Hoyts Belconnen Cracking Down on Contraband Consumables

milkman said :

I once went to the cinema and there was a young bloke eating a tin of kippers! Stank like nothing else, and he even managed to kiss the hot young thing he was there with!

What the hell is wrong with some people?

pptvb said :

pink little birdie said :

I thought you weren’t allowed to take hot drinks in to cinemas and that’s been enforced for years.

Not just hot drinks, apparently the smoke from my Webber was affecting other patrons. Man I have not had a good BBQ in ages.

Cut your nose off to spite your face Hoyts, have a refund to go to another theatre.

milkman said :

I once went to the cinema and there was a young bloke eating a tin of kippers! Stank like nothing else, and he even managed to kiss the hot young thing he was there with!

That’s pretty funny in the telling if not in the experience. Gee he must have had something going for him, it makes me queasy just thinking about it.

milkman said :

I once went to the cinema and there was a young bloke eating a tin of kippers! Stank like nothing else, and he even managed to kiss the hot young thing he was there with!

Had this delightful experience last year at Dendy. A Mum and her teenage daughter were eating shawermas from Ali Baba in the seats directly behind us, not only did it stink, but every time the daughter laughed I got showered with bits tabouli/cheese.

Solidarity said :

milkman said :

I once went to the cinema and there was a young bloke eating a tin of kippers! Stank like nothing else, and he even managed to kiss the hot young thing he was there with!

Are you sure it was the kippers that were making the fishy smell? 😉

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGVShoAWp00

milkman said :

I once went to the cinema and there was a young bloke eating a tin of kippers! Stank like nothing else, and he even managed to kiss the hot young thing he was there with!

Are you sure it was the kippers that were making the fishy smell? 😉

I suspect they only “enforce” it when they’re busy and have lots of customers.

I understand mcdonalds/hot food/sticky fondu. But yeah, just vote with your feet.

I wish the theatres would also evict people who play with their mobile devices while the movie is showing. This is so distracting and mindless. I have stopped going to the sponsored movies at ANU because of this and at ANU they even request before a movie or a talk that people refrain from using mobile devices. I have even had an audience member and his daughter sitting in front of me at a live ANU musical recital use their stupid iphones for the entire performance – what an insult to the the performers and others in the audience that requested the two people turn off the phones and were given the finger.
The two offenders were first out the door after the recital and made a bee-line to the free food and drinks.

I once went to the cinema and there was a young bloke eating a tin of kippers! Stank like nothing else, and he even managed to kiss the hot young thing he was there with!

They’ve had crackdowns before, this happened to me as a kid – maybe late ’90s/early ’00s? I only had a bottle of coke and some lollies but my mistake was to carry them in in the supermarket bag. Ever since, I’ve always smuggled my food into Hoyts Belco. I don’t bother anywhere else though.

The Dark said :

Whiskey bottle down the pants .

I thought you were just glad to see me

Panhead said :

I was a teenage usher at Hoyts for 3 years. Hot food and drinks are the worst to clean up and they make everything smell. Sure you wont spill your coffee but someone will and it will fester and smell, same with your hot food. You know what a cheese burger that has festered for a few sessions smells like after someone has left it behind and in the rushed 5 minutes we have to clean a cinema that has been ravaged by 100 or so people we missed it.

Think a cinema policy is stupid? I will tell you why it isn’t.

I can see why they don’t like it. Hoyts Belco have refused hot food and drinks for years. I always sneak mine in AND I always throw my rubbish in the bin as I leave. It is always the few that don’t that spoil it for everyone else.

The Dark said :

Whiskey bottle down the pants to go with the giant coke that you bought from Hoyts, works every time and everyone’s a winner.

I hear you- Avatar 3D after half a bottle of Bundy OP and a giant coke was an afternoon worth remembering….I recall most of it anyway..

I’ve known about those rules for years. That’s why for many years I’ve smuggled my booze into the cinema. Until they start pat-down searches, I’ll be fine. In winter it’s the coat, in summer it’s the cargo shorts.

