Let’s Go To the Movies

Friday night M.D. and I were supposed to go out to the movies with a group of couple friends. Everyone ended up cancelling, which I was actually really OK with since I don’t love the movie theater experience in South Florida. When we used to go out in Gainesville or Tallahassee we’d go to a matinee and it would set us back $4 a person. Here, a matinee is at least $9, and if you want to go at night, forget about it. It’s highway robbery, and though M.D. and I aren’t cheap, we like to spend our money wisely. That’s why we invested in a huge TV and amazing sound system.

The one movie that I insisted we go see in theaters was the last Harry Potter movie. I started reading the HP books when they were first published in the UK and my grandma brought me “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (what it was called in the UK). I’ve read every book multiple times and seen all of the movies in theaters. So, I demanded our first movie date in a year for the release.

Unfortunately, we were really busy for the first few weekends that the movie was out. We finally made it about 4 weeks after the premiere. The theater that everyone told me was the best in the area had stopped playing the movie. I didn’t think it would be a huge deal, and we went for the closest big theater. Wow, was I in for a shock!

All of the theaters in my hometown are pretty nice, and I’ve never had a problem with them being dirty. This theater had food on every seat (including half of a hot dog on the seat next to M.D. from the previous showing). I could get over that to enjoy my movie, but for the first 10 minutes, there was something on the screen and I was ready to go speak to a manager and get our money back. Thankfully, the screen cleared and I could relax a little.

I have never been so disappointed by a movie theater, especially when we paid such a premium for the tickets. I don’t think we’ll go to the movies here anymore if we can help it, and we will just wait for movies to come out on Netflix. (On another note, I did LOVE the last HP movie!!)