Movie theater reserved seating just took a big step forward
LOS ANGELES -- Whether you're an aisle-seat hanger or a back-of-the-theater lurker, the moviegoing experience is getting incrementally less stressful as reserved seating slowly spreads across theater chains and ticket-buying apps.
The steady march toward total control of your view took a major leap forward, as AMC Theatres -- soon to be the world's largest chain, and currently the second-largest in North America -- on Wednesday announced that all New York City locations will go to reserved-seating only.
It doesn't matter whether you book your showtimes on Fandango, Movietickets.com, Atom Tickets or right there at the box office (who does that anymore?) -- you're going to pick your seats at the point of sale, starting Friday.
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AMC was already offering reserved seats at 125 locations nationwide, but this is believed to be the first major market-wide implementation of the policy -- and more are sure to come. Like, Los Angeles would be nice. Ahem.
"As we look at markets where we can begin to make reserved seating prevalent, there’s no better place to start than Manhattan, where a trip to the movies often means a subway or cab ride," said John McDonald, executive vice president, U.S. Operations, AMC. "Reserved seating lets moviegoers pick the exact seat they want when they make their movie-going plans and provides our guests with the confidence that their specific seat will be waiting for them when they arrive at the theatre."
Not that it matters to me -- I'm the guy who prefers to sit up nice and close.
Josh Dickey is Mashable's Entertainment Editor, leading Mashable's TV, music, gaming and sports reporters as well as writing movie features and reviews.Josh has been the Film Editor at Variety, Entertainment Editor at The Associated Press and Managing Editor at TheWrap.com.A finalist for the Los Angeles Press Club's Best Entertainment Feature in 2015 for "Everyone is Altered: The Secret Hollywood Procedure that Fooled Us for Years," Josh received his BA in Journalism from The University of Minnesota.In between screenings, he can be found skating longboards, shredding guitar and wandering the streets of his beloved downtown Los Angeles.
