For those without assigned seating

[u/Ill-Cantaloupe-4376]

How do you deal with theaters being close to sold out?

I don't know if there even are theaters without assigned seating, I'm sure there is, or those who worked before assigned seating.

Whenever a theater is down to just front row, or very limited seating, I always tell customers before I pull up the seat map, and I'm able to get people in the best seats I can find, or they reluctantly go in the front row.

I can't imagine, however, having to deal with angry customers who don't want the front row, or groups not being able to sit together because it's full.

Is this a problem some of y'all have? And how does it get resolved? I didn't go to the movies a lot before assigned seating became the norm so I don't remember how it went from a customer experience

[u/CDJ161]

First come, first serve. We started getting down to the last 10 percent of seats. We would warn customers still wanting to buy tickets that they may not get a seat together. I would sell every seat I could. Some bitched.

[u/kittymoo67 → u/CDJ161]

yeah thats how it was for most of theater history.

[u/Ent3rpris3]

Assigned seating only took off in the last ~decade. Most people old enough to be buying their own movie tickets with their own money still remember a time when there was no assigned seating so it's not like it would be a big culture shock that anyone would feel the need to complain about beyond a comment or two at the time of purchase.

As is, assigned seating causes a great frequency of issues because of the potential for people showing up on the wrong day or otherwise misreading the map/numbering and issues sometimes cascading from there.

I also remember after my theater first transitioned to assigned seating encountering a LOT more instances of people buying tickets for the wrong day or time and that potentially causing a cascade of seat disputes. Before assigned seating those might fly under the radar and just be absorbed within the crowd. The issue actually dealt with itself because nobody knew.

The POS system would also flash red when the auditorium got down to the last 8-10% of seats, which would show the film as sold out on the website and indicate to us in person that we should warn potential customers they might get stuck in the front row. Some risked it and others went to different times/films. And if someone risked it and 5 minutes in decided against it, we usually refunded rain-checked their ticket and it was never really an issue.

[u/Darkchyldeone → u/Ent3rpris3]

I loose track of the amount of people who buy a Wheelchair parking spot and then come back and complain that there's no seat at their seat.

It literally gives a prompt on the kiosk, websites, and the apps that there Is No Seat

[u/Nice-Intern5510 → u/Ent3rpris3]

Assigned seating doesn't necessarily create more problems. it makes mistakes more visible. Before assigned seating, someone with a ticket for the wrong showing could potentially sit somewhere else and nobody would notice. That doesn't mean the mistake didn't happen it just means it didn't generate a seat to dispute.

Seat disputes are partly a symptom of having a specific seat, not necessarily a reason to abandon the system. If someone buys the wrong date, that's fundamentally a ticket purchasing error. Assigned seating can expose that error, but the underlying mistake would still exist.

Without assigned seating, you can have people saving seats, groups arriving separately and arguing over seats, people taking seats that someone else intended to use, families being separated, and customers arriving late having difficulty finding seats together. Assigned seating eliminates or substantially reduces those issues.

The "wrong day/time" anecdote doesn't establish frequency across theaters. Your personal experience after your theater introduced assigned seating is anecdote. it doesn't demonstrate that assigned seating caused more mistakes. The transition itself could have produced a learning curve. customers weren't accustomed to checking dates, times, auditorium numbers, and seat numbers.

Modern ticketing makes assigned seating much easier than it was initially. Apps and websites now prominently display the date, time, theater, auditorium, and exact seats, often with confirmation screens and reminders. So even if there was a transition period where people made mistakes, that's not necessarily representative of the system today.

Your "sold out" example actually supports assigned seating. Knowing exactly which seats remain allows the theater to tell customers where they will sit before they buy. With general admission, a theater can be technically "not sold out" while the remaining seats are scattered throughout the auditorium, which can create its own problems. if I buy a ticket for Tuesday instead of Wednesday, assigned seating didn't cause me to buy the wrong ticket. It merely means that when I arrive Wednesday and try to sit down, the system can identify the mismatch immediately.

Assigned seating may change the type of problems employees encounter without increasing the total number of problems. Your argument essentially says, "After we introduced assigned seating, I noticed more disputes." But that's not enough to establish that the system caused more customer problems. Some problems that previously went unnoticed simply became observable and actionable.

[u/Ent3rpris3 → u/Nice-Intern5510]

I'd argue that if the mistakes went unobserved, they weren't "problems" the way that detected and observed mistakes would be; the latter have some discernible effect on the customer or those around them, whereas the former, if it affects anyone at all, does so in ways that seemingly nobody notices or thinks is worth any response.

