The Unexpected Journey - Nor'Easter Style
Nov. 7th, 2012 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
semiotic_pirateWell me fine hearties... I bring to you a tale of rage, irritation, journeys, scandal, and redemption. It all begins with the anticipation of the viewing pleasure of our wee little furry footed friends.
Yeah. This is about my travail about finally scoring advanced tickets for the upcoming flick:
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Companies involved: MovieTickets.com and Rave Cinemas at Buckland Hills Manchester.
It really began about a few months or so ago, when I put an item in my calendar to remind me to look up information about advanced ticket sales at the end of October. Once Halloween rolled around, I had found out that tickets were supposed to go on sale (for the December 14th premier in the U.S. and Canada) on November 7, 2012. Reset calendar item.
Today, when I got to work and checked for tickets online, I found out that tickets weren't going on sale until NOON EST. Those bastards.
Okay. Reset calendar item and set a timer to go off five minutes before noon. While I'm waiting for noon to come, my husband calls to tell me he's heading home to work the rest of the day from there as the Nor'Easter snowfall had begun. I look up from my desk (where I had truly been hard at work finishing up on a project report) I see the practical whiteout conditions in the back parking lot of the building. Lovely.
Five minutes before noon arrives. I get myself logged into my usual ticket purchasing website, making sure I have my credit card ready. I get onto the day in question and, every so often, hit refresh in the address bar. Noon arrives. No tickets. Refresh, refresh, refresh... Five minutes pass - no tickets.
I call the theater and press zero to be connected to a live person. They very nicely tell me that due to a new computer system that they'd installed a few weeks back they were having technical difficulties. Perhaps sometime between while I am talking to them and 6pm, or as late as 6pm the next day the glitch would be worked out. *beginnings of irritation/annoyance*
More snow falls. More work gets done. I doggedly keep hitting the refresh button, hoping.
I had come in that day at 7am so that I could leave by 3pm, since I had thought that the snow was going to hold off until mid-afternoon. I realize I forgot my snow brush and scraper at home; I hadn't yet pulled it out of its storage space in the garage and put it into the trunk. I come up with the brilliant idea of using a gallon ziplock baggie to seal around my gloved hand to keep myself both warm and dry when I finally get out to clean off my car before leaving for home.
More snow falls.
At 2:50pm, after hitting refresh yet again, I am rewarded with three theaters of showtimes. IMAX, and two others. I notice that (unlike what I'd gotten my posse to agree to) there were NO MIDNIGHT SHOWINGS. *sigh* I go for the 7pm showing instead as I must have my assigned seats when I go through the trouble of getting advanced tickets and purchase them online (where you get a $1 surcharge on each ticket).
Wait! What's this?! No offer to choose my seats? ARGH! I buy the tickets anyway, thinking that if I didn't there was a possibility of them being sold out before I could later get the chance to purchase them. Besides, the snowfall had turned into more of a snow-drizzle and I figured I could stop at the theater on the way home and make sure my seats were assigned where I wanted them to be.
So. 3pm arrives and I am (surprisingly) all ready to go with laptop bag in tow just in case. Snow cleared off the car handily. Although there was some slowdown as (most) people drove more cautiously, the drive to the theater was done on relatively snow free roads - though there were plenty of slick spots.
Walking in the theater, I find myself glad that it seems to be a slow time. I'd been able to park very close to the front doors and the snow was starting to pick up a little. Shouldn't take too long, right?
Over a half hour later... They had to refund my purchased tickets one at a time. They hadn't realized they hadn't set it up to allow/assign seating (IMAX is ALWAYS assigned seating). They had to call the back room techie and have them set up the system to get the seating problem cleared up. One good thing - they weren't allowing any other sales until my refund was processed and I had purchased my tickets with the seats of my choice.
Did I mention they'd recently gotten a new computer system set up? They all hate it (the people working with it at the front desk area - including management). It is clunky, counter intuitive, and one big hassle. There really didn't seem to have been any intensive training to instruct the employees in its use either. One of the many annoying things to result in the new system (besides those annoying things I've already discussed) is that if you have purchased tickets for multiple movies (say one on Saturday, another on Sunday, and advanced tickets for something in a couple of weeks) the kiosk will no longer just print all of your purchased tickets out for you - it gives you an error message and you have to go to the counter just like all the shlubs that didn't think to buy their tickets ahead of time. Utterly stupid. Especially because once you get up to the front of the line it takes forever for the person to look up those tickets and has to access each show/set separately for printing.
When I finally got outside again? Snow was falling more heavily than when I'd gone in, and it was finally starting to stick and build up on the roads. It was pretty hairy driving home from there. And it didn't help that I needed to bypass home to pass to the other side of town and pick up something for dinner too.
