After the most recent incident at the movie theatre we have decided for certain to stop going to the movies.
Our local Sony Loews have steadily increased their matinee costs over the last eight months. I’ve verified via my past Discovercard statements that between November 2003 and January 2004, they increased their adult matinee price from $6/person to $6.50/person and then between June and July of this year, they increased it again from $6.50 to $6.75. So in the past eight months we went from paying $12 to see a movie to $13.50. That’s just uncalled for. I also noticed that their evening shows are $9 per person, but $9.25 for what is called the “Adult Premium”, which is a ticket to a Friday or Saturday evening showing. It’s still the same movie no matter when you see it, so to me this is just a way for them to make even more money off people.
For only $2 more than the cost of two matinee tickets, we can buy the movie when it comes out on dvd (which these days doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to) and we own the movie and can see it as much as we want. Seeing how we’d often pay to see the movie at the theatre AND buy it on dvd, if we just buy it outright, we’d actually be saving money. And I sure like to save money. And once we get a large widescreen HDTV, that whole movie experience will be right in our living room. Considering we can easily make our own popcorn and hot dogs for a fraction of the price the theatres charge, the theatre will no longer have anything to justify their outrageous costs.
I think as time goes on and prices at the theatres continue to increase, more and more people are going to adopt our attitude. It’s bad enough to keep paying more when you’re not getting any additional value for your money, but it’s even worse when having to deal with morons at the theatre who more often than not ruin your experience.