the US was way better to me. No commercials, only a few trailers.