Cineplex Cinemas Abbotsford and VIP — Attraction in Abbotsford

Terrible. Quite possibly our worst outing in a long time. How can Cineplex screw this up.

We frequently go to the Mission Silver City theaters and have never had an issue. For our anniversary, my wife and i decided that we would head over to Abbotsford to watch the latest Bond movie. We will never go back.. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised by the abundance of tables. We found seats and a server came over within a few minutes to take our drink and meal order. That was the last we saw of her. We eventually got our drinks, but no food. After 45 minutes of waiting, we got up to go to our seats. Our server, who magically reappeared with a bill, was happy to take our money. When we explained that we still didn't have our food, she "shocked". She gave us some story about how busy they were because of some event that was happening. She took our seat numbers down and assured us our food would be brought to us.

While heading to our seats, we decided we'd grab a drink at the bar. Another wait. About 10 minutes. Again, the excuse was some event that was slowing them down. We finally got to our seats. Waited another 10 minutes, still no food. So we flagged down someone with a theater shirt on and asked them to look into it. After a few minutes he came back with a smug look on his face. Because we had "walked away" from our table, they threw the order out. His look of contentment made it obvious that he was expecting me to beg for food or apologize for making him run around looking for it. I wasn't going to let him off that easy. I explained what had happened. He decided he would go back and re-order the food. But he had to re-take our order. And he had the guts to question if I actually ordered the nacho's with the chicken, or just plain nachos and got confused. I guess he thought that maybe I was trying to rip off Cineplex for $2 worth of chicken. After five minutes, an assistant manager type delivered the food. Again, he tried to explain how busy they were because of "what was happening upstairs". My wife calmly and politely told him that this was the worst service we'd ever seen.

So, we won't go back, and we won't be recommending this place to anybody.

The worst part: not one apology. All we heard was some big event that was distracting everybody. The girl behind the bar even said "you think this is bad, you should see it during a big movie opening weekend." Thanks for the warning....

I am writing this review to share a rather negative experience that I had the other day at the Abbotsford VIP location. We had four VIP movie tickets to a 7:20 showing of Star Wars. We arrived about an hour early so that we could enjoy a meal and a cocktail before the movie. It was my father's first time at a VIP theater. Although we were communicated with by a server within five minutes of taking a seat our first drink did not arrive for 23 minutes after placing the order. Nobody came back to take our order and nobody came back to inform us of any delay. Or first round of drinks came slowly over the next 10 minutes and when we asked to place our food order they suggested that we go to our seats and place our dinner order there. We came early so that we did not have to do this however we obliged. I sought out a manager and she provided us with several free appetizers although this did not correct the issue. Our order took so long to get to our seats that the movie was 10 minutes into it when the last person recieved their plate. Because we asked for popcorn during the movie, we ended up getting that before are meals and we're unable to enjoy it during the movie. Both the popcorn and the meals arrived cold and piecemeal. All in all we spent $63 in the lounge, $184 on our dinner and drinks at the seats and $72 for our movies. It was a $300+ experience that wasn't worth a fraction of that. The food was cold and lackluster, we were unable to eat it in the lounge as we had planned and we got our drinks and meals out of sync. Including entrees before appetizers and popcorn before all. It was absolutely the most abominable experience I have ever had dining anywhere and have ever had at any VIP Theater. Services, such as the lounge are offered so that people can avail themselves of dinner and a movie and this failed to meet the very minimum standards of acceptable enjoyment for any of us. It was not as if the place was busy, in fact we were the only people in the lounge area and we're unable to even get an order placed even though arriving an hour...

We visit this move theatre quite often and are generally very happy and have never had a bad experience. Today was an exception. I’ve been in food services and hospitality all my life in management positions and understand customer satisfaction is paramount when providing food. We ordered our popcorn and drinks like we always do and asked for extra butter - like we always do, and paid for the extra butter. Upon sitting in our seats and the movie starting we noticed the popcorn was lacking flavour and just not the typical movie theatre buttery goodness everyone expects. No big deal - I figured I would go and explain and just get another pump of butter and be back on my way enjoying our night as a family.

I waited in a long line again so as not to be rude and butt ahead of people who were waiting for the food and drinks (all while missing the movie but I was totally ok with this) when I got to the till I explained the situation and the young girl working had no idea what to do or how to handle the situation. I explained we had just bought the popcorn and paid the extra for the butter and it was just lacking any taste if she could please add a bit more. She then grabbed another girl, who also was at a total loss of what to do and proceeded to grab a male manager brown hair in a red dress shirt and he told the girls (did not come over himself!) to tell me that they cannot add any extra butter - saying they pay for it so they can’t give another pump. Absolutely disappointing customer service. If a customer is dissatisfied the goal is typically to accommodate. Anyone who has been to a movie theatre knows the markup and profit margin on popcorn is ridiculous and we had already paid for the dang extra butter pump. Clearly this man should not be in a managerial position and good employees must be hard to find post COVID. We are very disappointed in the lack of customer service - if we say the popcorn lacked flavour then the goal is typically to correct the food. We expected better! Movie was great. Popcorn with flavour would have been a nice...