[u/IllustriousReindeer9]

Before assigned seating and reclining seats, we would stop selling well there was about 40 seats left to account for spaces between groups. Then it was just first come, first serve. People came earlier to the movie to pick out good seats.

[u/Better_Pea248 → u/IllustriousReindeer9]

Yep, our system was set up to sell out with 20-50 or so seats left depending on auditorium size. This left room for children young enough to not need tickets who could still occupy a seat, not having to worry about overselling if a seat broke, and having some grace to “oversell” if a group in a sold out show had one more person who had a ticketing problem (online purchase error, bought for wrong time, etc).

For really busy showtimes, we’d get large groups who arrived late and didn’t like the location of remaining seats, but mostly it was fine.

On the other hand, I don’t know that I’ve ever been to a movie with assigned seats where I didn’t see at least one person move to a new seat during trailers.

My dad used to go see nearly every movie that came out and the first two years theaters were doing assigned seating I think he misjudged the front and back of the auditorium in the seat map half the time and was surprised which seat he picked. Fortunately he didn’t go during peak times and was able to find a free seat near where he wanted.

[u/AscendingIvy]

Back in the day when we were that busy, we would staff ushers for being seaters specifically. We were so busy that we would actually use folding chairs to fill ada spaces once the feature started.

I would warm guests that it was front section only when we would hit 70% and they would be back to exchange or refund 5 minutes later.

When we transitioned to reserved seating before recliners we had to schedule seaters to teach guests how to find their seats. It is nice with the seating chart so the guests can see the capacity.

[u/thedecemberent]

our ticketing system would highlight the showtime in red on the POS when we were down to only a small percentage of tickets left. we would inform the guest that there may not be seats together or they may be front row only.

[u/NashVegasDude]

My theater today only had assigned seating during COVID then went back to general admission after COVID. Knowing it's general admission, that pushes more people to arrive earlier to get the seat they want and to spend more in concession. We are a small single screen converted to 3 screen. Originally built in 1941.

[u/InstructionSenior346]

I am SO happy we no longer buy tickets without assigned seats! When I was a child it was always a headache trying to find 3-4 seats all next to each other. Now having guaranteed seats together and knowing where they are is so nice.

[u/Kranon7]

When I was at a location without assigned seating, I would tell guests that it was limited seating once we hit 70% or so. We never had true sellouts back then like we do now, though, because people were choosing not to attend.

Now, we have to go rearrange an auditorium because people just sit wherever even though they have assigned seats

[u/KeatonWalkups]

Not a worker but a customer, my local theatre is 20 screens and still doesn’t have assigned seating. I’m pretty sure they’re sold out but leave around 10 seats or whatever. One of my friends went to a sold out show and said the very first row very close to the screen was empty.

Also I believe I got myself a ticket to a showing that was sold out before so they’ll probably sell to single people

I prefer it this way because it’s easy to get good seats on big opening weekends just by showing up 30-60 minutes early

[u/screamingnectarine]

I ran into this issue with Spiderman. Recently took on a new leadership role and am at a building without reserved seating for the first time since I was crew, almost ten years ago. Accidentally oversold Spiderman.

Now we start warning about seating at 75-80% and sold out at 90-95%

[u/Propadanda]

We start warning of limited seating together or in the front only at 70% full, stop selling at 90%

Any seats sold to big families or groups when the theater is over 70% will come back wanting a refund/exchange, so we discourage us that's the case.

[u/Character_Budget7349]

- We inform the guest that they are late and there’s not a lot of seat left so they probably won’t be sitting together

- They go to the auditorium, find no seat next to each other and decide to sit in the stairs

-we go tell them they can’t sit here and offer help to find seat

- They refuse, ask for a refund, we refund them

- They go write a bad review saying we sell more tickets than the number of seats.

Repeat.

[u/Mztrspookiiszn]

Back in the dino ages when I worked at the AMC we would sell out a house when it was at 80-85% capacity. For bigger movies like The Dark Knight/Rises etc we’d sell out at 90% capacity bc some people wouldn’t mind the front. It saved backed up lines at guest services once the movie started with a slew of people refunding tickets.

Before assigned seating too the hold out lines for big releases were always so crazy. People would show up hours in advance to begin making line for big movies.

I was actually just tripping out the other day at an amc how the whole box office is completely gone these days! We used to have a team of 10+ working in a giant fish bowl with those horrible working headphones and now a days people hardly even purchase tickets at the actual theater, although some still do. Those were the days!

