Da na na na na na na na...na na na na na na na na...na na na na na na na na...Batman (well eventually)

I think that we have the midnight movie hex on this tour. In Tempe, a large group of us went to go see the new Indiana Jones movie at midnight the night it opened. The cinema was too far to walk so we arranged for cabs to take us there. Unfortunately one of the cab drivers had no idea where he was going and got totally lost. Thankfully Tami had a GPS phone, and was able to get the cab driver to the cinema, but sadly they were so late that they had to go to a different screening.

So not having learned our lesson, several of us got tickets to see the new Batman movie last night at midnight. Thankfully we have rental cars here in Atlantic City so we did not have to deal with stupid cab drivers. What we did not plan on was having to deal with stupid cinema employees.

Everything seemed normal until midnight came and went without the movie starting. Since our group bought tickets at different times we were spread out across three different screenings. After a little texting, we discovered that no one's movies had started. Although Mike's had started and stopped. As time passed the nerds started to get restless, and so people went out into the lobby to find out what was going on. Nobody could get a straight answer from the cinema employees or the police officers acting as security. We could see activity in the projection room, but there was no official word.

More time passed and still no movie. By this time it was approaching 1am and people were getting mad. The rumors were also out of control. Some of what I overheard include: "They did not have enough copies of the movie, They did not get all of the reels of the movie, They were waiting until everyone was in their seats to start the movie, They were trying to maximize snack profits, and on and on."

All along people had been leaving, but once 1am came and passed with no movie there was a mass exodus. I was starting to contemplate leaving, but the line for refunds was longer than the people lined up before the movie. Amazingly at about 1:30am the screen lit up with the previews. There was no sound, but at least we had something to watch. Then the movie started, and about 30 seconds into it the sound finally began working. So those who were left cheered, and sat back to watch the movie happy in the knowledge that they overcame the technical problems. Well except the sound cut out again about 2 hours into the movie during one of the most exciting chase scenes. At this point, I had invested a lot of time in seeing the movie, and I was going to stick it out even if it meant lip reading.

The sound did return from the dead after a few minutes, and we were able to finish out the movie without any other major issues. Had it not been so late, I would have gone out to the lobby and tried to get a refund. The whole evening was an exercise in poor management and apparent technical incompetence.

Oh and the movie, it was good.