NCG Cinema - Lansing + Xtreme — Local services in Lansing Charter Township

NCG Lansing - Horrible customer service! Waited in line for almost 20 minutes, and midway through line they changed employees working at the register. They yelled something into crowd and proceeded to ring people up. Once we got to the register I asked for two tickets, popcorn and pop. I was informed that they were not giving concession through the line. People in front of us had received concessions. Also, a worker was moving popcorn from the machine directly behind the register to another machine. My husband explained that we had been waiting and people in front of us had gotten popcorn, the lady got an attitude and said Sorry, no concessions. I walked out. There was no offer to try and make it right. If we had decided to stay and go to another line and wait another 20-30 minutes we would have missed the beginning of the movie. After leaving, my husband decided to call and complain. I was very upset. He asked to talk to a manager, and explained the situation. Expressed that the lady we dealt with was being a b*%&! (Unnecessary I know), the lady on the line said that it was her we had talked to previously and hung up on him. At that point I was furious and decided to send an email to their corporate offices explaining how rude the manager was to us. I explained it exactly as I have here. Actually, I was probably nicer. After more than a week of no response from them in any form I decided to leave my review here. It would have been so simple for the manager to say “l am so sorry, we switched this line to ticket purchase only. But since you were already in this line to begin with, why don’t you move off to the side and I will have the lady at the register to my left help you next.” Or an email from someone that said “I’m sorry you had a bad experience at one of our theaters. We apologize that you were unable to see your movie. It is standard practice to do this during busy times and are so sorry that it was not communicated properly. I hope that you will give us another chance at one of our theaters in the future.” I was/am not asking for free stuff. I didn’t expect a red carpet thrown at my feet. A small apology and maybe someone having a word with the rude manager was all that I could hope for. But, this company obviously doesn’t care when their customers are treated poorly. NCG is the closest theatre to me, I will not return. I will drive 15 minutes further if I want to see a movie. This is the first bad review I have ever written! But felt it needed...

Overall the theater is nice, clean, safe, and a great place to see a casual movie. If you can afford the extra cost, the Xtreme theater is well worth the money. It is comfortable with a very large screen and excellent sound. It definitely gives you that immersive feel that you want in a movie theater.

We go to this theater a lot - 3+ times a week at least. Because we have been there so much we have found a few annoyances that I would like to mention. These are not deal breakers (usually) for anyone casually attending the movies, though. The first thing I would mention to anyone going to this theater is to expect at least 3-5 minutes of commercials at the start of a movie. They had been playing the commercials 3-5 minutes prior to the movie time but recently changed to begin the commercials AT the movie time. So, if your movie is at 9:55, expect the previews to start at 9:58 or 10:00 - after the commercials. The commercials are annoying but I have noticed that it is leading to a bigger problem, which is also the second item of concern I would mention to someone going to NCG. Talking / phone usage during the movie is getting out of hand. The lights dim at the proper movie time and the commercials start playing. People realize that the movie isn't starting yet and continue their conversations / texting on their phones. This, of course, is fine, because who wants to watch commercials? However, normally when the lights are dimmed people understand it is time to quiet down, put the phones away, and setting in to watch the movie. The commercials are changing this because the lights dim just prior to the commercials starting. This seems to lead to a restless audience that has a harder time settling down at the start of the actual movie. The staff is friendly and concerned about this issue but fail to actually do anything about it. You can only get a refund if you involve the staff but even then, it's not worth the effort or frustration. We normally ask someone to quiet down / put away their phone and then change seats if they continue to be distracting.

The only last item I would mention is that the popcorn seems to be hard on a sensitive stomach. I'm not sure why this is but every time either of us eats the popcorn we end up with an upset stomach after. The popcorn tastes good but if you have a sensitive stomach you may want to try a small first (or if someone else in your party is buying popcorn you can get an add on popcorn for $1, which is smaller...

I normally love the experience here. I would drive way out of my way to go to this theater specifically. It had good service, great seating, and I liked their selection of drinks. Lately though, they've offered nothing worth the drive. I continuously retrieve stale, flavorless popcorn that I feel cheated paying $6 for. The service is terrible lately. I went tonight with my wife and she ordered a cheese pretzel. The manager started our order then tended to other guests. He then proceeded to forget about my wife entirely. I tried to wave down the manager who proceeded to give me the "one minute" finger, and then continued to ignore us. We had to wave down a separate staff member to even get out pretzel out of the microwave, despite it being cold at this point. We had to argue with the staff member for the cup of cheese and then argued about the poor service. I then requested a large popcorn instead as they offered to get us another pretzel and it was already 6 minutes past screen time for our movie. After arguing for several more minutes with no real solution, a different staff member gave us our popcorn. We were then approached and were told that our popcorn was an upcharge of $2.12. We continued to argue that they'd been incredibly rude to us and were making us late for our movie. They explained that since the movie didn't start until 12 minutes after screen time that we were fine. They then continued to request the upcharge fee. We paid them for the upcharge and walked away with no apology or compensation. I refuse to believe anyone with any service training, let alone a manager, would make a customer wait over 10 minutes for a $4 snack. Add to that the continued disrespect after trying to get their attention, it unbelievable. I no longer have a reason to visit this theater as they've got nothing to offer that another theater wouldn't do better. I don't recommend this theater at all as it's apparent staff and supervisors alike don't care about you as a customer. I shouldn't feel so frustrated seeing one of the few movies a month I see with my wife....