This weekend, I was given a free movie ticket. How did I get this free ticket? Well, I'll tell you.
I was a guinea pig.
No, not the four-legged variety. I mean that I was a test subject in an experiment. Regal Cinema was testing a new device to help alert staff to issues inside of a theater.
I was given a small device that looked like a walkie-talkie. It had 4 buttons: Picture, Sound, Piracy, and something like "People" or "other issue". While watching the movie, if the picture gets bad, the sound goes out, pirates take over, or someone acts really loud and annoying, then all I have to do is press the appropriate button on my walkie-talkie. That causes a series of events that begin with a pager going off at the customer service desk, and end with a highly trained government strike force dropping in through the ceiling tiles to subdue that guy who won't stop yelling at the screen during the scary parts.
No, but seriously, the pager goes off and they can dispatch an employee straight to the theater without me having to get out of my chair to complain. Pretty cool huh?
Obviously, the system needs work. You can't just hand people walkie-talkies. Too many will be stolen. Also, you can't give this kind of power to just anyone. Ultimate power corrupts ultimately. So they need a device that is possibly built into the seats... but can only be used by certain people. I have no idea how they're gonna pull this one off. But I like the direction they're going in.
Ok, I've bored you enough for today. Go outside and play.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Theater-going improvements
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1 comment:
It's a tough call. I think it's a neat idea, but you obviously can't excercise the appropriate discretion without a major discrimination issue. I guess the system could be one similar to fire alarms, where some kind of invisible ink is released onto your skin when you use it, in order to deter people from fooling around with the remotes, but that's both pricey and messy.
Regardless, I too like where this is going and I thought it was awesome that they gave one to you. Too bad it was during a movie we didn't care about AND it was the one time nothing went wrong. Um, is there a "crappy movie" button on that thing? I guess nowadays they’d never stop going off. However, I would like to report stale pretzel bites. That seriously took away from my theater experience- if I’m paying $6 for the damn things, can they at least be soft enough not to chip a tooth??
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