FrightFest

As a festival pass holder I was unable to see any movies in the Discovery 1 & 2 screens as I was not at the cinema at 9.45 am. I was thinking that for the first movies that would be fine if they start at around 10ish, but for movies which are being shown after that it would be fairer to allocate the seats as people queue up. If only 45 or so seats are available to pass holders then you could have someone letting in 45 people and then thats it. They could have one of those thingys people click on the doors of clubs to keep a check on the numbers as people go in. Not very high tech I know, but I can't see a problem doing it that way. It wasn't worth me having a pass to be honest as I was limited to the main screen and most of the films I wanted to see were Discovery Screen ones.

No doubt someone will come up with a reason why the above cannot be done, but next year I will buy separate tickets for all movies in all 3 screens so I can see what I want where I want with no hassle. Also sitting at the side at the top was excellent as the curved screen meant we still got a great view and we had loads of space, so buying separate tickets isn't such a bad thing in terms of seating after all.

Lesson learnt - separate tickets is the way to go. Was going to do that this year, decided not to,wish I had.

Do you mean queue up for each performance?

Same goes for the sleepy queue... sick of that crap every year.

sherbetbizarre wrote:Do you mean queue up for each performance?

Yeah, queue up in the normal way at the box office before the movie is due to come on as you would when going to the cinema normally and once those 45 pass holder free tickets have been allocated thats it.

jonbly wrote:Same goes for the sleepy queue... sick of that crap every year.

I know we are seeing horror movies, but it just seems that we are required to endure a painful experience in terms of inconvenience in order to get our tickets. Its a bit like THE FOX pub in St Giles St (which used to be in Wardour street) which is a heavy rock pub which everyone who's into that kind of music knows about and has probably frequented over the years. The toilets in there are so bad a health inspection would close that place down in seconds. The stench is beyond words and I remember hearing one girl in the bogs saying "I know we are into heavy music but it doesn't mean I want to take a piss in a stinking cesspool of a toilet" and I thought yeah she has a point there!

Same principle --> Horror Fan does not equal ---> customer needs are secondary

Hi there.
Me and my friend were also very disappointed that we didn't get the chance to see any of the discovery screen films this year, despite having a day pass.
We arrived at 9:30 and granted, the queue was a lot bigger than it was the same time last year, so things weren't looking great.
As we edged closer to the entrance of the cinema, a member of staff came out and informed us that Stalled was now sold out. We kind of expected that as we knew that Stalled was one of the popular films of frightfest. What we didn't expect was when we got to the front desk to be told that all of the discovery screen films (except the late night ones and The Dead 2) had been sold out. So we didn't have much choice but to go to the main screen films. Luckilly they all were pretty good (except RIPD 3D) which was surprising, because the main screen films always seem to be a very mixed bag on a Saturday.

Perhaps a better system would be that when you purchase a day pass, that you get also the choice of what discovery films you want to see at the same time (like a 'tick the discovery film you want to see' option) on the cinema website. I'm sure it sounds a lot easier than it is to put in practice, but it doesn't seem that you get much benefit being a pass holder.

Needless to say that next year we will be booking our chosen films up individually and won't be purchasing day passes unless the system improves.
Despite these issues we had a great day as always.
Ade

adeyboy99 wrote: Perhaps a better system would be that when you purchase a day pass, that you get also the choice of what discovery films you want to see at the same time (like a 'tick the discovery film you want to see' option) on the cinema website. I'm sure it sounds a lot easier than it is to put in practice, but it doesn't seem that you get much benefit being a pass holder.

Sounds like a good plan however the only problem I can see with doing it that way is that if people do not turn up for a film or cannot get there through no fault of their own, then there are precious seats left empty which no one can use on the day. Sometimes people are just running late so that seat would need to be left empty in case they do turn up during the movie which is fine, but if they aren't coming then the seat has gone to waste. Not a problem for the cinema obviously as the seats been paid for, but a shame for someone who misses out.

Not that a huge amount of people wouldn't come or be unlucky enough have their plans messed up at the last minute, but to my mind doing it the old skool way would prevent that and be a lot easier.

I missed on so many films this year because i wanted to catch the late film and not have to get up at 7-8 to get my discover tickets. There needs to be a better system than spending the whole festival tired and queuing!

BabyJaneHudson wrote:

jonbly wrote:Same goes for the sleepy queue... sick of that crap every year.

