Cineplanet 15 — Local services in Madison

The place seems nice. Lacking excitement. Put some decorations on the walls in the lobby. The seats are nice. It took forever to buy 5 tickets. Only one person was in line and I went to another open window. 5 people in the booth and nobody stepping up to help me until I said "I want to buy some tickets!!". Then they looked at each other and were arguing over who was going to handle it. Then it took forever for the girl to do it. I think I was waiting for a computer to boot because she was just looking at the screen. We had a lot of trouble trying to hear each other through the very small hole in the glass. She had a quiet voice, there were 4 people in the both with her talking and yuking it up, there was another customer trying to buy tickets, and there was annoying background music playing. She showed me the screen to pick my seats. I told her which ones but she just stood there looking at me like she was waiting for me to touch the screen or something. I told her again what seats and that I cannot touch your screen because it's behind the glass. Surely she wasn't that dumb. My wife was inside trying to get popcorn. No customers but her and 5 people behind the counter ignoring her and playing on their phones. She just gave up and left. Where are the responsible adults?? Just kids working here and they are just there to get paid. Didn't anyone train these kids?? Nobody supervising them?? They better fix this or it wil be a dollar theater real soon. The seats are comfortable but don't recline like Madison square. The biggest problem is just service. I went to support the local business but hard to do when the service is horrible. I tried to order the tickets in advance online but their website was not working. After selecting the seats, it started all over and would never get to a point where I could purchase them. Please work out the bugs so I can have a decent...

Pleasant little theater with a couple of different types of auditoriums. Some have roomy recliners, others have small non-reclining seats. In both kinds of rooms, the rows are widely spaced and the first row is well away from the screen. I saw The Last Jedi from row C and it wasn't too close.

I don't know if you can tell beforehand what kind of auditorium you will get.

Bathrooms were adequate and still clean three hours after opening. Staff was efficient and cheerful.

The fountain isn't oddly placed, as another reviewer claimed. It's appropriately located behind the box office, out of the way but big enough to provide a little extra seating, avoid the visual monotony of the average lobby, and make a bit of white noise.

Signage could be better - for example, I couldn't find any indication of which auditorium was which, and my entire row had to scoot down because the seat markers were unclear. There's a monitor behind the ticket taker that is cleverly laid out, but doesn't have enough room for all the shows.

The ticketing experience was weird. There was no one in the box office, so -- absent any signage -- we correctly assumed we needed to buy tickets at the snack bar. There should have been some ropes to manage the queue, but there was just chaos. Most folks thought there was one line, until some jerks showed up and made their own line, leaving everyone else stuck behind a large, indecisive, slow-moving group. There was no listing of shows; you just needed to know what you wanted. Seat selection was straightforward.

The inside of the theater was very clean. Picture and sound were good. The last couple of shows I attended at the Monaco were painfully loud, so I was glad they got the sound just right.

I will definitely try this...

OVERALL CHEAP EXPERIENCE.

From the poorly constructed stairs in the theater that my wife almost tripped down as we departed the movie; to the poorly located single bathroom located on the way out that is difficult to get to at times, that caused me to miss more of the movie halfway through when I needed to the use the facility, and getting accosted by the tickettaker to show my ticket stub on the way back in; to the cost-saving choices that lead to cheap-materialed, non-plush, semi-reclining chairs unlike the nicer chairs in other theaters; to the lack of a tray (more cost-cutting) at the seats, the entire experience was one of cost-cutting and poor design for the sake of profits.

While the staff can do nothing about those items, one thing they can do is to come up with a queuing system for people waiting for the obscenely expensive snacks. When we walked in, there were two employees manning registers, so we got in the two already long lines. As we stood there waiting, I can't tell you how many times some other employee would walk up to a new register and say, "Can I help someone?" and I watched a swarm of people from behind me cut the line to go to that shorter line. Talk to Disney on how to master a line and not screw those who were waiting - a single, long line that lets the next cashier help the next waiting customer would be much efficient and preferred by everyone. I went to watch a movie, yes...but all this added up to a "meh" experience that'll likely mean the profit-hungry owner won't get anymore of my money in the future as I'll...