The Outrageous Cost of a Movie

Hal and I were out the other day and after some lunch and shopping, I decided to stop by our local movie theater. Worst decision ever.

We have several streaming services here at home, but silly me, I thought it would be nice for us to see a movie in the theater for a change. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. We hadn’t purchased tickets online or anything like that.

The first sign of trouble was there were no ticket windows open. A sign said to purchase your tickets inside. There were two ticket machines, one was clearly out of order, and the line at the other was interminably long.

When we finally git to the machine, it wasn’t functioning correctly. This helped explain the long wait. By this time the movie we hoped to see was ready to start. I told Hal that the whole idea was turning into one giant clusterfuck and that we were leaving. Hal agreed that the whole experience was a waste of time.

We made our way home and I decided to go online and see about ordering tickets for tomorrow. That was the final straw. Going to the movies would cost one adult and one senior $40 fucking dollars! I’m not necessarily cheap, but there is no way in hell that we’re paying that much to sit in a theater. Of course, what is a trip to the movies without popcorn and drinks? Well, that adds nearly $20 more to the price. Honestly, there is just no way we can or should justify that kind of expense.

We have several streaming services here at home and we can watch movies without commercials. We can pause the movie for a bathroom break or to get popcorn and a soda from the kitchen. We don’t have to worry about people’s cell phones going off and interrupting our movies.

I just don’t understand why cinemas want to gouge customers like they do. Obviously, they are getting away with it for now, but they have permanently lost two potential customers with garbage like we encountered this afternoon.