AMC Star Great Lakes 25 — Attraction in Auburn Hills

Pre-covid I’d give 1 or 2 stars only. But they’re still open, and the employees were friendly, and that alone is so rare now I’m willing to “up” it to 3 stars.

I called ahead of time to ask about whether they had closed captioning devices for my 79 year old mother to use. They said of course, just stop by guest services.

We picked it up and were instructed that to use it, once the movie started, press the button and it would sync.

This has an inherent flaw which is you can’t test whether it works until the movie has already started, not to mention all the interesting trailers can’t be cc’ed.

Our device didn’t work.

I went to guest services, waited for someone, they got another one and handed it to me, that also did not work. I went back again to guest services (3rd time today and 2nd time since the movie started!).

The mgr. walked back with me back to the theatre. Once inside she was unable to get it to work. So that’s 2 cc devices that they thought worked that did not.

None of us got either of them working and I missed some scenes that were important to the setting up of the plot in the movie. (I asked if there was something the projectionist needed to click on to allow for syncing, but I can’t go much farther than that to fix things!)

)No offer for free tickets, partial refund, nothing.) The seats were older and fabric is worn down but still had all their padding and were comfortable rockers.

Also, pictured is the $8.95 bag of popcorn I splurged for.

The popcorn was stale. Sometimes you get popcorn that was popped the night before at theatres and it doesn’t mean it’s awful. You can butter and salt it up and hey, still having movie popcorn in a movie theatre…. (Hah! How ya like chat, COVID!)

BUT….

This popcorn went from stale to bad when I hit the level of popcorn in the picture, and I had to stop eating it. Not just stale. It had turned. It tasted like when you accidentally take a bite of cereal and something is wrong with it and you figure out it’s the milk poured on top that has soured.

I don’t know how that happened to the popcorn; maybe it’s from where the popcorn was stored that made it rotten and spoiled like milk?

For $8.95, this small amount of popcorn should be freshly popped. When buying, I saw that there was so much popcorn loaded up in the glass cabinets at 1:00 in the afternoon that it seemed obvious it had been mostly made...

bought tickets to the early screening of Beetlejuice for the IMAX and was thoroughly disappointed in the seats and where the handicapped row is located as well as the website for buying the seats

When i picked out seats i chose 3 in the middle of the handicapped row little did i know there weren't actually seats there it's for wheelchairs so luckily there was only about 10 people in the theater so we were able to move

But not only that the seats themselves were cheap and uncomfortable and so close to the screen it hurts our necks. We moved one row up and left my Walker in the wheelchair row and couldn't see the bottom of the screen thru the metal bars that blocked part of the screen and still so close we have to turn our heads to see the whole screen. Unfortunately i was unable to move any further up due to my need for my walker The floor was sticky and i heard other people complaining saying their sandals were sticking to the floor coming off of their feet

If you go to this theatre the Dolby theater had big leather recliners the IMAX has cheap folding church chairs and quickly floors. Do not buy seats in the handicapped row as what looks like seats on the map are actually empty spots

The guy at the concession stand has no clue about anything we asked him he was just like uhhhhh and shrugged his shoulders I asked about getting one of the movie posters and was told to check in December in the bin and see if that poster you wanted is in there. the movie comes out in October. I live an hour away so yeah no thx

It was about 110+$for 3 of us to go to this movie that was popcorn, 2x chicken tenders, 1 mozzarella sticks and 2 adult drinks it was 32$ for 2 adult drinks. I was drunk just from getting told the total not from the drinks and 54$for the 3 tickets if it was sold out me and my wife would have had to sit either in the floor or one of us on my Walker which is way uncomfortable because of the map when buying the tickets

Probably...

UPDATE: August 2023: Downgrading from 2 stars to 1...

My wife and I went here in August of 2023 and the whole place smelled like old urine, seats were incredibly dirty/stained/gross...and the seats are still just as uncomfortable as ever...go to MJR in Waterford instead. This place needs to invest in itself, or die.

Original Review: I live in Clarkston and from now on will be driving down to either Royal Oak or Birmingham to an Emagine theater. The things I dislike about this theater that I haven't encountered at an Emagine theater:

People using their phones to take pictures of the screen an tweet/post on facebook/email said pictures....during the movie (yes, this actually happened today with a guy in the front row so the screen lit up the whole place)

Seats are very uncomfortable. I'm 6'1" and if there is somebody in the seat in front of me, I have to put my knees to the side. All in all, they're just super out-dated. The ticket prices have continued to go up but the facilities are still stuck in $5.00 movie territory.

There were 30 minutes of previews. I generally like previews, but they just went on and on and I just wanted to watch the movie that I paid to see.

The Emagine tickets are cheaper and you get top notch facilities, leather recliners with 3-4' of foot clearance and arm rests that you don't have to fight over. The one person that I did deal with at AMC who took our tickets was very nice and it was easy to buy them online and bring the printout in...but of course that should be easy.

So really, the experience could be A LOT better and even cheaper, but it isn't. With that, I will opt to drive a little bit farther for a much...