Hello, So Nice To See You. That is the typical greeting from persons greeting audience members,taking tickets, seating patrons and selling concessions – usually volunteers at smaller theatre companies. This has certainly been my experience at many of the Kansas City venues: The Spinning Tree Theatre, KCActors Theatre, The Unicorn, The Coterie and The New Theatre. There are others that I have not yet attended but which I’m sure offer the same kind of personal touch.
Why do I bring that up? Because the movie I attended this week was a dreadful contrast. I won’t mention the theatre chain but rest assured I have let them know about my experiences. My friend and I arrived at about 2:45 for a 2:50 scheduled starting time. After waiting for some time in front of the empty ticket booth I walked over toward the person in the concession stand. I asked about a ticket agent and a young woman, leaning against the wall outside the concession stand, left her very important cell phone game or text to let me know that, “He’ll be back right away”. Right away proved to be five minutes plus. Already we had lost ten minutes of our afternoon just waiting. Finally the agent came back accompanied by the cell phone woman and the concession stand employee and the three of them were able to conger up our tickets. I asked about a hearing device but was handed a long piece of apparatus which was a set for closed captions. I decided to give it a try so I told the clerk which movie we were to see and she set the device accordingly. Then, with no one taking tickets or providing instructions to the right theatre in the complex we found our theatre, entered and sat down.
What does one do when waiting for the deafeningly loud ads and previews to start? We visited, catching up with events since our last outing. After a while we began to wonder why there was nothing showing. Fifteen minutes past start time and nothing on the screen but a shot of a poster. So, at this point I decided to find a manager. Down the long empty hall, down the escalator until I saw a person in a theatre uniform. He told me that they had had trouble with that theatre/feature earlier in the day but thought they had fixed it. He contacted a manager who told me the same sad tale but said he would start the previews right away. I rejoined my companion, the previews came on and we relaxed, ready to see the show.
We did see a show. Unfortunately, it was not the one we came to see, the one we bought tickets for. That meant too that the closed captions didn’t work because the device had been set for a different movie.
After the film (fortunately one that both of us planned to see at a later date) I turned in the captioning device. There was one employee in the very large lobby and he was very pleasant and apologetic. Too bad other employees didn’t share his attitude about customer service.
Next adventure will be a play presented by one of the wonderful Kansas City theatres.
Movies? – getting lower on my list of things to do.