This movie was an 11:55pm Thursday showing, technically starting at 12:01am the next day since opening day has to be on Friday. I had intended to sneak in with a $1 box of Raisinettes but, as I rushed to leave home, the Alamo Gods prevented me from remembering to get them out of the fridge. :(
I arrived 50 minutes ahead of time and converted my credit card order into a ticket at the will-call. No waiting... nice. I asked "are they seating already" and the guy answered "oh yeah." Not realizing what he meant by that, I sauntered in, and to my amazement the place was 90% full already, with loud, party-going opening nighters. This was a fun place. The pre-show videos were very funny (sometimes their video choices are not funny whatsoever). If I had to call one out, it would be the old "Dino-Boy" TV cartoon show... audience got plenty of laughs outta that one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZIjE79Dnc
The movie started and I was pleased by the bright, sharp picture. There were no visual artifacts or problems with the picture throughout the entire show. The sound, on the other hand, suffers from the Village's fundamental design... it is not really made for loud blockbuster soundtracks. The auditorium IMO is a bit boxy-sounding and too confining for a bombastic experience like X-Men Origins: Wolverine. As the amount of sound energy bouncing around the auditorium increases, you can feel the strain of the loudspeakers, the reflective walls, and your own difficulty separating reverb from direct sound. It's fine for quieter movies, but for blockbusters with a lot of loud action, there's no substitute for cubic feet in an auditorum. I reckon the acoustics could be improved a bit too, the entire auditorium is shaped like a box.
Now for my gripes... the cost of patronizing the Alamo has gone up significantly since their early days. Tickets used to be $3.50, or $1.00, or even free, for example. Now they're $8.50. Like many cinemas nowadays, they allow you to book tickets online via credit card. This saves them coping with huge lines at the box office, allows them to predict how many people are interested in a screening and book the right amount of waiters/cookstaff ahead of time, and generally saves them a lot of time and money. Their online ticketing system is purchased from Ready Theater Systems http://www.rts-solutions.com/soft.html. In the interests of covering what they presumably are portraying as "extra costs on their part," when booking online the Alamo charges you an extra dollar for every single ticket in the transaction - in addition to the money for the ticket itself. Not an extra dollar for each transaction, an extra dollar for every ticket. Meaning... if you buy 3 tickets online, you pay 3 extra dollars, even though there is only one transaction. Why is this? It should be one fee per transaction, not per ticket. To be honest, there should be a $1 discount for paying online, as you are buying tickets without any real inconvenience to the theater (versus showing up to their box-office and taking up their time).
Next... if you want your money back on a ticket - even one you paid for in person at the box office - they won't refund your money, they just give you a voucher that is redeemable for a ticket, and the voucher expires if you don't use it after a certain time! I got a voucher about a week ago, after we changed our minds about going to see a movie. The vouchers both expire at the end of June, in two months! Not really that long... I would prefer to get my money back when... asking for my money back. I know that Alamo has no obligation to do this, but, other cinemas do it, so they're behind the competition in that regard.
My final gripe for this post is... the waiter came up to take my order and proudly proclaimed during his spiele that the Alamo was now serving sodas with free refills. Great, I thought, better than having to pay again. However - their sodas are $3.99 for something that is similar to what you get at restaurants for $1.29-$1.79. Are they setting their sodas in the price range of other cinemas? I suppose it is prudent for couples to get one "free refills" soda and share it.
Alamo folks, don't feel bad about my gripes... everyone else will feel the edge of my sword eventually.
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