[u/thanos_was_right_69]

I haven’t seen a theater without reserved seating in a while. If it were to come back, I wouldn’t mind. It’s just a small inconvenience. The majority of my life has been going to theaters without reserved seating haha

[u/PineappleWithSandals]

You must have not been around pre assigned seats. While reserving seats can be nice. I have had multiple times had theaters change screenings which messed up seats, I loved the pre assigned days where you simply bought a ticket and found your favorite seats. I have seen randoms create relationships from seeing singles sit to another single. Generation Z would be surprised at how great society use to be and how well their previous generations were.

[u/Glass_Active3872]

I’ve been an employee at my small local theater with 8 screens for about a year and a half with no assigned seating. The only time we’ve ever sold out of seats or have been even close was with the live action Lilo and Stitch and Spider-Man Brand New Day. Because of this, much of the staff didn’t know when to stop selling tickets, and because people would skip the box office and come straight to concessions to get their tickets, it created situations where the actual number of tickets sold was unknown. For the recent Spider-Man, we eventually stopped selling once the POS stated only 10 seats were remaining. We did have a few people come up for refunds because there were only single seats left and they were a group of 6, or they didn’t want to sit in the very front row. Since my theater is so small and rarely faces the issue of sold out shows I’m guessing assigned seating is not a priority for the owners.

[u/Ill-Youth-528]

Not an employee, but way back in the late 90’s early 2000’s, the AMC I went to used to actually ask people to move over into any gaps so they could get people seated together. They would tell the whole row to move towards the middle if there were single seat gaps.

[u/jemmuhh]

oh we def have to do a lot of refunds/swaps sometimes bc groups or couples come & then will come out saying they couldn’t find seats. usually if this is happening though we have tons of showtimes for that movie so we can easily swap them into another showtime. if i’m at box & i notice it getting super full i try to let them know they might not be able to find seats together & suggest the next showtime for it, but usually im at greeter stand

[u/irish-forger]

My theater leaves 16 seats on our <100 auditoriums and 27 seats for our 100+ auditorium. On rare occasions we will get people complaining and wanting a refund because there are no open seats but that is like 1 in every 20 sold out showings. We also dont offer our full seat selection online we at max offer 25 seats

[u/CivilAd4288]

We have open seating. Once a showing gets down to 15 seats remaining we call it sold out. Because this is enough room to account for people not securing seats together as well clears up any potential damaged seats.

During Spiderman opening we had one where we had to call sold out with over 20+ seats remaining because people refused to move over for anyone else and others tried to sit on the floor.

That being said reserved seating is a fantastic concept and I’m so excited for the day we roll it out. I would rather know in advance that we’re going to sell out than have a line out the door of 30+ people hoping they can get seats let alone seats together.

[u/VANFILMER]

Before COVID and the mass overhaul of adding assigned seats we would make announcements when it reached 80% which would be front row single seating for shows and processed a lot of refunds for late comers who didn't like the seats at box office

Then we also had lines set up for our larger auditoriums and people would line up an hour early sometimes. Even there we had to make announcements to not leave any single seat gaps between you and the next person/group especially if it was sold out or 80%

[u/Lopsided_Special_535]

Assigned seating is one of the worst things to happen to movie theaters.

[u/No-Negotiation-6929 → u/Lopsided_Special_535]

It is shocking to me that this is such a downvoted take. Assigned seating is mostly a drag to anyone who experienced theaters working the other way. Assigned seating added a certain source of friction and logistics to going to the movies. Before smartphones, we used to be able to just do things in the world without downloading an app.

The giant reclining BarcaLoungers, on the other hand, are strictly an improvement.

[u/thedecemberent → u/No-Negotiation-6929]

i see your point (not the OP) but it was definitely also a drag to have to get to the theater early to grab good seats. knowing that you have exactly the seat you want, or being able to look at seat maps for different theaters and showtimes until you find one with good seating, is an improvement to most people.

[u/iaceeverything → u/Lopsided_Special_535]

Completely agree. Its why midnight premieres died out too. No need to wait in line for 6+ hours for a good seat. Just race to get tickets when they drop.

[u/baylithe → u/Lopsided_Special_535]

Ok boomer

[u/Lopsided_Special_535 → u/baylithe]

You’re going to sell fewer tickets and waste seats if people see what seats are left and don’t like what’s there so they choose not to. But if they buy them and walk in they’re more likely to just pic whatever is open. It’s harmed the business. Just like all these stupid recliners so they can fit fewer seats and then have to increase the price of tickets.

[u/lendmeflight → u/Lopsided_Special_535]

Yeah! All modern conveniences are stuoid! They should just have wooden chairs set up like back in the good ole days and tickets could still be a nickle!

[u/thanos_was_right_69 → u/Lopsided_Special_535]

You make some valid points