Now I am home, driveway heater on, warm and toasty on the couch because I am cuddled under a blanket with my living hot water bottle (half Chihuahua half Daschund). My Unexpected Journey is over. Wish I had a ring and a bunch of gold... guess I'm not as lucky as some hobbits I know.
Yeah. This is about my travail about finally scoring advanced tickets for the upcoming flick:
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Companies involved: MovieTickets.com and Rave Cinemas at Buckland Hills Manchester.
It really began about a few months or so ago, when I put an item in my calendar to remind me to look up information about advanced ticket sales at the end of October. Once Halloween rolled around, I had found out that tickets were supposed to go on sale (for the December 14th premier in the U.S. and Canada) on November 7, 2012. Reset calendar item.
Today, when I got to work and checked for tickets online, I found out that tickets weren't going on sale until NOON EST. Those bastards.
Okay. Reset calendar item and set a timer to go off five minutes before noon. While I'm waiting for noon to come, my husband calls to tell me he's heading home to work the rest of the day from there as the Nor'Easter snowfall had begun. I look up from my desk (where I had truly been hard at work finishing up on a project report) I see the practical whiteout conditions in the back parking lot of the building. Lovely.
Five minutes before noon arrives. I get myself logged into my usual ticket purchasing website, making sure I have my credit card ready. I get onto the day in question and, every so often, hit refresh in the address bar. Noon arrives. No tickets. Refresh, refresh, refresh... Five minutes pass - no tickets.
I call the theater and press zero to be connected to a live person. They very nicely tell me that due to a new computer system that they'd installed a few weeks back they were having technical difficulties. Perhaps sometime between while I am talking to them and 6pm, or as late as 6pm the next day the glitch would be worked out. *beginnings of irritation/annoyance*
More snow falls. More work gets done. I doggedly keep hitting the refresh button, hoping.
I had come in that day at 7am so that I could leave by 3pm, since I had thought that the snow was going to hold off until mid-afternoon. I realize I forgot my snow brush and scraper at home; I hadn't yet pulled it out of its storage space in the garage and put it into the trunk. I come up with the brilliant idea of using a gallon ziplock baggie to seal around my gloved hand to keep myself both warm and dry when I finally get out to clean off my car before leaving for home.
More snow falls.
At 2:50pm, after hitting refresh yet again, I am rewarded with three theaters of showtimes. IMAX, and two others. I notice that (unlike what I'd gotten my posse to agree to) there were NO MIDNIGHT SHOWINGS. *sigh* I go for the 7pm showing instead as I must have my assigned seats when I go through the trouble of getting advanced tickets and purchase them online (where you get a $1 surcharge on each ticket).
Wait! What's this?! No offer to choose my seats? ARGH! I buy the tickets anyway, thinking that if I didn't there was a possibility of them being sold out before I could later get the chance to purchase them. Besides, the snowfall had turned into more of a snow-drizzle and I figured I could stop at the theater on the way home and make sure my seats were assigned where I wanted them to be.
So. 3pm arrives and I am (surprisingly) all ready to go with laptop bag in tow just in case. Snow cleared off the car handily. Although there was some slowdown as (most) people drove more cautiously, the drive to the theater was done on relatively snow free roads - though there were plenty of slick spots.
Walking in the theater, I find myself glad that it seems to be a slow time. I'd been able to park very close to the front doors and the snow was starting to pick up a little. Shouldn't take too long, right?
Over a half hour later... They had to refund my purchased tickets one at a time. They hadn't realized they hadn't set it up to allow/assign seating (IMAX is ALWAYS assigned seating). They had to call the back room techie and have them set up the system to get the seating problem cleared up. One good thing - they weren't allowing any other sales until my refund was processed and I had purchased my tickets with the seats of my choice.
Did I mention they'd recently gotten a new computer system set up? They all hate it (the people working with it at the front desk area - including management). It is clunky, counter intuitive, and one big hassle. There really didn't seem to have been any intensive training to instruct the employees in its use either. One of the many annoying things to result in the new system (besides those annoying things I've already discussed) is that if you have purchased tickets for multiple movies (say one on Saturday, another on Sunday, and advanced tickets for something in a couple of weeks) the kiosk will no longer just print all of your purchased tickets out for you - it gives you an error message and you have to go to the counter just like all the shlubs that didn't think to buy their tickets ahead of time. Utterly stupid. Especially because once you get up to the front of the line it takes forever for the person to look up those tickets and has to access each show/set separately for printing.
When I finally got outside again? Snow was falling more heavily than when I'd gone in, and it was finally starting to stick and build up on the roads. It was pretty hairy driving home from there. And it didn't help that I needed to bypass home to pass to the other side of town and pick up something for dinner too.
Now I am home, driveway heater on, warm and toasty on the couch because I am cuddled under a blanket with my living hot water bottle (half Chihuahua half Daschund). My Unexpected Journey is over. Wish I had a ring and a bunch of gold... guess I'm not as lucky as some hobbits I know.
