Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

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Re: Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

Post by storewanderer »

Funny they have such limits given many restaurants around Portland were not doing any sort of capacity limits at all a couple weeks ago. I was kind of surprised.
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Re: Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

Post by BillyGr »

Alpha8472 wrote: April 1st, 2021, 4:01 pm A limit of 50 people in an entire theater is crazy. Do they mean auditorium? If a 16 screen theater can only have 50 people total, then it will not be very profitable.
At least for NY, it was for each room, not the entire complex. Which makes sense, since people in one room/screen wouldn't impact those in another as they are completely separated.

The place where it becomes more of an issue is those few older theaters still around that are much larger and often used for non-movie events, but they still do show films at some points. Seems a % would have made more sense for those.
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Re: Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

Post by Brian Lutz »

Made my first trip to the theater this weekend since last February (we usually go to the Regal Crossroads theater in Bellevue since they have recliner seats.) A couple of interesting things to note:

- The box office wasn't open when we were there. Instead, a sign on the door advised that customers should purchase tickets at the concession counter. We had already purchased our tickets online prior to arrival, so I didn't see how this worked out, although the wait through the concession line would probably be longer than the wait at the box office. We had an issue with one of the seats not reclining, and since the Guest Services kiosk wasn't staffed we had to have the ticket taker page a manager to come help us out.
- Some time between the last time we were at this theater and now, it appears that Regal has switched their beverages from Coke to Pepsi. Probably not a huge change since it appears that Regal has switched back and forth a number of times over the years, but definitely something to note.
- Regal seems to be pushing subscription plans pretty hard now. Don't think my wife and I watch enough movies in theaters for it to make sense (even at the cost of roughly two tickets per month per person), but it certainly seems like a way to get people back into the theaters.
- Looking at the available seating in the app it appears that they are putting a 1 seat buffer in between parties, although in this case the theater wasn't full enough for this to be much of an issue. I believe we were the only people in our row.

All in all it wasn't all that much different than usual, aside from wearing masks (it wasn't clear if Regal was going by the "fully vaccinated people don't need masks" guidelines other places have started using, there was nothing on the door to indicate this.)
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Re: Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

Post by Alpha8472 »

Regal probably decided that they could cut the box office staff. It is very difficult to recruit employees now for such low wages and only a few hours every night.

The theory behind selling tickets at the concession stand is that it encourages people to buy food and drinks. Cinemas make most of their money from concessions sales. The profit from tickets is low. If you wait this long in the concession stand, customers figure that they might as well get some food as well. The smell of fresh popcorn really tempts people to buy food and drinks. The popcorn is made to be extra salty so that you want to buy a drink. The box office people spend a large amount of time sitting around and doing nothing between shows. They can be put to work at the concession stands.

Regal used to serve Pepsi products until 2002. Then they switched to Coke products in Spring 2020. Statistically, Coke products are preferred by more customers. However, Pepsi is much cheaper for businesses to serve. Coke contracts cost more. Some people hate Pepsi because it is too sweet. Coke is not as sweet. People are sickened by too much sweetness, but if is less sweet people are more tolerant. It is a trade off. Drink sales are lower if you serve Pepsi. However, you make more profit on Pepsi since it is lower in cost to the business. The net effect is that you lose drink sales with Pepsi. If people hate the drink selection, they are more likely to avoid the concession stand.

You can always tell a company by the soda that they serve. Companies that penny pinch and want to save money will go for the inferior Pepsi products. The companies that want higher quality soda and better customer satisfaction, will go with Coke. You have to spend money to make the customers satisfied. If you cut a few cents on soda, just to make more profit you lose customer loyalty.

Penny pinching shows in every aspect of Regal's operations. They want the cheapest labor, the cheapest payroll, the cheapest seats. I have found that Regal always chooses seats that are the cheapest. The materials are less comfortable, and lower quality. The speakers at Regal are terrible. They chose the cheap Klipsch speakers that have terrible sound. Other theater chains use much better quality sound equipment and it shows. Many Century Theatres used very high quality speakers and their theaters were THX certified. The sound quality was amazing. To this day there are still Century Theatres across the country that are still THX certified. I do not know of any Regal Cinema that is THX certified.
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Re: Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

Post by storewanderer »

I am surprised Regal needs you to go to a counter to buy a ticket at all. Galaxy and Cinemark here in NV are either kiosk for tickets, online, or there is still a counter option but it is not even that widely used. I thought I used a kiosk at a Regal in CA years ago but maybe it was some other brand like AMC, I can't remember. Somewhere around Manteca. Galaxy uses an assigned seating model; it is easier to use the kiosk.
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Re: Regal Cinemas to start reopening on April 2nd

Post by Alpha8472 »

Regal used to have kiosks way back in the early 2000s. I believe they were Fujitsu ATM and movie ticket combo machines. They were huge bulky machines, but they were one of the first cinema kiosks back then. Then they got rid of them due to high costs. Regal switched to different brands of kiosks over the years and eventually most of their theaters got rid of the kiosks. You might still find some kiosks remaining at some of their cinemas. AMC had kiosks in the early 2000s as well, but they were really dim and hard to use. It was only around 2012 that AMC really started pushing huge iPad style ticket kiosks to replace human workers.

Around 2006, Regal was replacing some of their ticket windows with the ATM ticket kiosks. That did not last long. They switched back to human box office workers so that a human could persuade customers into buying one of those membership plans.

Regal had some awful corporate policies back then. They required employees to walk through the auditorium a certain number of times during a show. The secret shoppers would count how many times the employees walked through the auditorium. It was awful. If the secret shopper did not see the employee walk the required number of times, the theater would get in trouble. It got so bad that they forced employees to wear neon green vests, hold a bright flashlight, and even walk across the movie screen blocking the movie. They even wrote up employees for not asking customers if they wanted to upgrade to a combo. If a customer is not asked if they want a combo by an employee, the customer would get a free ticket.

That was years ago. I hope Regal has changed their insane and awful policies by now. Their policies annoyed customers and employees alike. If Regal wants to stay in business, they need to treat their customers and employees right.
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