Harkins Theatres Arizona Mills 18 w/IMAX — Attraction in Tempe

I did not pay for tickets and drive an hour across the valley to have an IMAX experience of Oppenheimer to have a group of 6 men enter the theater and find their seats 30 minutes into the film. 30 whole minutes into a film where they had to shuffle in front of people to get to their seats. These men's seats were in the absolute center of the theater and next to mine. But they didn't just show up late they also talked to each other during the film. Someone behind us kept shushing them but they didn't care. And the man next to me kept looking at his notifications on his phone, when he started scrolling I told him that if he is going to show up late to a movie and then be disruptive to the people trying to watch the movie he should just get out. He stopped looking at his phone but this whole experience was completely ruined at that point. After the movie ended I spoke to the manager and asked why they let the men enter the movie 30 minutes after the movie even started and his response was that it if they bought tickets they can enter the theater at any point in the film. This is awful customer service. 6 men bought tickets and were late but an entire theater of people paid for tickets and were on time for the movie but had their experience ruined by the 6. If people are going to be incredibly late to a movie and are accepting of the fact that it's so disrespectful to the other moviegoers for them to get into their seats, most likely they are also going to be rude throughout the whole film. Harkins can't easily stop people from talking or looking at phones but they can easily tell people who are late arrivals that they can't enter. There should be a no tolerance policy for being late, why would that ever be acceptable? The manager said he would look at the footage to see what happened but what does that even do? It doesn't fix my ruined experience or the other people in the theater. And they are going to fine the card that paid for these men's tickets. So how does looking at the footage even help? What Harkins management could do is create a policy that does not allow late entry for...

I saw the advanced screening of Wicked Part 1 tonight and while the movie itself was AMAZING, the atmosphere was anything but. People were kicking our seats, talking loudly throughout the whole movie, and laughing obnoxiously loud. I wish I took a recording of the laugh but there were semi humorous scenes that people would chuckle at and this woman was practically scream laughing at for some reason. I asked the people around me to keep it down way too many times and they just got louder. Now obviously there will be awful movie goers at any location, IMAX and Harkins can’t control that. But what got me was the fact that several times during the movie cameras were flashing and people were blatantly holding their cameras up to record the screen. How is that okay? And how did they just allow that to happen?? Telling people to be quiet is one thing, it is awkward and no one wants to do it, but allowing people to record in the theater?? That is a whole other thing because it is illegal. The theater itself is also extremely run down, not very clean, and not super comfortable. My recommendation: You guys need to get that place updated because it felt more like going to the Pollack Cinemas on Baseline than something you would pay almost 20 dollars a ticket for. You also need to have someone walking through the theater more than once to watch for illegal activity. AND you should develop a system that doesn’t require me to miss parts of the movie in order to notify you guys of loud and obnoxious people. Other places have it, why don’t you? You can literally text a number at Majestic cinemas to notify staff of people who are talking too loud in the theaters. Why is that not a thing here already? Honestly I will not be going to this location again. Even if this theater was somehow the only place you could see Part 2 of Wicked…. I would rather wait until it comes out on streaming.

Edited to add this was at the...

Just a bad experience. Got there once the place opened, we tried getting food but there was some miscommunications and the employee was not very helpful. They look like they didn't want to be there. We don't like making it difficult for anyone but we almost ended up with four large drinks, it was just two of us. Instead we settled with three, and was told we couldn't get the food alone even tho it said otherwise on the menu. ( Instead of giving us drink combos or switching it, they charged us for two separate drinks.) They didn't ring up one of the items so we just stood there waiting for it, until another employee asked us if something wrong. (We couldn't buy it since it meant getting the fourth drink, and our movie had started since we were waiting the whole time)

I had gone to this particular movie theater a few times before, but had been a long while. I used to get a popcorn refill with no problem, however we didn't realize it had changed to only reward members only. My companion signed up, usually they would mark the bag and refill, but this time after signing up they asked for a receipt which they had thrown away. Was told to go through a process and come back, the person was very kind. However, it was just a bad experience and was very...