why do theaters not let you in at all when you show up late?
The fact that it was a blind woman in a wheelchair has abosultely no bearing on the matter.
He just knows he isn’t getting sympathy if he wrote “we were six minutes late showing up because it took me too long to gas up my Hummer and they wouldn’t let us in at the intermission.” But it’s still the same rant.
He trotted out the blind woman in the wheelchair as a crass appeal to our emotions.
The analogy makes perfect sense. It’s clear from the great bumper sticker debate that logic is not your strong suit.
The OP says that they arrived, they did some sightseeing and then they got ready for the show - which leads me to believe that the sightseeing delayed them. In that case, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Personally, I’m on the theatre’s side here. I attend at least 20 shows a year in various places (NYC, Chicago, community theatre) and I have never been late for any show ever - that included living in NYC for four years and seeing 1-2 shows on Broadway a month. If you’re late, you’re disrupting not only the other patrons, but the actors. I’ve seen Gabriel Byrne stop in the middle of a monologue because latecomers were being seated and disrupting his performance.
And if it’s Shakespeare, I have a hard time thinking there would be any sort of break in the first act to seat them. And by the time the intermission rolls around, it’d be pointless to seat them since they’ve missed such a huge portion of the show.
The only thing I don’t agree with is the non-refundable tickets. If they were unable to sell the tickets, fine - you show up late, you forfeit your tickets and the cost. But if they resold the tickets to other patrons, then they should have given them a refund.
I’m sympathetic to the OP’s friend’s disappointment. It’s frustrating and sad when looked-forward-to events fall thorough. None of this, however, makes it the theaters fault. They stuck to their, apparently, well-documented policy as is their right to do. In fact, if other people, over the years have been made to follow that policy, I would call the theater unfair to make an exception for the lady in the OP.
My own daughter is disabled and walks with crutches, or uses a wheelchair. We have learned to plan to be at least 20 minutes early for seated events. It is impossible for a person in a wheelchair to slip into a room. The door would have had to be held open (letting light into the darkened theater) and the wheelchair jostled though (taking at least a minute or two.) It is also difficult for my daughter to be unobtrusive on her crutches – they are noisy (adjustable crutches always rattle) and she is somewhat slower than able-bodied people, so the light from the open door becomes an issue again. And, both the crutches and the wheelchair are more difficult to manage in crowds – such as are typical just before a seated event is scheduled to begin. So, we’ve learned to be early. We usually also wait to leave an event until the crowds have thinned out – this can be a pain for other patrons if they have to step around us, but is still better overall than our causing a bottleneck because she is slow.
My point is – these are things we’ve learned over time. This was the point of the OP’s sister’s dry run with her friend – to discover the best way to manage given their present circumstances. What they learned through this disappointment was to be extra early to seated events. Sad but true.
Sis got one shot to come through in the clutch. When it boils down to coming through during that time of importance, when it’s all on the line…when you decide, “Am I fit to be the go-to person…the clutch hitter…who only has to get to a fucking show on time”…and you don’t…
…get a “woman that will possibly be blind or dead by their next performance” to the show on time, you’re fucking incompetent.
I guess I’m the other way around - if it really matters that I be somewhere by a certain time (whether it’s a show, a plane, or a job interview), I make sure I’m there with plenty of time to spare. Once I know I don’t need as much margin of error as I’ve been providing myself with, I cut back on the MOE.
It all depends on how badly the woman wanted to see the performance, of course. If it was, “if we see it, great; if we don’t, there’s plenty of other stuff to do up there,” then everybody’s happy - and there’s no Pit thread.
But why would the OP have been angry on the woman’s behalf, if she wasn’t upset as well? So it seems that seeing the show genuinely mattered to her (not to mention wasting a heap of money on expensive tickets), but she wasn’t careful with her time, and frittered away her time sightseeing, rather than leaving a comfortable margin of error. The woman may be in a wheelchair and mostly blind, but ISTM that the crucial handicap in this instance was mental.
The thing that gets me about this situation is the unwillingness to seat them at intermission. You can talk all you want about how disruptive it is to seat people during a performance, it is not disruptive at all to sit them down at intermission.
These people are customers who have paid to rent those seats during that performance. They purchased the right to sit in those seats, they should not have the house deny them that right without giving them a refund.
