Film

I went to Islington Vue cinema on Tuesday to watch Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (surprisingly good and dark). It’s the first time I’ve been to a Vue in a while and they’ve changed the ticketing system. It’s a pain in the arse, I’ll tell you that much.

“Vista”, as it’s called, means you can supposedly buy your tickets at any till, saving you the hassle of queuing once for your confectionery and once for your tickets.

In practice, this means they’ve closed the front desks, so if you only want to buy tickets and no confectionery, you’ve still got to go into the Hall of Doom (aka the confectionery area) and brave the queues. Unlike the efficient front desk system, you’re pretty much playing pot luck here, as people jump from queue to queue – and wherever the confectionery staff were trained, it wasn’t a pub, since they can’t keep track of who should be served next. In fact, the people at the tills seem to jump around a lot, too, so you’re always guessing about exactly which till is open and where the till operator is going to be.

I can see where the management is coming from: they don’t have to have extra staff on the front desks, which saves money on wages; and with most of cinemas’ earnings coming from confectionery rather than tickets to see movies, anything that gets people into the confectionery area must be good for the bottom line.

All the same, it’s a pain and proof, yet again, that the Internet is good: order your tickets in advance over the Web, even if it costs you 50p more, then collect them at the front entrance to avoid the confectionery queues.

Anyone got good things to say about “Vista”?