Gateway Cinemas — Attraction in Thomasville

I think it’s about time to review this theatre again 2 years later. I understand that the pandemic has REALLY hit movie theaters hard, but man this place has gone WAYYYY down hill the past year.

Let’s start with the good. This theatre is always pretty impressively clean. Sure it looks pretty run down, but they do keep it clean. Very nice, quaint, small town cinema. Management is pretty good. Employees and owner are always really nice and polite at least from my experience. Usually not busy anymore, which is where the good stops.

Though clean, this theatre is run down as all get out. It’s not very well lit at all either. Don’t even get me started on the second concession stand in the back that is always dark and has creeped me out since I was a little kid. I’ve also had MANY experiences with sitting down to watch a movie, and either someone forgot to start the movie, there’s no audio, or the movie screen is WAY too dark. It seems now that the concession stand closes very early now, the prices have been jacked up from before, and they don’t even offer refills on ANYTHING anymore! For goodness sake, they can’t even seem to afford to keep the lights in their sign working anymore!!!!! Overall the place just feels deserted by lack of costumers and lack of staff. When I go in there now, it’s doesn’t even feel like they’re open.

I love this theater so much, which is why I know that something needs to be done SOON, or this place will be nothing more than a memory....

Great movie (The Bad Guys 2) and great staff, but management really needs to rethink how they run things.

Before the credits were even halfway through, we were politely directed to exit the theater so they could clean for a birthday party starting a few minutes later. I paid full price for the movie and was really hoping to to enjoy the end music, orchestration, and credits, but instead got the “speedrun” edition. End credits are scarcely more than 9 minutes for any movie. Out of respect for the underpaid staff, I left out and wished them a good evening.

The employees were respectful and clearly just following orders from the higher-ups. This isn’t about the employees; it’s about the scheduling and management choices of Gateway Cinema 7.

Pro tip for management: Don’t schedule events so close to the end of a film. Let paying guests enjoy the entirety of the movie including the wonderful music and appreciation for the production team that create such amazing works of art!

The end credits are a part of what guests pay for. Gateway Cinema 7 has great movies, great staff, but strangely competitive world record times for getting you back into the...

We were here last year and it was good. Not very clean, but no problems. Now for today. Went to noon matinee to see “Oppenheimer”. We arrived at 11:45 to get settled in. At 12:10 no previews or anything. 12:15 I went to front desk to see if there was a problem. Girl said it was going to start now. 12:20 still nothing. Went back to front and a young man said previews should have started, but would get the manager to fix problem. 12:30 nothing. There was 5 other people in theater, but no one else spoke out. So we decided to leave and get our money back. Young man told us they would start move at another theater with no previews if we would stay. So we tried that and movie started right away. But 5 minutes into movie the ceiling lights were still on. We back up front informed them and they turned lights off. We were there around 4 hours because movie is 3 hours long. They need to get their jobs in order! And the place is still dirty and in need of new carpeting at least. Only good news is movie was Great. Update: just watched “Horizon” here. Good news- Fantastic movie! Bad news- theater is still filthy! Come on guys, clean up. At least do the...