Movie Night

It has been a long time since I have had to wait in any sort of significant line at a movie theater. We have so many theaters around, and so many of them have multiple screens (I have two with over 20 screens within 7 miles of here, and two more with 10 or more within 5), that it usually isn't necessary to wait in a line. You want to see the latest blockbuster? Go anywhere and you can find it playing without a line. Simple.

Tonight M and I were planning an impromptu date night. After church we were going to head over to the nearby, recently discovered dollar movie theater and watch Michael Clayton. The theater is in an older section of Irvine, behind a car wash, and is an older theater that was fairly recently repurposed as a dollar movie theater. Well, to be honest, a "dollar fifty" movie theater (nearly all shows are $1.50).

She joked that it might just be the thing to do in Irvine on a Saturday night. We laughed... and then found out she was right. As we drove into the parking lot I commented that I was shocked at the number of cars in the lot. I hadn't ever seen the parking lot so filled. As we turned down an aisle and started heading toward the theater, we both commented on the number of people. As we got closer, we saw that there were two lines stretching along the sidewalk in front of the theater just for tickets! Since the movie we wanted to see started in less than 15 minutes, and there was no parking in sight, and there were two lines that long, we decided to put our plans on hold. But we drove right by the ticket booth and the lines were long and getting longer by the moment. It really is the thing to do in Irvine on a Saturday! Good call, honey!

So, we headed home, watched episodes of How I Met Your Mother, ate some popcorn, and had a quiet night at home. We are planning to try to go see Michael Clayton at the noon showing on Sunday instead.

I think that other theaters could really learn something. This theater is likely turning people away from shows due to the price and the size of the theaters; while you can go see the latest blockbusters it is rare that the shows are sold out. This theater is making up for the price in the volume of customers, while the deluxe, super-modern, multiplexes are having to raise prices continually to make up for the falling attendance. You wonder how much better the stadium 10 across the street from me would do if they would just lower the tickets by $2 per show; I would bet that they would make up in attendance volume the money they would lose on the initial ticket price. If you have a 100 seat theater and can only half-fill it at $10 a ticket, by lowering the price to $8 you only have to have 12 additional people show up per show to make up the price difference-- I would hazard that is fair bet to make. And when word gets around that your theater is $2 cheaper than the others around for first-run movies-- you'll have more than 12 people per show showing up!