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THEY ARE CRAPDear Cineworld,
When I think of the word ‘Cinema’, it conjures memories of yesteryear, a bloke at the front playing the piano while black and white people fall over and hang off buildings in an amusing way, the velour curtains sliding, nay, sweeping majestically to the edges of the screen as the lights fade. The time when the film would have an interval half way through and a woman with a torch and a tray would mill randomly around the cinema selling choc-ices for 15p (That’s about 15p in today’s money), then when the film finished, you could just sit and wait for ten minutes, then watch the whole film again for free!
Sadly, those heady halcyon days have faded into a murky yet somehow golden past. These days we are ‘treated’ to 3D dolby laser-disc digital surround sound experience, a choice between arm-chair Pullman seat luxury, spring loaded cushion pad technology or the wet cardboard boxes down the front, little blue lights that line the aisles guiding you to your seat in the dark and large burly security guards making sure you don’t take sweets into the cinema that were purchased from ‘elsewhere’. It’s comforting to know that these ‘bouncers’ are employed not to protect the public from screaming nutters trying to emulate their hero from the film ‘Who got stabbed this time 2’ but to eject anyone who commits the heinous crime of secreting a packet of polos in their handbag, or a carton of ribena about their person.
As I visited one of your supposedly capitalist Cineworld cinemas yesterday, being charged the princely sum of £6.50 at peak times and £6.49 at off-peak times (Which is normally between the hours of 9am and 11am when the cinema is shut), I entered the foyer and noticed the plethora of snacks and beverages on offer. The first machine I encountered dispensed hot and cold drinks. The first nozzle bestowed me with weak coffee, the second with tea that tasted like coffee, the third was still orange with bits of coffee floating in it and the third was hot chocolate, which was actually coffee as they had run out of hot chocolate.
I then noticed a slightly overweight lady ordering a bucket of coke, a hot dog, 2 trays of nachos (One with salsa dip and one with Garlic), a bucket of popcorn, a bar of chocolate, a tub of Hagen Dasz, a choc ice and a muffin. She promptly had a heart attack, not from the consumption of these high cholesterol foods, but from looking at the bill for her purchase. I prised the invoice from her lifeless fingers after administering an unsuccessful kiss-of-life, the six figure sum made even me a little faint, and I’ve got kids! My daughter has had to re-mortgage her hamster cage just to afford a tiny cup of weak orange juice.
I don’t understand where this money is going? The staff are all dopey and look like they should really be at school studying ‘the anatomy of arses and elbows’, so they can’t be getting paid much, the film industry hasn’t come up with an interesting concept for a film since ‘Pingu the Movie’ having to sit through the so called renaissance of the film industry which includes the recent release “Miami Vice” (A reworking of an old TV show), “Superman Returns” (A Reworking of an old film) and mystery and suspense is certainly alive with “Poseidon” (A reworking of an old Film), “King Kong” (A reworking of an old film) and “Oh no, I think the world’s gonna blow up, get Will Smith to help 2” (The sequel to every film Will Smith has ever made). Do you wonder why DVD piracy is so prevalent?
The fact you have a 150% mark-up on your prices has left me with no option but to teach my children the dying art of Smuggling. It’s only a short step from smuggling Truffles into a Cinema to wearing an eye-patch, cutting one of their legs off and replacing it with a piece of discarded plinth from my recent kitchen refurbishment and saying ‘ahaaar’ before every sentence.
I ask you to please consider the fact that what used to be a relatively inexpensive way to entertain the kids on a Saturday afternoon has turned into something akin to being on the corkscrew at Alton towers! You are taking your customers for a ride! Lets hope you never employ ex-health care staff as the amount of people shuffling through your ‘security’ looking like they have abnormal ‘growths’ under their t-shirts will certainly set the alarm bells ringing. Why not go the whole hog and x-ray the people coming through your doors and confiscate anything edible (Which should include finger nails as these are eaten during moments of mild threat or horror)?
Yours thoroughly skint for the next 3 months,
Disgruntled
Filed Under: LONDON, UK, SOUTH EAST, SOUTH WEST, NORTH EAST, NORTH WEST, WALES, SCOTLAND, MIDLANDSPOSTED by: urbanfox on 16 January 2007 at 3:31 pm
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this topic was recently covered on a bbc3 programme called ‘the bullshit detectives’ (although the shit is *’ed out). The looked at all the major operators including cineworld as well as odeon and vue.
It’s not illegal it’s just ‘policy’ and if you complain hard enough they have to concede it seems aside from cooked food like a hot dog which they will refuse on the grounds of hygiene…
It’s a load of crap how much they charge… It makes you think where they get the real profit from and why they think more and more people prefer the home cinema experience!
Thank goodness, I’m glad someone else is angered by the ‘no food or drink’ policy at Cineworld. I wouldn’t mind if the confectionary they sold was reasonably priced or if they even sold sandwiches, but unless I want to fill my stomach with overpriced crap I have to wait until after the film to eat.
Here’s a tip (which makes me feel a bit like a drug smuggler). Take a largish back and hide your food under a tshirt the same colour as the inside of your bag. As long as there is still plenty of room above the tshirt you should get away with it without a problem. As you say, the staff are predominantly dopey.
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