Well done to the guys and girls at Odeon Southend, and thanks for a lovely night… of queuing.
Valentine’s night is notoriously busy for cinemas, and the premiere of the Simon Pegg / Nick Frost comedy “Paul” just happened to fall on the same night. So, on a predictably busy night, some bright spark elected to close all the tills at the main ticket desk, and get the popcorn sellers to double as ticket sellers for the night.
Here’s the scene at 7:50pm on Valentine’s night…
We saw some fairly angry people queuing, and in some cases abandoning the queue to trek up to the top floor for snacks, only to find that… hey, they’ve closed the kiosk upstairs too. Back down the snake to Square One and the ever-growing queues downstairs.
Full marks too, to one of the sales assistant behind the popcorn counter. When a customer couldn’t get her Odeon points because she’d not registered her card online, he tried to help her sign up to the Odeon Film Club from her smartphone… oblivious to the massive queues forming.
Here at Sarfend, we’d like to send our sympathies to those who missed the start of their films while they queued for 15 minutes to buy some over-priced popcorn, thimbles of ice-cream and cartons of watered-down carbonated liquid.
We’re hoping this is some strange experiment they tried for a night (although why Valentine’s night, guys?). With luck, they’ll realise this wasn’t such a hot idea, and will now abandon it… otherwise, we fear, this may be another reason to stay away from the big screen and save some cash.
