My spouse has gone all in on the gd rumble-seats in Cinemark theaters. Even dumb movies we’d never go see, they’re like “does it have rumble seats? ‘cause I’m there.”

For me it’s just the comfy-ass recliners. One of the Regals near me swapped out all of the chairs with comfy recliners and— my god— sitting through a 3 hour movie was a comparative cakewalk to how it used to be.

I haven’t got any AMCs near me, but it sounds like they haven’t put in the same efforts on seat situations. You can have all the Dolby, XD, THX etc stuff you want, but the chairs are a big part of it.

—that said, we also have a lovely historic theater near us that’s oozing character and ambience, so… it’s an uphill battle for all chain theaters in our area afaic

If only they’d upkeep the recliners… my theather converted around covid, and half of the them are non functioning now. Broken buttons mostly, but it’s especially bad around the center positioned seats everyone always takes.

I used to be an usher a while back and cleaning the basic foldy seats are no bueno, especially on kid/family movies— people are slobs. Shrek 2 was the WORST by far to clean up after, and it was in theaters for so long.

I cannot imagine how long and how much work it would take to thoroughly clean some of the recliners I’ve seen.

Coupled with that, nearly every chain cinema near us has cut staff/concessions down to combining concessions and tickets into the same booth/register, and the ushers are a skeleton crew.

They’re looking for a quick-fix/lowest effort draw for an audience and are only halfway there ‘cause uhhh ineptitude or greed or both. And it sucks ‘cause I’d hate to see all of these places shut down.

…although, one of them shut down near us and got bought by a local guy who has spruced it the hell up, so. We’ll see what happens.