Century Cinema 16 has luxury lounge chairs, way more room for each customer, beer and wine, and assigned seating! It's so much nicer to go to the movies!
Century Cinema 16 solved everything that was wrong with going to a movie theater. The “luxury loungers” are as comfortable as sitting in your favorite recliner at home. The seating is no longer crowded together, so the people behind you can’t kick the back of your chair. There’s enough room in front of your feet, even in the fully reclined position, that people can easily pass in front of your chair.
When you go online to purchase your tickets in advance, you get to select the seats you want. That’s right, assigned seating instead of having to rush in and grab whatever seats are available. Brilliant. You don’t have to deal with someone telling you that “these 10 seats are all saved” for their friends.
You can print your tickets at home, but what’s the point in doing that when you can easily request them to be texted to your phone. Show the friendly theater attendant your phone, they scan the QR code, and you didn’t have to waste paper.
The bar has a nice selection of beer and wine and Starbucks is served: a cold glass of Chardonnay for me and an Americano for my husband.
It’s as if Cinemark asked people why some of them stopped going to the movie theater, they actually listened to what their customers had to say and they fixed all the problems.
I saw one cute little family in the lobby and each of the kids had their favorite blanket with them. Honestly, my favorite fuzzy blanket from home is the only other possible improvement that I could think of, but I didn’t have the courage to do that, not to mention, I’m pretty sure I would fall asleep if I had a blanket with me.
It was inevitable that the movie theater industry had to make some serious changes since they’re competing with so many at-home movie-watching options. It’s so easy to watch movies at home and since the experience of attending movie theaters was questionable (since you didn’t know whether or not you would enjoy the experience, or if the person behind you would make you want to scream and punch them) something needed to change.
Century Cinema 16, thank you for the wonderful improvements that you made to my local movie theater and I’ll definitely be back for more. Real estate in Mountain View is very expensive and we appreciate that you’re willing to let each of us have a little bit more room to relax while we enjoy the show. The old theaters had approximately 450 seats and the new ones have around 200, so it’s a drastic improvement. I’ll be back much more often, I promise. I feel like I just got reacquainted with an old friend. See you at the movies.
