Yesterday Vanessa and I went out to Meridian to check out the new shopping center, The Village at Meridian. Its design is pretty cool and it feels more like a park or college campus than a shopping center. The signature feature is the fountain that is synchronized to music and lights at night. It’s surrounded by tables and a few fire pits which make for a great atmosphere to relax in.

We were planning to see Thor 2 at the Village Cinemas and we decided to go to the 4:30 showing. The movie theater is absolutely beautiful and very stylish. We arrived at 4PM to buy our tickets. The theater has reserved seating, and when we were buying our tickets the only seats left with two side by side seats were in rows D and up. We figured the screen would be far enough back that we could still enjoy seeing the movie in row D. Unfortunately when we got into the theater it was clear there would be no way we could enjoy the movie that close to the screen. What annoyed us most was the theater was almost entirely empty when we got in there and we really should’ve been able to sit where we wanted.

We ended up heading back to the box office to get our money back. Reserved seating in a movie theater is a very bad idea. I don’t very often plan hours ahead of time to see a movie, so it’s not practical to buy tickets online hours before a movie starts. Plans often change, or people often decide to join at the last minute. Reserved seating ruins the traditional movie going experience.

One of the newer movie theaters back where I’m from in Pennsylvania had reserved seating when it first opened, but it quickly learned it was a bad idea. People complained, got refunds or blatantly ignored the assigned seating and sat in other people’s seats often causing problems as the movies were starting. I can only hope Village Cinema in Meridian will learn how undesirable their reserved seating is and end the policy soon. Until then we’ll stick with Edwards in Boise.

Ice Rink opens next Friday!