Saturday night was Date Night for CJ and me. We haven’t had one of those in a while and it was good to get out. Overall the evening was great – went out to dinner, caught a movie, walked around in the moonlight and then stopped for a yummy dessert. Jealous yet?
But wait, there’s more!
The only black spot was our movie going experience. There is a dine-in movie theatre in one of the newly renovated parts of Omaha, Midtown Crossing, that we’ve heard a lot about but not experienced. So, we thought it would be fun to check it out. I had heard from several friends that the food there was just ok, so we ate dinner at another restaurant and then went to the theatre for the show and snacks.
Being newbies, we had no idea what to do. We walked in and instead of finding a ticket counter, there was only an escalator, some movie posters and 3 computers at which to purchase tickets. So we got regular tickets (i.e. not in the dining section) and heading upstairs. On the 2nd floor is a lounge so we kept going up to the 3rd floor.
This reminded us a lot of what going to movies is like in NYC. You literally have to go up many flights to get to your theatre. One movie we saw was on the 10th floor! The difference is that everything is well-marked and laid out there so you know exactly where you’re going. It wasn’t well-marked at this theatre.
Anywho, we got to the 3rd floor and were greeted by a ticketing agent. She sees our tickets and tells us that the regular seats are the first 3 rows, as in those closest to the screen. I did not want to see “Thor” 3-D that close up, so we shelled out an extra $1 a piece to sit in the dining area, in the very back.
We go in and sit down. It’s about 7 pm at this time. A waitress comes over and tells us this is not her theatre but she’s helping some guy out and takes our order: 2 pops and a large plain popcorn. Seems pretty easy right? She brings our pops right away but then says it’ll be a minute on the popcorn.
So we spend some time trying to figure out how to adjust the seats, which are basically glorified office chairs. You have to stand up and pump this lever to raise it up. If you pump the lever while sitting in it, you go down. I am not kidding you, it took us 5 min. of standing then sitting then standing then sitting to get our chairs right. That’s when I discovered there was a server calling button right in my view so I made CJ switch with me (since he’s taller it didn’t block his view) and then we did the chair adjustment charade all over again!
I had just gotten comfie in my new chair when a different waitress came over with out popcorn. It was a HUGE tub! As she went to hand it to me, she knocked the bucket against another chair and popcorn went flying everywhere. She was mortified and immediately started scraping it back in the bucket (and all over the floor and the chair next to us) and apologizing over and over. She mumbled that she’d be back with another bucket.
A few minutes later a couple of guys came to sit next to us and cursed the fact that there was popcorn all over their chairs.
The movie starts. It’s 7:30 pm now and we still have no new popcorn.We get through the previews and I tell CJ to press the call button. A waiter comes over (this is now yet another person) and asks if we’re ready to order. We tell him we ordered 45 min. ago. He says he’ll be right back with our popcorn. He comes over and hands us a small tub and leaves. At this point I don’t care that it’s the wrong size. I’m hungry and I dig in. Turns out he had brought us BUTTERED popcorn, which CJ absolutely abhors! I love it but usually sacrifice the butter for him, and for the state of my cardiovascular system. I warned CJ that it was butter and I thought he was going to pull a Hulk and turn green right there on the spot. CJ ANGRY! Would have been somewhat apropos considering we were at a Marvel movie.
We press the call button again. The dude comes over and CJ tells him we got the wrong kind. Waiter looks over at me, who is basically face planted into the bucket and devouring it not unlike how the Tasmanian Devil might. CJ says something about though his wife enjoys the butter he does not. Dude says he’ll bring another bucket, which he does about 5 min. later. By now it’s 8:30. It’s been 90 MINUTES since we first ordered and we’re an hour into the movie. And it’s just popcorn! It’s not like we ordered something fancy like a hamburger.
A few minutes later we get our bill. Dude charged us for 2 popcorns even though we ordered one. I don’t care that I ate the 2nd one like it was going out of style, we only ordered 1! I tell CJ not to pay it. Dude comes by and checks for our credit card then leaves. Comes by again. He did this about every 5 minutes. Finally when the movie was over, he asked us for it at which point I told him, in so many words, that there was no way in hell I was paying for 2 popcorns when I only ordered 1 and it took and hour and a half for them to get it right! He mumbled something about talking to his manager and sheepishly slinked off. He came back with a new bill with just one popcorn on it. We paid and left.
Maybe we caught them on a bad night. Maybe we were being smited by Odin. Whatever the case may be, it was a bad experience and I won’t go back. I mean, how hard is it to get popcorn right AT A MOVIE THEATRE!!! The other aspect I didn’t like was that you could see the heads of the waiters/waitresses as they walked by and hear dishes clanking. No thanks.
Other than that, the evening was magical, particulary the part where I got to eat my whole dinner by myself without having to share a bite with anyone, or have anyone throw it at me. Although I did give CJ a bite of my burger as a test to see if he could tell the diff between a hamburger and a turkey burger. He could. He totally nailed it.
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