I remember when my theater told us they were switching to assigned seating. We hated it. I liked sitting in a certain section and always made sure I got there early to get the seat(s) I want. Why should someone else waltz in a minute before the movie starts and get t? And now I have to buy online. And what if I decide to see a movie spontaneously? Or switch seats? This is terrible and I hate it!
I’m an idiot. It’s wonderful. I get the seats I want because I can buy them in advance and (usually) there is something I like available. Now I don’t have to come early and I have the freedom to come just before the movie starts. Buying online is a breeze. I have never had to change seats so it’s a non issue and the one time I couldn’t make a movie I had bought a ticket for I got a free pass as a refund. I literally wouldn’t go to a theater that doesn’t do assigned seating now.
I was invited by some home-school kids at my church to attend their play ($4 a ticket). I’ve been to school plays before and I’m not a huge fan. I am not even a big fan of musicals overall.
They were jaw-dropping good. It was long, almost 3 hours, and I heard maybe one or two stuttered lines the whole time. It is obviously not Broadway, but still better than most adult plays I have seen. The singing was great. They also run all the sound and the lights.
We went again this year (Anne of Green Gables) and it was even better than last year.
I was also asked to be a “judge” for a regional home school speech competition. They presented better than 98% of adults I have ever seen (including myself).
I can see how homeschooling can free up a lot of time and allow students to pursue and master a particular interest if they desire.
Caller ID seemed like a terrible idea when it was announced. Within weeks of getting it, I realized it was one of the greatest telecommunications innovations of the late 20th century.
Texting. I didn’t do it for years after the technology was available to me. I figured, why not just make a quick phone call? Phones aren’t for typing!
Hahaha, I laugh about those days now. I rarely ever use my phone for voice calls anymore. Texting (and messaging) are so easy, they can be silent so they don’t disrupt anybody, most messages can be easily time shifted for the recipient’s convenience. Still, I’m glad I have a full qwerty keyboard on my phone. Those numeric keypad days were rough.
Sushi - went from “can’t imagine eating that” to “Dayum, that’s good stuff!”
Apple Pay/Google Pay/Samsung Pay - so much faster than debit/credit card, check or even cash. Also more secure since it requires my phone and fingerprint as well as (my version anyway) uses a unique CC number every transaction.
Pineapple on pizza. Rejected it for years, but then actually tried it, and YUM!
Kindles. I am a bibliophile, with a huuuuuuuge library. But the ease of travelling with a Kindle is just too great a draw, and 99% of new book purchases are electronic. Still, if the book is heavy with maps, pics, illustrations, art, etc. then there is no substitute for a hard copy.
Bidets. Why would I want to sit on a water fountain? Well, once they made a bidet seat for a regular toilet, I learned why. And now I’m a proud owner of one.
Avenue Q. A show that began in a summer workshop and somehow got to off-Broadway. And it has puppets? I only went because a friend who had seen the show bought me a ticket.
Well, that show transferred to Broadway, beat out Wicked for the Best Musical Tony, and has been performed all over the world. The puppeteers are on stage, yet the human actors play totally off the puppets. And the puppeteers move their mouths exactly like the puppets.
I thought texting was ridiculous, although back then you had to tap “5” 3 times to type an “L”. So that was one of the things that kept me from it. Now I don’t know how I’d live without it.
I LOVE books - everything about them from the feel to the smell. Why would you ever want a Kindle? But I’ve owned one for about 5 years and rarely read an actual book. It’s so convenient.
Agree on all the ones mentioned so far, both on my initial “whyever would one want that” and eventual embrace and never looking back, except for
Assigned seating in movie theaters: I always wished that were available, who the heck wants to stand in line to see a movie TWICE, first to buy the ticket (the line for the ticket counter) and then to jockey for first pick of physical seating (the ticket holders’ line)? Now I do neither and it’s so sweet: I simply select tickets, and their seating location, on my phone, then go a few minutes before show time.
Ketchup on scrambled eggs. Sorry, ketchup is the blood of Satan. To each his own, but I will politely decline. Salsa on eggs, sure, like with huevos racheros, but ketchup is not a substitute for salsa.