It is certainly fair to have house rules about late seating, but the rules, as described, seem needlessly punative. Outside of punishing late comers, what is the purpose of denying them a seat after intermission? I’ll stand behind sensible rules that improve the theatregoing experience for everyone, I won’t stand behind dumb rules that just punish people who made a mistake.
That theatre needs to have someone from the ACLU explain to them the meaning of the term “reasonable accomodation”. Which is NOT “unreasonable pettifogging stickler to a set of non-accomodation rules”. :dubious:
There weren’t either “reasonable” or “accomodating”.
All well and good, but in that case, the woman ought to have prodded the OP’s sister a bit harder to get there on time. Being in a wheelchair doesn’t generally prevent one from being able to keep track of time.
Thanks Q.E.D.; Now I have a good excuse next time I’m responsibe for getting someone somewhere on time. “Hey, you shouldn’t sit there blamin’ me; you should have prodded me more.”
Well, I don’t know about you, but if I were in a wheelchair and had someone to assist me in getting around, I most certainly would make sure that the person assisting me got me where I wanted to go on time, if it was something that was very important to me.
Bullshit. If the lateness was due to lack of handicapped parking or not having a wheelchair ramp, you would have a point. They were late. They shouldn’t have been late. End of story.
Actually, upsetting the theatre would be unreasonable, and it would be unreasonable to expect a theatre to make on-the-spot decisions about who is ‘disabled’. You can run up to the door, do twenty pushups and ten knee bends and still be ‘disabled’ per the ADA.
The ‘reasonable accomodation’ part of the disabiity act isn’t really relevant in the scenario in the OP.
Some theatres with union crews/actors/musicians do not have this luxury. You go into a new block of time and suddenly you’re shelling out much larger paychecks than you expected. You’d be surprised how a few stragglers in the audience can destroy your budget and cost you thousands in overtime.
One of my stage managers worked in opera with three different unions working the same performance (I think it was actors, musicians and crew unions). Once the doors closed, the show started. Period. No one was allowed in until they opened again for intermission (or the end of the show, so don’t dawdle while you’re having a smoke break outside either, if you’re late from intermission you’ll get stuck then too.)
Although I’m with Cheesesteak – I’m shocked that they wouldn’t seat the latecomers at intermission or at least offer a refund or even a partial refund as a token gesture (assuming they had alreayd resold the seats and couldn’t accommodate them even if they really wanted to.) That does indeed strike me as unreasonable.
I’ve had a chance to look at the Conditions of Sale for the tickets I bought last weekend for Hamlet.
These are printed on the back of each and every ticket I bought. The RSC cover themselves for vitually any set of circumstances.
They can refuse admission
Request any ticket holder to leave (and take any appropriate action to ensure this)
No refunds unless the performance is cancelled
No mobile phones switched on/no babes in arms/ no cameras/recording equipment etc etc.
And last:" Please note that latecomers will not be admitted to the theatre until a suitable break in the performance".
On the last point as I said in my previous post, there was no break in the performance until 1hour 50 minutes had elapsed. There would be no point entering the theatre then surely?
Perhaps in the US you have more intervals (for advertisements maybe?)
I’m pretty sure any vacant seats were not resold. Stopping late admissions was purely to prevent disruption to the actors and audience who managed to arrive on time.
What I don’t understand is, if it was so important for this woman to see this performance,she didn’t show a little more enterprise. The theater manager says you won’t be admitted during the intermission? I’d like to see him try to enforce that.
You roll out of the theater and wait around on the public sidewalk until you see a flood of people coming out of the theater to get their nicotine fix. You wait an additional 5-10 minutes until the smokers begin to flow back in. You roll along with them. If an usher or anyone else tries to stop you, you show your ticket.
At this point you are in the midst of a whole bunch of theater going entering the theater. Do you honestly imagine the staff would be able to maintain such an unreasonable stance with a lot of other people standing there to witness it???
Picture yourself as one of the other attendees. You are returning from intermission, and you find the manager is trying to keep a handicapped woman from entering and taking the seat she has paid for. Would you shrug and say ‘no skin off my nose’ or would you speak up? Me, I picture a whole lot of speaking up going on, all of it along the lines of ‘let her in, for heavens sake.’