I see a lot of movies, though not at Belco. Never been tempted to bring in food, except sometimes for coffee which is available at Dendy and Manuka. It is a rare movie that is much over two hours, and even I can wait that long for nourishment. I can eat without watching a movie, so I should be able to watch a movie without eating.

That said, I agree with anyone who criticises the cost and taste of anything purchased at the movies.

Whiskey bottle down the pants to go with the giant coke that you bought from Hoyts, works every time and everyone’s a winner.

Deckard said :

mareva said :

I am going to start by making a few assumptions about OP.

OP is white, middle-aged, male (obviously), and almost certainly works for the APS.

???
I might make a few assumptions about you, none of which can be repeated here.

I can think of a few of the assumptions you could make about her…………..

I think it’s fair enough, probably won’t stop people from smuggling stuff in. It would help if Hoyts sold some decent food rather than the usual popcorn and overpriced packets of M&M’s and Malteasers. This is why I like the premium lounge at Dendy, sure it’s expensive but you can get a decent meal in there too while you enjoy the movie. I take my rubbish with me on the way out, I can’t believe how disgusting some people are. Even when I saw a Broadway type show in Melbourne, afterwards the isles were still absolutely littered with junk. Not sure what is wrong with people these days…

Thank god Hoyts in Tuggeranong went down the tube it came from.
Pacific 6 was awesome. Hoyts was ok at the start but then went crap in a hurry. They never cleaned between sessions and the place was desserted with perhaps 4 staff on at a time.

I never managed to goto greater union woden before it closed, but hoyts Woden seemed much better.

When hoyts was open in Tuggeranong, they couldnt be arsed to even have someone at the door doing tickets so anyone could just walk in and eat whatever they wanted (Many most likely did).

Limelight is cheap, and never had any problems getting things in. Likewise for the few times i’ve been to belco.

It just doesn’t make sense to have people order online to avoid the queue if then you have to queue up for food.

Best bet would be to get a thick plastic bag with a jumper of jacket on top of cheap snacks.

The cinema doesn’t sell anything remotely healthy, or remotely affordable for what it is.

I think it was dendy the last few times i’ve been have wheeled in drinks and food counters to do last minute sales after everyones already sat down.

Drive in movies never used to make much on the food.

Screen sizes in canberra have pretty much stayed the same for 20 years. Hopefully one day imax will come in and clean up, all they would need is one massive screen similar to sydney.

Deref said :

I went to one the other day. Having to sit through half an hour of bloody ads – that I’d paid for was just off the wall. From now on I’m sticking to DVDs – at least I can skip through the ads on those.

Hoyts Belconnen is consistently 20 minutes of ads after the “start” time, so if you have a reserved seat you can show up ‘late’ and still catch the trailers every time.

buzz819 said :

mostly said :

why pay $17 bucks each to watch a movie with another 150 people you don’t know?

Why pay for petrol just to drive around town with 400,000 people you don’t know?

Gold:) Very few RA posts make me laugh out loud- this one broke the mold.

JC said :

LSWCHP said :

I’ve been watching pictures at Hoyts Belco for 20+ years, and I’ve never once purchased any of their mind-bogglingly overpriced popcorn or soft drinks. I always take the kids down to K-Mart or Coles to stock up on a couple of bags of lollies and some drinks, which are easily concealed in backpacks or deep hoodie pockets.

They can do what they like, but I’m not going to be gouged by them. If they start body searching everybody, we’ll just forget the junk food when we go to the flicks. When they charge reasonable prices for the treats then I’ll be prepared to pay for them.

That would be hard considering the cinemas in Belco didn’t open until 1995! But take your point and agree.

I moved into Aranda from Tuggers in 1985, and sometime after that I started going to the flicks at Belco. I could’ve sworn they opened pre-1995, but if not then I’ll just blame it on a senior moment caused by my advancing years. 🙂

poetix said :

Most films (at least non-Peter Jackson ones) are no more than about two hours (choc-tops). You really should be able to go that long without a snack. Of course, if it’s a kiddies’ film for a birthday or something, it’s a bit different.

Eat before and/or after!

