Yesterday I went to the theatre with friends and their children. Partway through the trailers, a woman opened the side door of the theatre and held it open. After a minute of that annoyance, I went over to the door, said “execuse me”, and started pulling it closed. She pointed out that there was a burning smell in the theatre, and pointed to the back of the theatre. I stepped just a few feet in that direction and noticed that she was right. There was no fire in evidence, but the burning smell was fairly strong further back on one side of the theatre. Someone had gone to alert management. I went back to my seat, and noted that we were fairly close to another exit.
Nothing happened for a few minutes, then the projector stopped just as the trailers finished. Everyone started talking loudly. Finally a manager came ito the theatre and started talking, but we couldn’t hear him over the din. I’m not sure why they didn’t use the P.A. for an announcement. He was gesturing toward the exit, so everyone filed out. It was a large theatre, so there was immediately a huge line for the customer service desk. I told my friends that they could leave their ticket stubs with me and I’d collect the refunds, so that they could take their children home.
The fire department arrived. They had a hard time getting waiting cars to move out of their way in front of the theatre. Some people are amazingly stupid.
When I finally got to the head of the line, I found that they were giving refunds along with passes good for future admission. However, our tickets were purchased on Fandango, and they said that they couldn’t refund those. I would have gotten upset, but they quickly offered to give me two passes for each ticket stub.