NCG Cinemas - Brookhaven — Attraction in Brookhaven

Well, first off we are frequent movie goers as well as patrons of new venues to see all new releases. This theatre was not far from home, looked nice via the website, and upon entrance lived up to what we expected. To our surprise, all of that changed immediately following purchase of tickets, heading to concessions to get what was supposed to be a “combo” deal which included Large popcorn, 2 large drinks, and 1 candy for $26.95. Our total came out to almost 37.00… upon asking why is the tax and total almost $10 more, the response was “we are out of regular large cups and popcorn buckets so we have to charge you for “souvenir items”. So since you don’t have the proper inventory to support your advertising we as the consumer have to get charged for it? Nah not at all… so instead of honoring the fact that you don’t have regular large containers, you can easily substitute them for the souvenir ones since they are indeed the same size. Instead, they were instructed by upper management to “push” the souvenir products for up charge instead of equal pricing to compensate us for your business not having proper inventory. No manager on duty to honor this request, and so we decide to go into the movie without snacks at all… Within minutes it just made since to leave and try again another day, so we requested a refund and to no avail, they can’t reverse the charge on the credit card because their scanner won’t read the ticket. The teller says to fill out a form for the manager and they will call you and the refund will probably get to you in a few days. Again, NAH… at this point just forget it. We will sit through the movie since we did want to see it, but be assured that since there was no true consideration on discount, complimentary concessions or anything, we probably won’t come back to this location until they have a more solid operating system/ customer service...

I really want to like this place (even though, for trying to be a nice movie theater, they picked the absolute wrong shopping center for it), but it misses the mark on a few key things. First, when you get there and check in, you have the option to buy your popcorn and drinks at the front register. They try to sell you on this ridiculous $20 bucket of popcorn, but they hide under the counter the $8.50 bucket that looks the exact same size as the $20 bucket (the only difference being that you get free popcorn on future visits with the $20 bucket, but if you don't go to the movies often, it's not worth it, obviously). If you ask me, just buy the $6-$7 bag of popcorn since refills are free.

The ticket prices are nice here ($9 for matinees), and if you're just wanting to watch movies and don't care for quality, then it's a good deal. But my wife and I watched Top Gun twice -- once at the AMC Phipps and once here, and the AMC Phipps movie sound is SIGNIFICANTLY better than NCG's. The sound here is lacking in bass and sounds flat, which you'll notice when any "booms" in a movie just don't hit you like they're supposed to. NCG tries to mask the deficiency by turning it up a little louder. It doesn't work. If you want a more quality and immersive movie experience, I would go to AMC instead. Otherwise, the recliner seats at NCG seemed to be identical to the ones at AMC Phipps.

The only other thing that bothered us was that the popcorn was WAY oversalted. I realize that's probably more dependent on the person who made the popcorn, not on the theater in general. But man, it was awful. It tasted like I was drinking ocean water, it was that salty.

Overall, not a terrible experience. But if anyone asked me what I think about NCG Brookhaven, my immediate answer would be, "You get what...

This was my first time going to the NCG at this location and it turned out to be a great experience. I got there just before the crowd and the manager Mr. Mitchell was the one helping me at the register. This worked out good since someone had previously entered my NCG app information wrong. He was lovely and helpful and allowed me to take a look in the theater before I picked my seats. What others have written about the seat backs being too tall is correct if you're short, (I am) but once someone sits in front of you and puts their seat in the reclining position, you can see easily see the full screen and if there's no one in front of you, you can reach over and put the seat down. (Just remember to put it back up when the movies over) The actual theater was small but not the least bit cramped. As far seating goes, Maybe 50 seats & well-spaced apart. Lots of room to walk past somebody in a row. And all the seats have a good viewing area. And as other reviewers have said, the seats recline have an adjustable headrest and were very comfortable. We didn't eat any of the concessions so I have no information on that but everything look clean and there were no long lines. Bathrooms were spotless! The whole theater seems to be well maintained. Hopefully they'll be able to keep that up because that is definitely a nice change to many of the theaters in the area that have aged and have not been kept up. This will be my new theater of choice for going to the movies!

(The response below from the management is from an older review where I could not reach...