Precisely. About once a year the stars align and husband and I get to go to the movies, usually a 10am session. An annual reminder that moviegoing equals paying money to sit in the dark and listen to other people eat. Do people normally eat kebabs and bags of maltesers at 10am?

Antagonist said :

TheDancingDjinn said :

buzz819 said :

mostly said :

why pay $17 bucks each to watch a movie with another 150 people you don’t know?

Why pay for petrol just to drive around town with 400,000 people you don’t know?

How did you get 400 thousand people into the same car with you? – that should be in the record books.

I thought there were only around 370,000 of us clowns living in Canberra?

I bet he puts the other 30 thousand people in the boot.. i always put extra stuff in my boot.

screaming banshee said :

Spykler said :

Nasty-ish incident last night at Hoyts Belco- Myself and Mrs Spykler sauntered in to watch Les Mis only to have a jumbo takeaway coffee offender in front of us told that his foreign brew was not welcome in the cinema. He then enquired how he was supposed to consume half a litre of scalding hot Macchiato in the 5 min before the film started- ‘Not really my problem’ was the heartfelt reply from the young attendant.
This then triggered a rant about the waiting times in the ‘express’ queue for the online ticket buyers. A couple of minutes after venting he shredded his ticket and stormed out vowing never to return..

A jumbo macchiato, I thought all the Starbucks closed down.

A small child could have bathed in that cup..

Is this the IMPORTANT debate of the day?

For starters people, $17? Try a Club Dendy membership for $22 which gives you 2 free tickets on joining and $12 tickets thereafter. They have a not too bad coffee machine and the young ‘uns are reasonably adept at operating it. They even let you take coffee into the movie (there goes the hot drink theory). Of course, the coffee is just something to wake you up a bit and distract the staff away from the Brewski’s in your cargo pants/backpack. Of course, the true smuggler must be prepared for that moment where they have to ditch the booty or consume it on the spot. No point jumping on the Internet and whining about getting called out on an obvious infraction of policy.

Spykler said :

Nasty-ish incident last night at Hoyts Belco- Myself and Mrs Spykler sauntered in to watch Les Mis only to have a jumbo takeaway coffee offender in front of us told that his foreign brew was not welcome in the cinema. He then enquired how he was supposed to consume half a litre of scalding hot Macchiato in the 5 min before the film started- ‘Not really my problem’ was the heartfelt reply from the young attendant.
This then triggered a rant about the waiting times in the ‘express’ queue for the online ticket buyers. A couple of minutes after venting he shredded his ticket and stormed out vowing never to return..

A jumbo macchiato, I thought all the Starbucks closed down.

TheDancingDjinn said :

buzz819 said :

mostly said :

why pay $17 bucks each to watch a movie with another 150 people you don’t know?

Why pay for petrol just to drive around town with 400,000 people you don’t know?

How did you get 400 thousand people into the same car with you? – that should be in the record books.

I thought there were only around 370,000 of us clowns living in Canberra?

I don’t go to the movies much. When I do, I’m reminded of why I don’t.

I went to one the other day. Having to sit through half an hour of bloody ads – that I’d paid for was just off the wall. From now on I’m sticking to DVDs – at least I can skip through the ads on those.

Being a captive market for their massively overpriced junk just adds insult to injury. Bugger ’em.

buzz819 said :

mostly said :

why pay $17 bucks each to watch a movie with another 150 people you don’t know?

Why pay for petrol just to drive around town with 400,000 people you don’t know?

How did you get 400 thousand people into the same car with you? – that should be in the record books.

mostly said :

why pay $17 bucks each to watch a movie with another 150 people you don’t know?

Why pay for petrol just to drive around town with 400,000 people you don’t know?

why pay $17 bucks each to watch a movie with another 150 people you don’t know?

