So did any of us little guys do the midnight showing of spider-man 2? If you did how did it do?

We passed on it. When my staff found out we could have done it I had more than enough volunteers to run the show.

We ran it last night. Was about 1/2 capacity. A little disappointing. Harry Potter did quite a bit better at the midnight showing. I'm actually a little worried about how this will do, based on advanced sales. Not nearly as many as Harry Potter and Shrek

Nope, didn't do it here. I would of had 5 people for it. Anything starting after 9:30pm around here is a challenge to get anyone to showup.

No advance ticket sales for Shrek 2 here, but it is one of my biggest all time grossing films.

Me too I had almost no advance on shrek2 but it has grosses I think the most for us ( have to chekc on passion)

Spiderman is different though. It is more like Harry Potter I am competing with 25 other show times in the my general area. They put it on every screen including the Drive IN by us where children get in FREE. At least I think Spiderman will have repeat appeal like Shrek2. Harry Potter did not have many people coming back a second time with other friends.

Spidey will be a two week wonder with all the screens playing it I'm afraid.

Boy is the drive-in missing out by not charging something for kids. That drive-in is in the minority.

By booker tells me the midnight shows he knew of, was nothing earth shattering gross wise.

down here Spiderman open to about half of what Harry and Shrek did in the first day. plus Spider opened during school vacation 2.

I never worry about a Wednesday opening. The weekend is what counts. You will not be disappointed with Spidey's weekend grosses.

HP3 did very little here and Shrek 2 was just okay for whatever reason. Passion is by far my biggest grosser.

You can have midnight (12:01) shows for every film that opens but I gave up on them in this small town. Too many people have to work in the morning - including me!

Looney: Didn't you say you had 3 screens and had a multiplex nearby? I think I recall we are in similar situations. How badly do you think this affects your business and what have you done to counteract?

Spiderman dropped about 20% on opening day here. What happened with it up there?

Jason, yep I have a mega plex 25 minutes away.
They're showing Spidey 29 times per day.

The mega's been open about 4 years. I saw a dip in the beginning, but I believe it has came back.

I counter act by actually having staff and managers that have a clue and understand what we are really selling. We focus on putting on the best possible presentation and best service. Clean, clean, clean.
All items the mega plex doesn't bother with or even understand. Their requirements for a manager is for them to have a resturaunt degree, that tells you where the priority's are.

We don't charge $21.95 for one small drink like they do, BUT they do give you "free" unlimited refills after all.

And we don't charge $8.00 a ticket & treat customers like cattle on top of it.

And your right, "sometimes" the Wed opening isn't a good indicator of how the film will ultimately do in a particular situation. But in my situation, it does a lot of the time.

By the way, Let's all wish for rain this weekend.

Rain Rain Rain ( except on Sunday we scheduled ourselves off for a change )

You know when you can explain to a customer that they are paying for that free refill 5 times over at the megaplex their eyes get wide

quote:

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Originally posted by Jon:
Spiderman dropped about 20% on opening day here. What happened with it up there?

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Not sure what you mean Jon, if you mean it dropped 20% the second day vs opening day, it still remains to be seen here, as the 2nd day is just getting started. But a 20% drop on day two, is decent performance.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dave:
Rain Rain Rain ( except on Sunday we scheduled ourselves off for a change )

You know when you can explain to a customer that they are paying for that free refill 5 times over at the megaplex their eyes get wide

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A day off? What's that?

Yep, we explain that concept all the time. And the fact that free refill gimmick is just that, a gimmick, only a small % ever take advantage of it.

Jason,

Besides what Looney said to compete is what we do and have done for 20+ years is a refillable cup. Not free. We have a plaictic car cup co-branded with Pepsi and our logo on it with a nice lid. We will refill it anytime with the lid for $0.75. That includes next week when you bring it back. We have many loyal customers who do that and have been doing that for years and as long as we have the picture they come to us and not them. We also carry a wide variety of candy both in our concession and smaller cheaper candy in vending machines. You don't pay the machines a wage and they will sell up until the last person leaves the building without complaint.

Spiderman b/o dropping fast down here compared with Wednesday and thursday figures (time of writing 3.00pm friday

Spiderman actually increased a bit here on day 2. Again, I am more concerend with Friday and Saturday.

