Just a bit of a rant. Booked a group of 8 seats at cinema for 3D film last night - you get allocated seats. We booked well in advance to get great seats (centre of back row) all together - 4 adults and 4 kids (one with SN).
Arrive to find a family sat in 4 of our seats. The DW of the family insists it's a cinema double booking mistake and we will have to sit elsewhere (pretty busy so we'd have been dotted around).
Go to lobby who say they'll send manager. Head back to cinema (to stand in aisles and watch the 4 DC (who have sat in our remaining seats) and ask the DW if we can all look at our tickets. She gets her tickets and email confirmation but won't show the date - keeps her thumb over it and says there's no date on it.
Manager arrives and quickly establishes the other family have tickets for the wrong day. The family don't want to move until they are given new seats as they say they booked by telephone and wanted that day so it's cinema fault. Obvs hadn't checked her email confirmation or tickets.
Manager says no one can just sit anywhere due to keeping gaps between seats (Covid safety) and he'll ask lobby to find seats the family can move to but meanwhile we must stand in aisles or outside.
Film starts, all goes dark. We ask him to move the family so we can sit down in the seats we bought with our DC as one has SN but No, as film has started he said he can't ask CF family to move due to health & safety until he has seats for them. Didn't seem bothered that the family didn't actually have tickets for that day. Manager also totally unfazed that us 4 were stood in aisles or outside the doors with him missing the film.
CF DW gets up to come and tell me I'm overreacting and to just sit anywhere! An easy thing for her to say while she's sat in the best seats (ours) with our DC, and there's no other large groups of seats all together for our group. She didn't even have tickets for that day.
We missed over 20 mins of the film before the hopeless manager received confirmation from lobby where to reseat the CF family, who then reluctantly moved.
Would you be cross? We were. As it was 3D we couldn't watch it whilst trying to reason with manager that it was the other family that needed to move and quickly as we were missing film.
I'm certain CF DW knew she had wrong tickets well before film started - that's why she showed us the seats and screen number but not the date and manager told her before film started that hers were for the next day.
If you discovered BEFORE the film that you didn't have tickets wouldn't you just get up and let the people with tickets sit down??? That's what I can't get my head round. I'd have been up straightaway and apologising not demanding the other family sit all over the place so I could have their seats.
Just venting - it was all upsetting as we don't get out much, and missing 20 mins of start of film is not good.
She was a CF surely?