I smuggle my own snacks into the movies, partly because of the inflated prices at the Candy Bar but also because they are all jumbo packs. I don’t need to devour a 200gram pack of Maltesers in two hours. I’m quite happy with a small Caramello Koala just to get the taste.

earworm70: this isn’t a new policy. It has always existed and almost always enforced. It is also the case at almost any cinema; anywhere. And the policy is stated in the poster held in the light boxes that hold the movie posters (have a look through the foyer for one). The policy isn’t related to ‘take away coffee’ but rather any hot food or drink, as well as glass and aluminium can containers. And it has NOTHING to do with trying to force you to use the Candy Bar. It’s to do with safety in a darkened cinema, and also prevented the mess and stench that this type of food creates (if either accidentally spilt, or (as is more commonly the case) deliberately spilt and trodden into the carpet and seats by delinquent patrons).
As other posters have tried to claim, it has nothing to do with the cinema owner trying to force you to buy their food. Absolute rubbish. If you read the policy, it is clear that you can take in 100 bags of Maltesers, 100 bags of Allens Snakes and 100 plastic Coke bottles purchased from Coles (rather than their Candy Bar) and there will be no issue. They are not trying to force you to buy their food rather than bring your own from elsewhere.
If there was ever a business model and proprietor to avoid kicking while they are down, it’s this one. The entire cinema industry has it tough enough these days. So give up on the attempts to rubbish them with your nonsense… and also lay off the teenage staff just doing their job.

poetix said :

Most films (at least non-Peter Jackson ones) are no more than about two hours (choc-tops). You really should be able to go that long without a snack. Of course, if it’s a kiddies’ film for a birthday or something, it’s a bit different.

Eat before and/or after!

Finally, someone with sense!

So what I got out of this is;

“I went to the movie’s, they have rules and regulations, I tried to break these rules, I got a full refund when I was not satisfied with the rules and regulations, I want to whinge because I feel hard done by because a business decided to enforce their own rules and regulations.”

Get over it and move along.

This thread makes me think of school holidays in 1992 or 1993 ( I was 11 and in primary school )
During these holidays, parents took turns in taking a group of us kids to the cinema to see a film. Each turn was fun till we got the outing with Mrs G.
Mrs G, refused to allow any of us to buy sweets, or popcorn or drinks. During the film all of a sudden, there were paper plates and cups passed down to us all, then came the cold BBQ chicken and salad and orange cordial hahaha.
a lot of 11 year old kids were very unhappy.
And thanks to Mrs G, no one wanted to go to the cinema ever again, and her son copped as much shtick as we could throw at him hehehe.

I’m happy that they are vigilant in not allowing these people in anymore hehe at least no other 11 yr old kids will suffer what we did.

Nasty-ish incident last night at Hoyts Belco- Myself and Mrs Spykler sauntered in to watch Les Mis only to have a jumbo takeaway coffee offender in front of us told that his foreign brew was not welcome in the cinema. He then enquired how he was supposed to consume half a litre of scalding hot Macchiato in the 5 min before the film started- ‘Not really my problem’ was the heartfelt reply from the young attendant.
This then triggered a rant about the waiting times in the ‘express’ queue for the online ticket buyers. A couple of minutes after venting he shredded his ticket and stormed out vowing never to return..

I think you should lodge a complaint with the ACT Human Rights Office.

mareva said :

I am going to start by making a few assumptions about OP.

OP is white, middle-aged, male (obviously), and almost certainly works for the APS.

???
I might make a few assumptions about you, none of which can be repeated here.

I admit I didn’t know it had stopped being cracked down on, let alone that it had started again. I’ve been subjected to ‘What’s in the pocket?’ ‘If I could check your bags…’ stuff many times.

I’ve never liked the policy, but just kind of accepted it as ‘Their cinema, they make the rules’.

Not that I don’t think a lot of cinema stuff is too expensive as it is, which has sadly cut down on my outings, regardless of whose food I eat.

wildturkeycanoe said :

4. Will sporting venues begin to take this approach with things such as NRL games, cricket matches, football and the like?

A lot of major events including sport already do this, though in most cases they are looking for alcohol.

LSWCHP said :

I’ve been watching pictures at Hoyts Belco for 20+ years, and I’ve never once purchased any of their mind-bogglingly overpriced popcorn or soft drinks. I always take the kids down to K-Mart or Coles to stock up on a couple of bags of lollies and some drinks, which are easily concealed in backpacks or deep hoodie pockets.

