Ok, so the movie theater by where I live in always checking tickets right before the show starts. They walk around the theater and check everyone’s ticket. I have no problem with this. However, they check each person’s ticket two or three times. Which I think is a bit much. So, can I get kicked out if after the first time my ticket is checked I shove it down the front of my pants or down the crack of my ass? That way, when they ask to see my ticket again they better have gloves.
I believe you are required to produce your ticket on demand until the show is over. OTOH, i don;t understand why they would piss their patrons like that.
I suspect they can always kick you out if you don’t play by their rules.
But I will let them see the ticket, I just chose to keep it in my ass.
I imagine the usher will not ask for your ticket a second time if he sees you stick in it in your ass.
They can kick you out for pretty much anything. You’re on private property when you’re in the movie theater, after all - they’re not required to let you hang around if you’re acting like a jerk - people get thrown out for fooling around too obnoxiously, talking on their cell phones, and so forth. I should think sticking a ticket in your buttcrack counts as “acting like a jerk,” too.
IANAL or anything, so if there’s a law that states “Movie theaters may not eject patrons for putting tickets in their buttcracks” I wouldn’t know, but I’m friends with one of the ushers/bouncer-type people at the local movieplex.
Well, let’s look at the back of the ticket i bought today. It says “Management reserves the right to revoke the license granted by this ticket.” So they can ask to see your ticket every twenty minutes if they want, throw you out for refusing to show it (or for sticking it in your crack) and all they have to do is refund your money.
In the theater where I worked years ago, we had the authority to kick anyone out we wanted to at any time. The truth is, you would have had to work really hard to get your butt ejected from our theater. It all boils down to what Sailor alluded to: we didn’t want to piss off our customers.
The practice baffles me: The only reason why one would do a ticket check would be if you had the absolutely hottest sellout film and, for some reason, the film seemed to attract lots of sneak-ins. Nevertheless, theaters know that this happens and plan for it: even when we “sold out”, we never sold all of the seats in the theater. We had better things to do than piss off the entire theater in order to catch a few cheaters.
I guess that this practice is akin to those megastores who have a bouncer inspect your receipt when you leave, thereby treating thousands of nice customers with suspicion in order to catch a few bad ones.
Where on earth do you go to see movies? Around here I know of absolutely no theatre that does that - instead, there’s usually someone at the entrance to the lobby (or one person for each sub-lobby in the multiplexes) who takes the ticket, tears off half, and give you the stub (in case you exit to get food or something, and want to go back in, you can show the stub).
I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure if a usher (which I’ve only seen when there’s a collection for the old actor’s home or something) tried to check ticket stubs several times around here (beautiful downtown Long Island), the crowd would bounce his butt out the exit.
Maybe on the East end…no, no they’d definitely bounce his butt out there even faster. And don’t get me started on Brooklyn…
I’d like to believe you, but I find this extraordinarily difficult to believe. Once before the show starts I might believe as a precaution if kids are tring to catch 2 or 3 movies with their friends on one ticket, but canvassing everyone who is seated two or three times strains my credulity meter.
It is an AMC Theater. They do only check at sold out movies. Matrix Reloaded was the worst. Like I said, check my ticket once I don’t care, but more than that is too much.
Movies I was checked at recently.
Matrix Reloaded
X-Men
ANGER MANAGEMENT
The problem is they have more than one person checking the tickets and they double cover some areas. So Worker 1 asks to see your ticket, then Worker 2. The only time I was asked three times was at the Matrix.
You handle my ass tickets every day. You pick up my ass tickets for good luck. You throw… oh, wrong thread.
Next time you go, wear a hat and pin it to the front of the hat so when they come around you don’t have to fumble with the ticket, you can just look at them and say “What?”.
It’s possible that the theater in question has been caught booking books or for some other reason believe that studio snoops are checking attendance and policy.
Or maybe the ushers just like wandering around having an excuse to talk to hotties….
I used to work in a movie theater. We had problems with people using movie passes (which sold for something lilke $3 at the time) to get into just released films (which cost about $6 at the time for an evening showing). The problem was that the theater company had agreed NOT to take the passes for tickets when they rented the new release, so people would use the pass to buy a ticket for another movie, and sneak into the big film. We’d also have an adult buy a lot of kids’ tickets, and then pass them out to their (adult) friends. Since all tickets were printed on the same color paper, they looked about the same at a casual glance. We had the people who felt that they should see all eight movies in the cineplex for the cost of one movie ticket, too. Of course if we started checking tickets on one group of people, we pretty much had to check everyone’s ticket.
For maximum movie enjoyment, my advice, for what it’s worth, is to see the film during a weekday afternoon during the school year, if your schedule permits. AVOID Friday and Saturday evenings, and Saturday afternoons. Those are the busiest (in my experience), biggest, and noisiest groups of movie goers.
Doesn’t work for movies that have a big following, like Matrix, LOTR, or Star Wars. To get the maximum enjoyment of movies like these I need to be in the crowded theatre with the true fans watching the first showing. I saw the first show of Matrix Reloaded and the house let us into the theatre 3 hours early! That was fun watching all of those weirdos walk around with their leather trenchcoats fighting like they were neo and the agents. You can’t beat a movie going experience with real fans. They are a blast before the movie and when the movie starts they shut up! You can’t get that any other time. No matter what time of the week you go, there is always someone in the theatre who can’t keep quiet. But when there is a theatre full of people who want to absorb every word, they don’t let anyone get away with it.
I’m not picking on you, Otto - your post just provides a decent vehicle for my own question/point. 
If you don’t show them a ticket, do they have to give you any money back when they ask you to leave? The ticket is your proof that you paid anything at all, and didn’t just sneak in for free.
Surely folks who sneak in through the fire exit aren’t entitled to get $8.50 (or whatever) when they’re shown the door…