I don't want it to rain. We have been getting bad thunderstorms recently which keeps people from coming out but the forecast is calling for more thunderstorms.

I have a 12 plex opened in another town about 4 years ago and I, too, am seeing an increase now but not enough. I am looking to make drastic changes. I give .75 refills while they are in the theatre but if I did the 'bring your cup back' promo, my customers would bring in some of the nastiest cups you've ever seen. Most of my customers buy drinks and snacks each visit because we have low prices. I think we make more profit this way. I lose more business due to lack of screens than anything else.

Looney: I didn't realize they even had to have a degree. Around here, if you're 18 and have a car, you are management material for the chains.

I charge less than competitors also but I've found that people are not concerend about $2.00. They still drive out of town if I don't have the movie.I have always been told that if people were so concerned about $2 then my matinees would always be packed but they aren't. People want to see the movie now and with the best sound, etc. Prices don' seem to be as important - at least here.

]Looney: I didn't realize they even had to have a degree. Around here, if you're 18 and have a car, you are management material for the chains
SAME DOWN HERE JASON Plus if you can walk round with a screw driver in hand you can get a job as thread up boy 2 at the chains plus you must know how to ring the supervisor on Sat morning to ring in sick.

Well, that's the standard they advertise for management, but it's been my experience the truth is the quailifications you noted are what they are really doing.
As this company is notorious for not wanting to pay worth a toot.

I couldn't/wouldn't do the refill cup thing either. I would have the same problem as you Jason. Plus I feel your giving away too much good profit.

I just read a new study on credit cards, and it sure sounds like any of us that are not accepting them are missing the boat and drowning. I need to get off my duff and get that implimented.

Prices, don't always stop people, that's true. And I had an "old timer" tell me once not to concentrate so much on my prices, and in the past 3 years, I've brought them up more in line with where they should be. Stopped doing a bargain night that I had been doing for 15 years. The result? Profits are up, attendance has stayed roughly the same. Obvious, I had them too low both tickets and concesssions for years. But, I'm not still jabbing people with my prices either, like the mega does.
you can price yourself too low, and can back fire on you, people don't take you seriously if it's too low. And if the price is too low, you have too many customers of the "rift-Raft" calibre, and cause's others to shy away from you.

Are you in a mall Jason? If so, that's probably against you. As you can see, theatres are getting away from those.

An example of pricing. A drive-in owner I know did for years as was standard, kids under 12 were free, except for Disney pics. He started looking at his estimated addmissions for kids, and it was around 9,000 for the previous year. The next season, he start charging kids 2-12 a buck. Child admissions was 9,200 that year plus an extra $9,200 gross. Over the next two years, he brought his child ticket up to $3.00, and child admissions last season was 10,100. You do the math. Over the same time period, adults went from $5.00 to $7.00. To say the least, he raised his gross's tremendously. It was quit stunning. NO ONE complained about the price. He didn't think most even noticed. I felt the same when I raised mine. As long as it's within reason that is.
His theory, If I don't get the dollar here, the guy down the road will.
This is the same guy that convinced me my prices were too low, and he was right.

Spider for me was down 4% Thur from Wed. Good for me.

We refill our large popcorn one time... that's the only refill we do. We sell large popcorns 4-1 over mediums... and roughly 40% or so actually fill-em back up.

I agree on taking plastic... it's a major convenience for the customer, takes no longer than cash with the RTS system and tends to account for larger purchases at the snack bar.

We have the same experience on pricing... most people don't notice... some try to give us more than we charge. At the drive-in, we get one or two a week that are living in the dark ages and think we charged by the carload just last year (we dropped that concept 14 years ago). It still amazes me... It doesn't occur to them that you're not getting in to see two first-run pictures for $5 a carload... not on the West coast anyway.

It's definately an interesting business!

Looney any details about that article you could share or where to read it would be great.

My wife and I are running the business for her mom & dad. He has been in the business since he wes 14 or 15. (lied to get a job) So we fight them on the price thing all the time. They want to be as low as possible and we think if we charge just under going rates nearby we can get the revenue to upgrade systems etc. so we can compete with home theatre and megaplex.

Plastic is another one on the battle front. So that article would should be nice to see Looney.

So far spider mat was up Thur from Wed. but eve was down slighly more than I would have wanted. Todays Mat is up over both previoud so lets hope for a shrek2 weekend.