They can do what they like, but I’m not going to be gouged by them. If they start body searching everybody, we’ll just forget the junk food when we go to the flicks. When they charge reasonable prices for the treats then I’ll be prepared to pay for them.

That would be hard considering the cinemas in Belco didn’t open until 1995! But take your point and agree.

I used to bring in some wicked wings from KFC to the cinema….love munching on them while watching and there’s only 1-2 families anytime before 3 pm. Well, all good things must come to an end…

OP you have committed the cardinal sin of not concealing your drink in a bag… or failing to purchase iced coffee and concealing it in a bag 😀

Panhead said :

Think a cinema policy is stupid? I will tell you why it isn’t.

Then why allow food/drink in at all?

I watched the Hobbit and was amazed by the number of people who brought in HUGE buckets of popcorn (low level background crunching noise) and supersized drinks, who then had to go to the toilet during the movie. Surely you can last a couple of hours without stuffing your face with crap food. And cheezles smell bloody awful when you are sitting next to the bloke eating them, too.

I am going to start by making a few assumptions about OP.

OP is white, middle-aged, male (obviously), and almost certainly works for the APS.

I actually laughed (in my mind) when I read that you, OP, got a damn refund for your damn tickets because your damn coffee was taken off you which is the most basic damn cinema policy of all time. Don’t take in food from outside, plus don’t take in hot drinks.

Maybe OP you should quit your job at the Department of Bullshit and go work at Hoyts and instigate some bottom-up change, i.e. eradicating all the most basic and sensical public health and safety policies they have practiced for many years. Maybe you can start by drafting a policy paper about it.

No I don’t work for Hoyts, I’ve never worked for a damn cinema but OP your classic Canberra asshole attitude has really pissed me off.

I was a teenage usher at Hoyts for 3 years. Hot food and drinks are the worst to clean up and they make everything smell. Sure you wont spill your coffee but someone will and it will fester and smell, same with your hot food. You know what a cheese burger that has festered for a few sessions smells like after someone has left it behind and in the rushed 5 minutes we have to clean a cinema that has been ravaged by 100 or so people we missed it.

Think a cinema policy is stupid? I will tell you why it isn’t.

Most films (at least non-Peter Jackson ones) are no more than about two hours (choc-tops). You really should be able to go that long without a snack. Of course, if it’s a kiddies’ film for a birthday or something, it’s a bit different.

Eat before and/or after!

JimCharles said :

Apart from the fact my wife and 3 kids had to move seats because Hoytts sold the same seats to another customer who ordered online [same seat numbers, verified by the usher, even though the manager said it wasn’t possible to double book a seat]

So it DOES happen! I went to go see Total Recall and booked a ticket online, seat K-13 or something. When I get there I see someone sitting in that seat. I didn’t make a fuss because it was an almost empty cinema, I just sat a few seats away. A dude came along just before the movie started and said to the guy sitting in K-13 that it was his seat, showed the ticket, and the person in it apologised and moved… the same seat I’d bought online… I didn’t bother making a fuss over it since there was plenty of other places to sit, but I’ve always wondered if it was a once-off.

They didn’t allow coffee in so you drove into civic? Why not just finish the coffees and walk in?

I have had no trouble over the years, but have always waited for the day when I may be challenged. I always go to the cinema via the supermarket – they are in the middle of shopping malls after all, so my defence if ever questioned would be that I am carrying my shopping with me. I’d get a bit upset if anyone wanted to search my shopping bags.

wildturkeycanoe said :

4. Will sporting venues begin to take this approach with things such as NRL games, cricket matches, football and the like?
5. Should schools also adopt this in order to keep our canteens in operation?
Apart from the fact my wife and 3 kids had to move seats because Hoytts sold the same seats to another customer who ordered online [same seat numbers, verified by the usher, even though the manager said it wasn’t possible to double book a seat] and ended up under the blast of air conditioning, causing headaches and chills without any more than a simple “sorry”, I am over the big screen thing. I’ll wait for the DVD or early release on Foxtel. That way I can eat and drink what I want, pause if I need to go to the toilet and rewind if I missed something.

