Studio One Theaters — Local services in Portland

TL;DR: The only fun part is watching a movie on a couch, but you can do that at home for cheaper, cleaner, and with better company than the serving staff they offer. The seats are comfy, but everything else was honestly terrible, including the customer service. We arrived to the theater about 7:20 p.m. for a 7:50 p.m. start time because the parking lot is fairly small, and we wanted to save time to order food. Finally someone comes over and shows us to our seats and says he will come back to take our order shortly. At first glance, there were big popcorn kernels, crumbs, and feathers (?) on the sofa, but we brushed them off and settled in. When he returned a few minutes later, we asked about the pulled pork sliders we saw in the main restaurant atea and he said they were all out for the night. No big deal, so we ordered a trio of fried shrimp, chicken katsu, and fried Mac and cheese instead ($28). As soon as you order, you have to pay (and potentially tip) which made us a little stand-offish because we had no idea what to expect, but we carried on. A few moments later, other movie goers start to arrive and as they are ushered in by other servers they are listed the specials for the day: salmon, PULLED PORK SLIDERS (that we were told they ran out of), and beignets. We were a little confused because we thought they were out AND we were never told the specials, but we thought maybe that server didn’t know they ran out of sliders yet. But as time passes on, more servers come and each guest gets listed the sliders and specials, which now we were annoyed about because, again, we never received any of those options. Continuing, just before the 7:50 start time, my friend that I purchased a ticket for told me she was not going to be able to make it, so I went to the main area just to see if we were able to get a refund for the extra ticket. I was fine without the refund, but figured it was worth a try. So, as I’m standing in front of the register for at least 4 or 5 minutes before anybody acknowledges me (there’s plenty of staff around, they’re just on their phones or walking past me), I glance in the kitchen and see 2 plates of pulled pork sliders just sitting there. Strange right? Coincidentally, our server finally comes up to see what I needed (after sitting at a table right behind me the whole time I was standing there) and I politely asked if there was anyway we could get a refund for an unused ticket. He rudely and immediately says “no I don’t do refunds” and tries to just move along to the next task. I was confused because nowhere on the website does it say “all sales are final, no refunds allowed, etc., but really it threw me off at how hostile his response was. So, I proceeded to let him know that our experience has been fairly disappointing overall in customer service and that I can literally see the pulled pork sliders in the kitchen that he repeatedly claimed they were out of, as well as other servers still offering them to every one else. I told him it was very upsetting for our first time visit. His response was to shrug his shoulders and tell me that those sliders were the last ones and that they were ordered before we got in (which wouldn’t even make sense because that means they would have been sitting in the kitchen for over 30 minutes now from the time that we would have ordered them AND that whoever ordered them would surely be receiving cold food). I walked away frustrated, and a few moments later he came to our seats to NOW miraculously offer us some comped sliders since he couldn’t refund our ticket. At that point I didn’t even want the sliders. It was the principle of the situation that had me angry and where in the world did he find these sliders all of a sudden? It was a shady situation all the way around. Lastly, when the food we ordered did come it was all very mediocre and very small portions for the $30 we paid (2 shrimp, 2 fried Mac and cheese, and maybe 4 of the smallest strips of...

Studio One Theaters is…a very interesting place to say the least.

My partner and I are visiting Portland and really wanted to see the new Nosferatu movie (spoiler alert: it was just okay) so we decided to stop into Studio One for a 9:45 PM showing. We got there a bit early and as soon as we walked in were immediately confused, as there wasn’t any signage or anyone to help guide us to where we could check-in with our tickets and make our way to the theater. No no, it doesn’t work like that in this theater. At Studio One, it is so remarkably disorganized you won’t know which way to go or who to ask for what. We were told by the manager, after trying to figure out who that was and how he could help us, that the theater wasn’t ready and we needed to take a seat (somewhere) until the theater was ready for us. Mind you, he did not say at what time we could re-approach him for when it is acceptable to start going into the theater.

You see, they don’t simply allow folks to go directly to the theater. No no, not here, you MUST be escorted by one of the gentlemen that work at Studio One to your theater when it is deemed appropriate by them (it is random). Fine enough we guessed, we’ll just grab a drink at the bar and go sit and listen to the jazz band play (they were actually so good and it was lovely to have this experience while we waited for the theater to be ready).

