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Comment by Maro | Hacker News Reader

These days, when I have a movie ticket for time T, I plan to arrive at T+20 minutes. That's when the ads are over, roughly when the trailers are playing.

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There are several "dining" theatres near me including one which only has full service prior to the films beginning, and all of them are low-occupancy theatres with online seat selection and generally very large, comfortable, sometimes rolling leather chairs.

Pick your ticket online, show up a few minutes earlier, enjoy a decent appetizer, and get a drink or two while the movie is on. Whatever floats your boat. I find it's a much better experience and frankly not that much more expensive than sitting through hell my local multiplex

I’ve one of these locally as well. We used to like it until we went 3 times in a row to see a specific movie and were told that the online schedule was incorrect. What a waste of time.

That's nice, in my country we have two big movie theater companies who provide a similar service, but I hate it because they serve the food in the beginning of the movie, so there's a lot of noice and waiters coming and going.

Our local theater finally figured out the right way to do this. Only the rear half of the theater can order food at their seats. If you're in the front half, you have to get your food in the lobby and bring it in yourself.

This way, when you make your seat selection, you can choose if you want the convenience and slight distraction of waiters, or if you just want the comfy chair and no waiter.

It doesn't work well if the ticket has no reserved seat. You do that and the only seat available will be in the first row.

Dont think thats really a thing outside of US (another thing the US is like awkwardly behind in).

Assigned seating is gaining traction pretty quickly here. The theaters with good reputations all assign seats.

Depends on the Cinema I guess. At least most cinemas I’ve worked with have configured their system to adjust show start depending on how much advertisement there is so the ads are finished ca 10-15 minutes after the scheduled time.

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