Do they not do this anyway at sporting events over here? Back in the UK i stopped buying stuff years ago because of the searches and gits taking soft drinks off kids (because the bottle can be thrown as a weapon, although they were selling their own inside) , huge markups and Test cricket got rid of food hampers years ago with external beer packs gone years and years before that.
The money they can make is massive.

I don’t know what happens in schools here but when a few schools banned kids from bringing chips and chocolate and also removed them from the canteen (Jamie Oliver), they had parents rushing to school at lunchtime shoving McDonald’s burgers through the fence because they thought their kids were gong to starve.

The business of a cinema is to sell tickets to films and food and drink items to be consumed at the film. As such the owner is entitled to refuse to allow a person to buy food elsewhere and consume it on premises.

Same as buying food at Maccas and trying to eat it at KFC.

As far as Limelight goes, they are hoping to get more people in, nothing more. 45% of $11 is $4.95 per person that Limelight keeps as opposed to $7.65 for Hoyts. However, Hoyts probably have a higher percentage of discounted tickets than Limelight.

I’ve always done it and had no trouble.

I think it’s fair that they do this, but putting up signage would save them a lot of trouble.

If they charged reasonable but still profitable prices this would not be an issue … price gouging at their front counter is their self inflicted cause of the food smuggling! Will not stop me … good luck searching me if you dare! 😎

pink little birdie said :

I thought you weren’t allowed to take hot drinks in to cinemas and that’s been enforced for years.

Me too

As long as you are taking in the same kind of food and drinks they already sell it should be fine – if they kick up a stink just mention anti-competition complaints to the ACCC.

As for coffee (just take an iced coffee instead) and hot foods, you could probably argue your way in but you’d have to be a bit of a douchebag to subject your fellow movie-goers to it. It’s the olfactory version of people checking their phones during a movie – not actually that big a deal, but I still want to rip your eyeballs out via your arse!

My wife did the same the other day, packed up a heap of goodies just to be told that they can’t be taken into the cinema. Many people had to leave their stuff outside the theater in a box. Too bad if they got stolen before the curtain dropped. Here are some interesting conversation starters in relation to this issue.
1. If you have allergies to certain foods which the candy bar doesn’t cater for, can you take your own pre-prepared snacks?
2. Water – can you take your own in a flask or sports drink bottle because you need the fluorine from tap water for healthy teeth?
3. How far can they legally search your bags/handbags/pockets to identify the contraband?
4. Will sporting venues begin to take this approach with things such as NRL games, cricket matches, football and the like?
5. Should schools also adopt this in order to keep our canteens in operation?
Apart from the fact my wife and 3 kids had to move seats because Hoytts sold the same seats to another customer who ordered online [same seat numbers, verified by the usher, even though the manager said it wasn’t possible to double book a seat] and ended up under the blast of air conditioning, causing headaches and chills without any more than a simple “sorry”, I am over the big screen thing. I’ll wait for the DVD or early release on Foxtel. That way I can eat and drink what I want, pause if I need to go to the toilet and rewind if I missed something.

johnboy said :

cinemas make almost nothing on ticket sales,

Interesting. But if I was to see The Hobbit (2D) tomorrow at 6.00 PM at Hoyts Belconnen will cost me $17.00. Dendy appears to be $18.00.

The same movie at the same time at Limelight will cost me $11.00. Is Limelight losing money on the ticket but hoping to make it up on the popcorn?

Any ideas?

as others have said, the cinemas make their money from the concession items. therefore, the policy of refusing entry is valid. however, the cinemas would make more money if they were less greedy and charged less for the concession items.

MrPC said :

I wonder if this counts as third line forcing.

No, because the cinema and candy bar are a single entity. They are not preventing you from purchasing the goods, just consuming them on their premises.

lostinbias said :

Curse those employees for upholding policy. Would I be correct in assuming that you brought up their youth in your original post (“teenage attendant, and subsequently the teenage manager”) in order to express and/or stir up disapproval (“How could someone so young be a manager blah blah blah life experience blah”)?

Totally agree.