So I moseyed over to the bar to grab my partner and I a drink, where I was promptly told by the manager that wouldn’t be possible because the bar is backed up and they aren’t accepting orders at this time. Try again “later.”

…Huh? This was really bizarre and for sure a first for me, as I had never been turned away from ordering a drink at a bar. Certainly I’ve waited for longer than usual when places are slammed, which is totally reasonable, but this felt odd and signaled to me a level of disorganization I was coming to realize permeated the whole theater operation.

So I waited. 20, 30 minutes or so, then went back up to the bar and spoke with the bartender who was finally able to take new orders. He asked me three times what I wanted while trying to juggle myriad other tasks. A woman came up to the bar and asked if she could get the ciders she ordered AN HOUR AGO during the film and he just shrugged. I could sense her frustration and I wanted to avoid this experience so I made sure to order our wine and beer as quickly as possible. I got our drinks and we stepped in line to be escorted to the theater.

Once we got to the entrance of the theater we were shown an iPad with the “specials” for the evening, included like, ribs and pork and other weird things I don’t think anyone wants at the movies? I’m vegan so maybe I’m biased, but I was also like dude…can you please just let us into the theater this is too much lol. Once we got to our seats not a single soul came up to us and asked if we wanted anything…for the entire movie. It’s a good thing we had dinner before we came because that would have been a HUGE problem for us (I am terrible when hangry).

This is a bit nitpicky - but the theater furniture was literally clearance furniture from Homegoods, I swear to god. It was the most bizarre setup I have ever seen!

Okay, lastly, the waiters/staff were in and out of the theater the entire 2.5 hours of the movie. It was so distracting and took away from the experience. Ugh.

All in all, I cannot recommend this place at all. Needless to say, we will...

Been here a bunch of times over the past couple years and usually love it (used to even recommend it to others!), but my experience last night was poor enough to make it my last visit. Not only was the food unusually awful, but they were extremely rude about their inability to offer closed captioning despite advertising that they do.

They apparently do not offer closed captioning anymore — or at least not reliably. My wife is hard of hearing and their website clearly boasts that they offer closed captioning devices. In the past they’ve had no trouble accommodating this. Last night when I asked for this at check-in, the host brashly informed me that it “probably wasn’t” available in our theater (?). When I pointed out this was never a problem before, he got short with me and muttered something about WiFi before storming off to get the device. First they couldn’t figure out how to physically set the device up, and after 15 minutes of struggling a rude Manager came out and quickly shoved the neck of the device under the couch cushion my wife was sitting on — not exactly viewable when looking at the screen, but okay, we’ll settle. We order/pay for our food and wait the credits out. As it turned out, this device didn’t work when the movie started. I spent another 15 minutes trying to flag down an attendant/staff member, all while the movie was playing and my wife unable to understand the majority of it. At this point the attendant admits that their devices don’t work in most rooms because of poor WiFi, that this has been a problem for a long time, and they’re sorry and can give us tickets to another showing on another day. The movie is at this point already going, we already have drinks, we’ve already paid for food, and given that the attendant has now admitted this is a universal problem, we decided to just cut our losses and stay. It was a three-hour musical my wife knew well, we’d already set the time aside, and we figured it could still be enjoyable.

We ordered pickled veggies and popcorn. The popcorn came out after about 45 minutes and it was somehow already stale. We ordered extra butter and the popcorn was so cold that the butter had already re-solidified, causing certain kernels to be very dense and hard with butter because they clearly poured real melted butter over the batch whenever they prepared it (hours before?). The “pickled” veggies didn’t come out for an hour and a half … and they were quite literally fresh-cut raw veggies with some vinegar on them, with four bread-and-butter pickle slices on top. I don’t know if they just ran out of pickled veggies that day and decided to try to fool us with these or what, but we didn’t eat them. The four pickle slices on top were almost insulting 😂

On our way out we asked for a manager to speak to. The manager who was right there looked at us, shrugged, and said “you’ll be waiting a while because I’m busy” and walked off.

I gave two stars only because the other staff members were very kind and were truly trying their hardest (with the exception of the kitchen crew,...