AMC Worldgate 9 — Attraction in Herndon

I had the absolute worst customer service experience I have ever had at this terrible theater today. I will never spend another dollar at ANY AMC. If this is what represents the company, I won’t spend my hard-earned money here.

Sequence of events: We purchased tickets for a 2:15 movie 2 days ahead of time. We arrived to the theater around 2:10 to find it closed/gates up. No signage no one outside explaining anything. Someone slightly cracked the gate and asked if we bought tickets. We said yes. He said “go over there for a refund” no explanation of why it was closed or what was going on.

Then we get to the cashier. He could not have been more exasperated in his tone from the second we came up. It wasn’t like there were hoards of people he had to deal with. It was maybe 6? When we approached the counter he asked “Did you get an email from AMC?” I said “no if I had gotten an email I wouldn’t have come all the way here.” (I checked in my email to see if I had one at that moment but did not.) He said “Ok I will refund your tickets here can I scan them?” We scanned the tickets and he starts the process at the cashier. He said literally not another word during this process. Then he hands me a receipt to sign for the refund and I sign and then hands me an AMC gift card. For ~$7 less than I paid on the AMC app. I said “whoa no I don’t want a gift card I want a refund to my credit card.” He just keeps his arm extended with the gift card and says something to the effect of “you must have paid for the tickets with Apple Pay or something that blurred out the card number so this is all I can give you.” I said “Why didn’t you say that before you processed this? You just said refund? And it’s not even a refund it’s $7 less than what I paid??” And he just stares at me. And after about 30 seconds I finally said “We are going to try to make it to the movie somewhere else so can we finish this and get the credit card refund?” And he said (with an extremely annoyed tone) “I’m waiting to make sure you’re finished.” !!!??? And then says “that’s why I asked if you got an email” What??? It made zero sense. I insisted he refund via credit card as well as the fees and asked for a manager (who he states was himself) and all the while he is just holding the gift card out not responding or apologizing for ANY of the confusion and repeated “Take it up with AMC. Take it up with AMC…” over and over until we gave up and left.

This could have been avoided with even the most BASIC communication and contrition. 1) Any signage or AMC employee out front explaining what is going on 2) an apology from the cashier that we made an unnecessary trip (it’s not his fault the theater couldn’t play the movie but acting annoyed that people are there to get a refund for a service that was not delivered is not the way to act when dealing with a customer and 3) the cashier telling me I can’t get my fees back from him and that I was about to get a gift card (which is NOT a refund. When a store only issues store credit they state “No refunds store credit only.” These are different things and he should not have said he could give a refund) 4) Use of basic politeness

When you do a fine or expected job, people will return to your establishment, you’ll probably retain a customer. When you go above and beyond, you create loyalty and probably will get a good review to draw in other customers. When you act like the customer is a nuisance and quite unwelcome (and fail to refund the entire amount of the transaction for services no rendered), trust me they will tell everyone within ear shot never to go there. I can only assume that your employees’ attitudes reflect the top of the company down and again, you do not deserve our hard...

The two stars are for the movie experience once inside the theater and in our seats. The rest can be summed up in one word…. DISASTER.

Comfortable recliners made that experience nice. Little ripped up upholstery but that’s fine.

Cleanliness—not in the vocabulary of this location. The lobby was littered with trash and the soda and concession stands was smudgy and sticky. I felt gross walking away from there. The bathrooms (men’s) was also a disaster. We used the bathroom before our movie started. There was no toilet paper in any of the stalls from which I noticed and one of the urinals was filled up to the brim with pee, like it was clogged. The hand dryers also had some type of water mildew on them and I really didn’t want to put my hand in there at all. Lastly, there was vomit all in one of the sinks which made the restroom reek terribly. Then we went into the movie, watched it, and then had to reuse the bathroom again. Not a single worker had went in there during the entirety of the 2+ hour movie because it was left the same way.. urine, mildew, vomit, and all. It was absolutely disgusting. Just makes you wonder how often they clean their restrooms during the day.

Service—very disastrous as well. We preordered food to our seats because I’ve never tried it before and wanted to use that perk. But never again. I selected the time for 4:45 drop off and it never came. 15 minutes past our drop off time, I went to the concession stand to speak about my order. I explained to her what my order was (large popcorn and two large waters) and she told me that they didn’t have any water but offered me cups to fill up at the soda station for water. I refused because the cup was the size of a child’s cup and then she offered me a fountain drink for soda instead. I took it, but since I don’t drink soda often, I wasn’t to excited about. She then explained to me that my popcorn was on the list to be delivered and they were just backed up with orders. I understood and went back to my seat, hoping the popcorn would’ve been delivered before the end of the trailers. I was wrong. Movie started and the popcorn was never delivered at all. I didn’t want to leave the movie that I paid for since movies are expensive these days and I shouldn’t have to, either. At the end of the movie, I asked for a manager, but was helped by the lead employee instead who was able to assist me in getting a refund for my items but offered me a free movie and popcorn on my next visit. He was helpful, and honestly the only helpful employee I encountered.

This theater used to be much nicer and cleaner but for now on, I’d take the drive to the Loudoun Station AMC which I never had a bad experience yet. It’s worth the extra drive out and I highly suggest you...

Oh, the movie mall. That’s what my friend and I coined this place after visiting. It’s a pretty odd setup to me. You park in a parking garage and enter into what feels like a mall to get to the theater. Only, there’s a Panera, another random restaurant and then the movie theater itself. That’s it- there’s nothing else there. It’s weird, and that’s why we thought “movie mall” is an accurate depiction.

But trust me on this, a movie mall is NOT as pleasant as it may sound, if it does sound nice to you. I know movie theaters can really range in being super gross or actually quite nice. The movie mall leans much more towards gross. Like, pretty icky overall.

So, like dummies my friend and I accidentally walked into the wrong theater at first. But thank goodness it wasn’t the theater we had to sit in, because it smelled AWFUL. So bad, like musty sweat and mold, almost as if something was wet and never got cleaned and it was disgusting. I felt bad for the people in that theater just sitting in the stink.

Then we go to our actual theater where it thankfully smelled much more normal. But we end up moving from our assigned seats because you could literally seat the filth and lack of cleanliness on the chairs and side tables even in the dim lighting. Even pre covid this would’ve been really upsetting, like, do they ever clean their theaters? Who knows.

The last thing, was that during our entire movie there was a really loud dripping/ clicking sound coming from somewhere in the theater. We couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from but it was really concerning, like was something about to break? Were we okay to be sitting in there for so long?

Thankfully we got out very quickly and did not spend any extra time there. I hate to say that I do NOT recommend this movie mall place. There are plenty of nearby theaters in the Reston area that are wayyy better and won’t make you feel like you need to shower...