AIBU… Genuine mistake

[LetsGoOutside]

What is the done thing when this situation happens? it was a genuine mistake. Picture of seats attached so you can see our thinking.

We have not been the pictures in over 5 years. Took the kids yesterday. Booked what we thought were back seats, they look like back seats on the pictures.

Film starts. Lady, Man and their child approach us. She says “You’re sat in our seats move.” My husband said “I don’t think we are, opens his phone to find the tickets.” I said what’s the seat number, I check both ends of the isle and they only say numbers not letters. So I came back and said I don’t know what to do. My husband said I’ll go and ask one second. The woman is getting more annoyed by this point. I said he’ll only be a minute. She said you need to move now, I said I can’t move both kids, all our food on my own it’ll only take a minute we genuinely think these are our seats. She starts pointing in my child’s face, whose three, saying move him, he’s in my son’s seat and he’s autistic. It’s my child’s first time at the pictures, it’s dark and there is a strange woman pointing at him telling him to move. He gets upset. Not that this is relevant but I felt like saying so, son is autistic too! Anyway husband returns and says yes we are in the wrong seats. We both apologised while moving the kids and our things.

I understand I was wrong, it was a genuine mistake though, look at the picture would you think these are back seats? Or if you go the pictures a lot is it obvious and we’ve just been really silly. 😂 I genuinely thought we were in the right seats and did everything we could to resolve it quickly.

AIBU would you have moved two young children under 4 if you thought you were right?

You mean when you are booking cinema tickets and all the chairs are facing towards the big massive rectangle with Odeon on the front?

Listen, I have ND people in my family who would miss that totally. What they wouldn't do is crop out the screen in the screenshot they sent to the family group ranting about what happened at the cinema.

You're being very unreasonable because you've deliberately cropped the photo that shows the screen to try to make yourself look right. Pathetic.

So you should have been front, not back?

They were unreasonable to arrive after the film had started.
You were unreasonable not to move after you realised your mistake.
IF there were plenty of seats available, both unreasonable not to just sit anywhere, given the film had started.

I don't think I would have automatically recognised the ODEON label representing the screen position.
However, I would have looked for the letter markings in the cinema - they are usually on the floor.
But the woman was very rude.
And if the seats were clearly identifiable, she should have pointed it out.

It’s very obvious because you’ve cut the screen from the photo. And also why would the chairs face away from the screen?

The tickets didn’t have a row letter , only a number. She’s explained.

Itd Also be obvious from the disabled spaces being where they were when you walked into the room

No. She said that the ends of the rows only had a number, not that the tickets only had a number. Logically, it is not possible that the tickets only had a number unless each row had a unique set of numbers (i.e. first row was 1-10, next was 11-20, next was 21-30, etc.).

Weird there was no screen in image - not massive unreasonable without a screen to think row A was at the back. Especially as the wheelchair space are row F - but if you've not been in a cinema for so long would you know they are normally the first row?

It's also really weird the letters weren't marked on the rows. Never been in a theatre of any type or age, that doesn't clearly label all the rows and seats.

What a hulabalu to happen during the start of the film!!

Yes the tickets said A7-9 but when I checked either end of the rows they just said 1 and 9 no letters. So my husband went and asked.

But if that was the back row you’d have been sat in the disabled seats/area?

She’s just cropped the screen out of the image

If your tickets were a7-9 and you sat in f7-9, were you sat in the seat for carers with a C on it near the wheelchair space?

I’ve never been in a cinema where the row letters haven’t been shown somewhere, often on the floor rather than on the ends of the chairs. Presumably you just missed them in the dark.

The woman was rude and impatient, and it wasn’t nice of her to start picking on your youngest child. You could have been the sort of people who just refuse to move after all, there are plenty of people like that!

I absolutely don’t believe that there weren’t letters somewhere on the rows as otherwise it would be bedlam. Which cinema was it?

Also when she said that you had the wrong seats wouldn’t you ask someone on the row “is this row A?”. If everyone else in the cinema has worked it out then there must be a system somewhere.

Yes she was rude but perhaps she knew that unless she got her kids sat down pretty quickly there was going to be an absolute meltdown. It also sounded at first as though you were refusing to move so maybe that wound her up.

Yes sometimes the letters are on the floor or the end of the row of seats and then the numbers are on the seats somewhere else.

I go to the cinema and I would think they're back seats. There was no need for the woman to be so rude. My DS is autistic, he really struggles with unexpected changes and waiting around so I'd be stressed in that situation but I wouldn't be acting the way she did.

I don’t know that I would have recognised that that is supposed to be a screen, but I would have known that A is normally at the front and wheelchair seats are usually at the back.

The woman sounds rude but she was clearly running late (you said the film had already started) and who knows what had happened to make her late. She was presumably expecting to at least be able to go in and sit straight down, and yet she couldn’t because she found someone else in her seat. So you can understand why she was frustrated.

Yes, but the OP is saying that there were no letters on the seats or the ends of the rows - no row letters at all. That is something that I've never seen anywhere.

Here is what I could see when I booked, I thought the wheelchair seats were at the front as there are stairs at the back?! Didn’t realise the band with odeon was supposed to be the screen 😂😂😂

I’d have thought row A was back row as the wheelchair accessible seats are row F. But then we enter our local cinema at the front (ie near the screen) and I guess others enter at the back. Depends where the door is, basically!

ETA It’s much more obvious what’s what when you can see the screen in pics pp uploaded! But I do wish they’d show the position of the doors on these types of images. I always want to get tickets near the exit (as I have a medical condition that sometimes means needing the toilet urgently) but it’s rarely clear where the exit is, to the left or right of screen I mean.

Whenever I've booked cinema tickets online I'm pretty sure the row at the top of the picture is always at the front. Same with the theatre

Can you share the full screen shot? Were all the rows recliners? It seems you were sitting in the more expensive, extra room, recliner rows which also should have indicated that you were in the wrong seats (and also explains why the other family wanted the seats that they paid for).

I’ve uploaded the full picture ☺️

So you didn’t realise that the screen was the screen, that the chairs face the screen, that the disabled spots were at the back when you walked in, or that the luxe seats that clearly cost extra weren’t actually the cheapest seats in there? And then magically this was the only screen that didn’t include row numbers?

Sounds like you tried your luck with the empty posh seats and got caught out to me.