Now, as many (and by many, I mean the five people who actually read the forum, and Poptarts) of you know, I havent posted recently due to City of Heroes and La Pucelle Tactics currently waging war for the dominance of my very soul. Well, today I was going to actually talk about City of Heroes, but thanks to certain events yesterday (Which may or may not have involved time travel, due to the many questions that fiddling with the time/space continuum presents, such as why your luggage ends up in 1624 AD when you clearly went to 1348 BC.) Anyways, getting back to the actual point (The fact that I actually have a point this time and not just rambling under the influence of prescription medication shows that I am improving as a writer), I decided yesterday that I would do something I haven't done since my father passed away two years ago and actually go see a movie with some friends.

So, after much discussion, we decided to go see Van Helsing. Now, being that the weather wasn't that great due to all the raining, we went over to the Cinemark theater over in the richmond mall, since I didn't think the Ark could make it all the way to lexington. (And those fools made fun of me when I built that. HAH!) Now, the Richmond mall is one of those crappy little malls that you only bother with when your REALLY bored. You know the kind I mean, the one with 5 stores, almost all of them Radio Shacks, and bathrooms that looked like they havent been cleaned since the crusades. But hey, we wanted to see a movie, and weather be damned, we were going to see a movie. So we got there at about six, found out that Van Helsing was playing at 7:10, and goofed off in the little arcade for about an hour. (And Time Crises 3 ROCKS, by the way.)

Finally, seven rolled around, and me and my pals headed to the movie theater. I had forgotten to sneak some soda's in (Something I regretted later) and so shelled out the 3 dollars for one of those giant "Guaranteed to miss half the movie" soda's. You know, the kind that you can buy in every fast food resteraunt for a buck less and wont make you miss out on any cool action scenes. I also blew the five bucks for a big tub of popcorn for my buddies, since I owed them a few dollars anyways. So, at that, we headed into the theater, with a good ten minutes to spare.

Now, before I continue, let me actually talk about Van Helsing for a moment, since I feel I should actually say SOMETHING about the movie before ripping into Cinemark like Unicron at an all you can eat planet buffet. Van Helsing was a pretty good movie. Its not the best movie you can see, and there was one or two moments where it dragged (Usually when, y'know, there was actual plot and not gratuitus monster butt kicking) but it made for a good mindless action flick to waste two hours with. Not to mention a few cute jabs at James Bond and Q, along with the Frankenstein monster who actually came off pretty damn cool, and some good mindless butt kicking. And of course watching the transformation of the wolfman was also a nice touch. So dont go out of your way to watch it, but it sure as hell beats watching American Idol.

Anyways, back to the main reason for this post... So my and my buddies pile into a theater, and after relocating to get away from the guy and girl groping and fondling each other in the seats in front of us (*I* wanted to stay, but they insisted.), we settled in to get ready to watch the movie. So, 7:10 finally hits and the theater starts to go dark. Then the comercials start. I think to myself "Fine, this should take a few minutes, then we get to see the movie.". We watch. The previews come up. Finally at 7:40, the last of the previews ends and the movie starts. At this point, I'm rather pissed. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the theater times listed "7:10" as the start time of the movie. NOT "7:10 and the 30 minutes for the previews.".

Now, it would be one thing if I was watching this movie for free. However, when I shell out roughly 7 bucks to sit in a theater with a bunch of people to watch a movie, I expect the movie to start at the time LISTED, not when they feel like getting around to it. Hell, if they wanted to say "Previews start at 7:10, but the actual movie starts at 7:40", I would be fine with that. Or they can start the previews early. However, saying 7:10 and then showing 30 minutes of commercials and previews is just downright misleading, if not flat out dishonest. Now, as some of you know, I work for Fazoli's. And every tuesday we hold our kids night, where from 5p-8p we sell our kids meals for only $0.99 instead of the usual $1.99. Now, if we were to start discounting at 5:30p instead when we clearly have 5 listed, not only would we be complained at, but would be accused of false advertising. And yet the movie theaters feel they can get away with it.

So, after the movie was finally over, we got up and headed out, and I went to go to the concession stand for a refill on that $3 drink. Guess what? They don't give refills. So, yeah. I wasted $7 for a movie which didnt start on time, $3 for a drink which doesent even come with a refill despite the fact that I can get it a $1 cheaper in the foodcourt itself AND get free refils, as well as the $5 dollars for the popcorn. So, I now have a Cinemark buisness card, and as soon as I can get a live supervisor to talk to and not their answering machine, I will be making quite a bit of fuss. Ultimetly, I learned a few lessons from this:

1: I wont be going to cinemark again anytime soon,

2: Dracula is the equivelant of your D&D L33T D3WD Min/Maxer,

3: Starscream has actually managed to get a credit card despite having been blasted into atoms, drifting through time and space, and being ejected from the body of the Kenny of the Beastwars saga,

and finally,

4: Never eat six boxes of poptarts in one sitting. Trust me.

Posted by Liquid-X at May 20, 2004 01:11 PM