Cineplex Cinemas Coquitlam and VIP — Attraction in Coquitlam

Came here specifically for a VIP showing, and was greatly let down. The screening only had one waiter going around taking orders, and there were simply too many people for her to get to everyone in a timely manner on her own. As such, she only just finished taking orders as the movie started, meaning food and drinks were still arriving 20-30 minutes into the film. To be clear, the attendees weren't late, it was just taking a long time for one person take all the orders. I don't blame her at all, I blame Cineplex for assigning a single hostess to an entire showing with dozens of people.

Worse yet, the staff bringing out the dishes during the film didn't seem to have a good sense of the layout of the theatre, as they kept having to turn flashlights on to see the row letter and were conversing with attendees asking what they had ordered, bringing food to the wrong people, and then having to go down the isle asking others if the items they were carrying were for them. Again, keep in mind, this is all happening well into the films runtime.

The ordering itself was also problematic. My partner and I had a fairly large order, consisting of 2 drinks, popcorn, candy, and 3 food dishes, one of which was a burger with topping modifications (requesting certain things not be put on). The waitress, to her credit, got everything right. She read back the order before payment, and not a single thing was wrong. We paid and figured that was that.

A few minutes later, the hostess returned saying one of the items, a drink, "didn't go through the first time" and would need to be re-ordered. Sadly, the receipt they give you for payment is simply a confirmation of payment, not an itemized receipt, so I had no way of knowing whether it had actually gone through the first time or not. It had been included when she read back the original order, so I was surprised to be asked to order it again. Regardless, the movie had started at this point, so we didn't question it and simply did as she asked. Second problem with this though is that she didn't ask to scan my Scene+ card again, which we used the first time we ordered since it gives us a 20% discount; as such, we paid full price for this drink. Whatever, it's a couple bucks, not a big deal on its own, but it was annoying to have to order it twice and pay more for it in the end.

Eventually, the food came out, and 2/3 dishes were messed up. I had ordered hot wings, and when they arrived, only half were actually covered in hot sauce - the other half were simply plain. As well, many of the wings were cold. Not even warm, but straight up cold, as though they had been left out.

The other dish that was messed up was the burger. I had asked for 5 toppings not to be put on it (I know, I'm a picky eater). Of those, only 1 was not put on; the other 4 - which again, the waitress confirmed I didn't want on when she read back the order - were all present. Of course, it's a theatre and quite dark, so I couldn't tell they were on there until I bit into the burger.

Now, with the dishes being brought partway into the film, I wasn't about to step out then-and-there to get things resolved; and unfortunately, I had to leave immediately when the movie finished to deal with a personal matter. So one thing I can't speak on is Cineplex's ability to correct their mistakes, as I simply didn't have a chance to raise these problems with them. But in any case, for how much VIP costs ($25 per person, or $20 with Cineclub), on top of how much the food is (about $110 spent between myself and my partner), I REALLY expect better service with less interruptions and fewer mistakes. This is billed as a special experience, and frankly, ended up being worse than a normal showing. I don't think we'll be doing VIP again anytime soon.

I mean really, $24 for a plate of boneless wings, with half of them not coming as ordered and a bunch being cold? Come on. I could've seen a couple normal movies...

No real complaints about the facilities... it's a good sized theatre with a large number of options for viewing styles. We love the D-Box, although we wish there were more options for enjoying it WITHOUT having to watch in 3D (my son and I get Migraines easily from it), but we know it's likely not the theatres choice, and is instead set by the movie. It definitely resembles a lot of businesses after Covid, in terms of spots shut down/ spaces closed off and giving that "going out of business" look, but that's in line with the times so it is what it is. We enjoy playing in the arcade area before and after the movies too and think they have a good variety of game options to choose from. Of course it's a $$ rip off like most prize arcades but our son loves it so much and I love watching him and his dad get a kick out of playing different games together, so it's worth it when we treat ourselves to a movie night out! The food options at this theatre are definitely lacking in comparison to other theatres, but for your standard movie snacks it's fine (popcorn, hot dogs, nachos, candy & chocolate). Their "butter" flavoring stations always seem to be out of order but its worth the extra money to get the real stuff anyways, in our opinion. The one thing they could definitely work on is staff training however.... Multiple times now we've gotten in line only to wait and be late for our movies due to having someone not fully or properly trained on the till & getting flustered/causing more delays than helping by being there. For example, this last time we got a very friendly young woman, however she had no idea what she was doing, what the specials were, or how to ring them in, and overall was just a frantic mess. She apologized constantly and looked like she was about to cry, and then told us she wasn't supposed to be back there behind the counter and was just supposed to work parties. By no means were we upset with her, because it's up to management to know that you don't put people who are untrained into a new situation/position like this on a busy weekend without some help, of which there was none. If you're going to use staff from other areas as floaters then they need to be properly trained on all the machines, protocols and specials. Otherwise it just causes more headaches for the other staff trying to take orders, who then have to stop to come fix errors etc. Not to mention this poor girl won't be lucky enough to always have understanding & patient customers and you're just basically throwing them to the wolves if you don't properly train first, and that's really not fair staff management. We ended up getting everything we ordered, although it took quite some time and we definitely paid WAY more than we should have ($128 for 3x popcorn, 3x drinks, 3x candy), but at this point there was a very long line, the whole staff was frazzled and frustrated, and we were missing A LOT of our movie, so we just let it slide as there was no supervisor in sight to assist them anyways. Overall, would recommend for a standard simple movie going experience, but customer service and specialty options are lacking so keep that in mind to curve your expectations...

I've been to the theater twice, both were with the VIP experience. The first time I went was to see Avengers Endgame, and I remember it very fondly! The service was great, the seats were comfortable, even though it didn't fully recline I was comfortable the entire 3 hours.

Last night my partner and I saw Super Mario Bros The Movie, again with VIP. We arrived half an hour early to our show so we had time to order drinks before our show. We sat in the lounge and a server told us because our show time was soon we could head to the theater and order from there. We walked down and were told by staff inside the theater they were still cleaning, so we walked back to the lounge. We figured we'd just order our drinks then get food once they were done preparing the theater. We sat for about 10 minutes, and watched the same server look over at us, grab menus and walk to different tables to serve them.

I noticed we weren't the only people who hadn't been helped, and one couple went to notify management. There were other servers clearly running around from table to table, it seemed to be understaffed.

The positive from this outcome was the management team and other servers who were clearly working hard to make sure people got what they ordered in a timely manner so we wouldn't be late for our show. We got escorted to our theater and a server was with us right away and was incredibly helpful.

It's not a 5 star for me because of the staff member who clearly ignored us, and leaving their other team members and managers to give us service, and based on what it looked like not communicating with their team. As someone who has worked in customer service, when one person leaves their team high and dry, it causes problems as we saw.

The staff in the theater were 10/10, management was 10/10, the quality of the food and drinks was 10/10, theater was clean and comfortable 10/10. Overall our experience was positive and I would come back again for VIP, I'm very much willing to give more chances for...