I was witness to the same policy enforcement as the OP and (to me at least) it looks like a really hard thing to have to tell people when you’re their only avenue of recourse right there and then. I can easily see people getting quite angry over this too.

The young usher, when I was there, was reasonably professional and obviously just trying to do his job and I suspect the manager had similarly lowly powers under the shining almighty head office.

(For the record, I hate this policy)

When I was in the cinema industry in the 1990s, the distributors took 55% in the first week then a sliding scale down to 30% with a minimum fee of $150 per week.

Once a year (show weekend which was the slowest weekend of the year) we sold tickets for old films for $2 and would pack the cinema over and over again. Distributors got minimum but we made a motza on the concessions.

BTW, the cost of the packaging for popcorn is higher than the cost of ingredients. Profit is in the region of 600% and drinks are similar.

We would have liked to stop people from bringing in outside food because as JB says, you still have to clean up the filth that people leave behind. The only strict rules were no glass and no hot food. The former for safety reasons, the latter because for everyone else in the cinema it stinks.

LSWCHP said :

When they charge reasonable prices for the treats then I’ll be prepared to pay for them.

Couldn’t agree more. Surely they’re losing out on potential profits simply because of how over-priced their snacks are. If they stuck to the RRP I’d be willing to bet that they’d start seeing more cash coming in.

I’ve been watching pictures at Hoyts Belco for 20+ years, and I’ve never once purchased any of their mind-bogglingly overpriced popcorn or soft drinks. I always take the kids down to K-Mart or Coles to stock up on a couple of bags of lollies and some drinks, which are easily concealed in backpacks or deep hoodie pockets.

They can do what they like, but I’m not going to be gouged by them. If they start body searching everybody, we’ll just forget the junk food when we go to the flicks. When they charge reasonable prices for the treats then I’ll be prepared to pay for them.

Curse those employees for upholding policy. Would I be correct in assuming that you brought up their youth in your original post (“teenage attendant, and subsequently the teenage manager”) in order to express and/or stir up disapproval (“How could someone so young be a manager blah blah blah life experience blah”)?

I’m so sick of young people in the workforce being unfairly judged by the public at large. Yes, I’ve worked with some young people who are good for nothing, but I’ve worked with some who are very dedicated and skilled as well, and it’s the same with older people. Being quite young in the scheme of things I’ve dealt with older people who seem to assume that I will not provide a decent service or will screw up somewhere.

On the subject of this consumables policy, I thought it was always the case, and on the rare occasion I go to the cinema I will hide my contraband junk somehow.

johnboy said :

Nope, the distributor pays the cinema an amount to display each session of the film (back in the day about 30 tickets worth).

All the money from the box office goes to the distributor.

Selling popcorn is always where the real money is for the cinema.

(Actually in one chain I worked for in the UK the real money to the parent company was an Irish subsidiary selling cleaning chemicals to the cinema at a 1,000% markup which repatriated the takings to low-tax Ireland. Cinemas are not a simple business, but selling your popcorn and not letting you bring in any other crap which may be hard to clean, or annoying to other patrons, is a bit of a no brainer.)

Fascinating.

Awesome, now whenever I go to the movies with friends it’ll be a contest to see who can successfully smuggle in the most kebabs and fried chicken in their pockets/under their hats. That sort of thing is no fun when you know they’ll just let you in.

johnboy said :

cinemas make almost nothing on ticket sales, so the real wonder is it took Hoyts Belconnen this long to notice.

I find this interesting, surely once the cinema has paid their rent and licenced the film, the cost of providing screenings to people is almost zero.

I wonder if this counts as third line forcing.

I thought you weren’t allowed to take hot drinks in to cinemas and that’s been enforced for years.

cinemas make almost nothing on ticket sales, so the real wonder is it took Hoyts Belconnen this long to notice.

I and a couple of friends were also stopped the other day for the same thing. We were all rather amazed that after going there for the last 15 years (or however long it has been open) they now decide to enforce it…. I guess it is time to migrate to Dendy or start a smuggling trade…

Surely that is counter-productive to actually selling tickets. I wonder how much the make on ticket sales vs concession item sales.