I remember the first time I had falafel in a pita with salad and tahini sauce, I hated it so much I threw it out after eating about 1/4 of it, something I rarely ever do. It was completely unlike anything I’d ever had before, the mouthfeel of the “fried ground chickpeas” was far mealier and harder than I had imagined it would be, and it probably doesn’t help that I got it from a street cart vendor who had taken the spot of a hot dog cart I’d long frequented after school, and I had gone there originally been hankering for a hot sausage with mustard, sauerkraut, and onions.
Caller ID WAS great when it was new, but it is useless now. With spoofing, you can’t tell who is calling anymore. You can’t even trust known numbers, as I have gotten spam calls from “myself” several times.
Your town has to be different than here. Reserved seats here cost more, plus on-line ordering adds another surcharge. Movie tickets are already too high priced, why should I add 2-4 bucks more per ticket for minimal benefit? I haven’t been in a full theater in years, if not a decade. There’s always someplace good to sit.
But I must admit, those recliner chairs are pretty comfy!
My theater has an app where you reserve your seats, where you can pay an extra $10 a month or so to be in their “club”, and you get a free accumulating ticket per month, free online ordering, and 20% off concessions. It’s a pretty good deal if you go to the movies frequently. I don’t think the theater even does regular seating anymore.
I freaking LOVE assigned seating. I’m picky where I sit, and you don’t have to stand in those stupid lines anymore! I remember on some of the big releases the line would wrap around the whole damn theater. No more anxiety about being sold out or crappy seats or having to show up an hour early. Theaters are way better now. They have to be, because home viewing is a whole lot better now too.
Las Vegas sounded unappealing till I was convinced to join some coworkers on a weekend trip. Love it.
Pineapple pairs really well with cured pork on pizza. Try one with pepperoni and jalapeno.
I sort of miss the numeric keypad alpha entry. It kept the messages shorter and less frequent. But I especially miss being able to write and send a message without looking at the phone.
Rear view (back-up) cameras in cars. I thought “what a waste of technology” till I actually drove a car with one. I have to admit that being able to tell exactly where the bumper of my car is in relation to other objects is pretty useful.
I usually drive a Tacoma (with a camera) but this applies to both cars and trucks.
Cell phone cameras. When they first were introduced in the mid-2000s I thought “what a silly idea”. I was still in the old fashioned mindset that cameras were only for taking pictures of things you wanted to stick in a scrapbook so you could remember them forever – vacations, graduations, weddings, and those sorts of things. But I now use my phone’s camera all the time for all kinds of things. I can snap a picture of some random interesting thing I want help identifying. Or I can take a picture of an informational sign at a trail head an reference it later. I’ll take a picture of the row I parked in at the airport so I can remember it when I return. It’s incredibly handy to have a device with a camera in it with me all the time.
Also, a couple of TV shows: Scrubs and The Orville. From how their networks promoted them I thought both of those shows were going to be stupid and not something I’d like. But I ended up enjoying both of them.
I hate assigned theater seating with the hatred of a thousand suns. I prefer to be able to sit centered in a row and at a level in the theater I prefer. The seat selection screens are never accurate about how the seats are positioned relative to the screen. Oh, sure, they’re sort of accurate, relative to the other seats and such, but it’s always an annoying guessing game.
Back when seating selection didn’t suck, you would just go a little earlier, get your seat, and then kick back in it and relax and enjoy the downtime for a while. Nowadays you can pull in forty minutes early and find that somebody else has prebought all the (possibly) decent seats anyway, presumably from home. Why don’t I do the same, since seat position is the same sort of lottery whether you’re picking online or on the little screens at the box office? Because if you want to prebuy your tickets online they cost more! The screw you coming, they screw you going, and the only infintessimal benefit is that you don’t have to leave somebody to guard your seats when you go to the bathroom.
I swear, once my dad dies and stops wanting to go to the theater with me, I’m never going to the theater again.
I love pre-purchased theater seating. A couple bucks is well worth it to not have to hustle my wife out early, have someone watching my kid for an extra hour and spend 45min unscrambling actor’s name MOT HANKS five times in between Coke commercials from our prime seats.