Varsity Theatre — Attraction in Ashland

I took my wife, my 15-year-old daughter and her best friend to see a movie. No one was at the ticket box so we went to concessions for our ticket. The guy at the counter asked if any of us were students. I appreciated him asking because I didn’t know they had a discount. When I told him that the—obviously school-age—girls were students he said that he needed to see their student IDs. They had them, and it wasn’t a problem, I just thought it was a weird tone to set over a dollar discount: You think I’m lying? They’re rogue teenagers bucking the law by not attending school?

We saw a great movie. The theater was what you’d expect in a small-town “art house:” small screens, old seats, low quality sound. It is what it is and they did a good job with what they have. The movie experience was good.

Then… We get out of the movie, my wife uses the restroom, and the girls and I wait in the lobby. Just as my wife come out of the restroom the same employee mentioned above comes over to her, holds up a beer bottle and says, “do you know anything about this?” My wife was clearly a little shocked. [Side note: my wife loves telling people that if you took every drink of beer she’s had in her life it wouldn’t fill one glass. Sad, but true.] Being put off balance my wife gave him a confused “no,” we all soaked in the awkward moment, and then we left.

The theater was fine, the amenities were fine, but that one employee made it an uncomfortable experience from end to end. By the time we bought tickets, snacks and drinks we had spent a lot of money in this business. The employees should be trained to show patrons that they appreciate their business, not treat them like they’ve done...

A nice experience with limited exposure. This was my first trip to the theater so it's fairly limited. I like popcorn slot and opted for the $20 bucket which includes a lid that doubles as a sharing bowl. The bucket comes with a card which allows two additional refills on future visits which brings the net cost for each down to $6.67 each... easy better than the $9 large (but smaller) paper bucket. Butter is optional. The movie we saw was in theater 4 which requires you to exit through the front, follow an alley down the dive and enter through a side door. The theater is on the smaller side, but the screen and speakers were adequate and clear. My only real disappointment was the adjacent film was very loud and downed out some of the quiet dialog in my theater. Otherwise, the theater was comfortable. I''ll consider returning when another movie lures me in. Staff were friendly too and tough to breast the $5 Tuesday...

It's shocking to me how many great movies this theater misses despite being an "independent arthouse" theater. Every year I look forward to arthouse films in the area, and every year I'm disappointed by what they decide to leave out. On top of that, instead of playing some of the best arthouse films of the year, they opt to play big budget Hollywood movies just to make the money. I understand if you have to do that to keep afloat, but I'd be spending hundreds of dollars at this theater every year if they actually released what was coming out that no other theater would play. Outside of that, the last two experiences I had here the screens had a very strange "floating bubble" look to them, and it was often very distracting while watching the film. I want to love this place, especially since it's my only option in the area, but seriously, who decides what plays here? And why can't they get equipment adequate...