New* Things #1 - Alamo Drafthouse

Well, I was heading towards a day that would have been an F on Day Grader but I salvaged it by getting out of the house and knocking off four new things - two of which were new new. So let’s kick off the chase to 500 New Things!

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is my go-to spot because I have their monthly pass. I have the basic version - they recently introduced a new Unlimited version of their season pass - and I basically just have to go to two movies a month and I break even. Usually that isn’t two difficult but this year has been rough; just a lot of movies that I have no interest in. And I almost cancelled my ticket for yesterday’s movie but my aforementioned F day - I was basically on the couch on Instagram watching people get pranked all day - pushed me towards getting outside and actually doing something, anything that day.

While I like my season pass, I’m sad to say that the Alamo has gone the route that many companies go when they are bought by a big corporation. Alamo Drafthouse was struggling and pretty much needed to sell to stay alive so I can’t blame them but once Sony bought them and took over, the quality of the food crashed. They used to have a really good soft pretzel and now they switched to giving you three flavorless soft pretzel rods. I’ve spoken to other people and they felt the same way about the food. They also initiated an order by phone approach to getting your food and drinks which is annoying to me; I don’t want to have to pull out my phone in order to get a refill of soda during the film. And I’m definitely getting a refill because a glass of soda is almost 9 bucks.

My other concern is that I’ve run into more movies that don’t have morning or late night shows. I love going to the movies to kick off my Saturday but I feel like the 10am showings have disappeared. And during the week, I usually don’t get off of work until 8 or 9 and I’ve run into a number of films that don’t have a showing after the 7pm one.

Finally, the theaters are small so if there’s a big film that needs to be seen on the big screen, it’s probably better to go to the Regal at LA Live for those. The Regal also has 4DX which I recommend everyone try once. Make sure it’s a movie you don’t really care about that also has a lot of different weather conditions for the most fun. It looks like The Odyssey was a crazy time. I saw the first Jurassic World there and I have to say, the distractions of 4DX made me enjoy the movie more than I should have. When the film popped up on streaming, I put it on and was amazed at how much I didn’t like it without the bells and whistles of 4DX. Which reminds me, techinically, 4DX is something new now so I need to go back and try it again.