I know we are seeing horror movies, but it just seems that we are required to endure a painful experience in terms of inconvenience in order to get our tickets. Its a bit like THE FOX pub in St Giles St (which used to be in Wardour street) which is a heavy rock pub which everyone who's into that kind of music knows about and has probably frequented over the years. The toilets in there are so bad a health inspection would close that place down in seconds. The stench is beyond words and I remember hearing one girl in the bogs saying "I know we are into heavy music but it doesn't mean I want to take a piss in a stinking cesspool of a toilet" and I thought yeah she has a point there!

Same principle --> Horror Fan does not equal ---> customer needs are secondary

Probelm is, they put in-person sales on from a certain date/time. You don't *have* to queue up in the sleepy, you can purchase online if you want. It's the desire for particular rows/seats that makes people do the sleepy (and the fact it's become a bit of a tradition). But anywhere you go, if something starts being sold from a certain time, then people are going to queue up for it. I can't see how you could "stop" the sleepy queue.

Having to get up an hour earlier and spend that time queuing for tickets was a bit of a pain. If you've stayed for the late film and have any distance to travel home, you get very little sleep which can affect your next days experience if you are excessively tired. A big problem may be the disparity between the main screen capacity and the smaller capacity of other screens. Will be all change for next year anyway so perhaps the issue will be solved by the changes.

BabyJaneHudson wrote:

sherbetbizarre wrote:Do you mean queue up for each performance?

Yeah, queue up in the normal way at the box office before the movie is due to come on as you would when going to the cinema normally and once those 45 pass holder free tickets have been allocated thats it.

I can't see how this would work - there often isn't 45 minutes between films, especially if the Q&A goes on a bit. I had all of five minutes to get from one to another on Friday afternoon and wouldn't have stood a chance; likewise Sunday night between Conspiracy and Antisocial.

I think it needs a rethink, and I missed out on two films I'd have liked to catch on Friday because I didn't get to the queue until just after nine (which was fine last year) but it was lesson learned and I didn't miss any others because I got up and was in the queue in good time, so it's not as if there's anything preventing others doing likewise. My problem is I was so tired as a result I was falling asleep by midafternoon and I left before the last film twice, which I never normally do - I'm thankful I at least had the sense to stay for Cheap Thrills.

Charlie wrote:I missed on so many films this year because i wanted to catch the late film and not have to get up at 7-8 to get my discover tickets. There needs to be a better system than spending the whole festival tired and queuing!

Agree, I arrived at 9am on the Saturday morning to try to get tickets for Stalled, The Borderlands and Paranormal Diaries, but couldn't get any of them due to the queue already being massive at that point (did get one for Cannon Fodder though).

The only way to be sure to get tickets would appear to be by getting there at 7am or something stupid, so obviously having to miss the late night film the previous night, then as a result of getting up that early, being so tired you fall asleep in the middle of most of the films and don't remember anything about them. This is not a good process.

yeah this did suck. i got there at 9.30 on friday to get a painless ticket and was unable to get one. really wanted to see paranormal diaries and demons rook on saturday and usher and corruption on sunday but couldnt be bothered to get there super early to get tickets as that just takes the fun out of it and means i will just constantly tired and weary eyed for whole weekend. (i did eventually get a demons rook ticket but only by fluke when some random guy gave me one.) not having a go at organisers about this as you never know how popular these things are going to be until they happen. still it did suck and meant i missed a lot of stuff. would have been better if they were in bigger screens but hey-ho, guess it will change next year with the screen reshuffle....

I am not sure how we get around this. Probably like quite a few others had days where I wanted see what was on the disco screens more than what was showing on the main screen. But not being prepared to queue for ages and then missing out it ends up being pot luck if you get what you want.

Fri 1/3
Sat 1/2
Sun 2/4
Mon 0/1

I was only staying round the corner at PI but the queues on some days was massive.

Considered buying tickets but that then leads into a different way of doing the festival. If you only buy tickets to what you definitely want to see, you miss out the unusual stuff and having a quick look at this years list of films, FF would have ended up with a lot less money from me as I would not have ended up with enough tickets to exceed the weekend pass.

In hindsight maybe the Empire should also have used Screen 2 as well, was in there for Willow Creek and that is a lot bigger than 4, never been in 5 so dont know what size that is.

Will have to see what they do next year with the redevelopment.

Jekyll wrote:Will have to see what they do next year with the redevelopment.

That does seem key - and it's hard to comment usefully until we learn what the new facilities will be. It may be that if we had 4 screens of 300 seats each, say, that we'd have more flexibility to put on 3x Discovery and just 1x Main, if that's what demand dictated.

...but then the problem would be how seat allocations would work if we're swapping screens all the time...