I’ve not been searched at any cinema (don’t know if they can in Australia) and certainly have taken food in.

If a cinema won’t let me take in my own chocolate or water etc then I wouldn’t go. Then again, if they were all like that you’d just have to stop going and/or lobby the cinema in your local area/s.

Strange things going on in the USA.

Anyone able to comment about the UK, Ireland or other European countries?

Why do you think blockbusters are called popcorn movies?

What’s the most absurd food you’ve ever snuck into a theater?

When I saw Naked Lunch in its first run in San Francisco, it was quite warm in the theater. Almost everyone had stripped down to their underwear. And people were passing around big bowls of picnic food, like potato salad.

They were forced to close when, after fifteen years of trading, a council inspection found that one of their firewalls didn’t make the grade. I’m sure the fact that a Westfield was talking about wanting to open in the area and they wanted to put in their own multiplex had NOTHING to do with it at all.

I love how reading about this theatre searching
people for cameras has sparked my creativity to
come up with ways to sneak a camera in.

Irish and UK cinemas certainly restrict what you can bring in. They occasionally do a casual bag search (as in, “lift the flap, thanks”) but are absolutely within their rights to prevent food and cameras from entering the theatre.

We sneak stuff in.

You’re joking, right? Drive-ins have been on decline since VCRs became popular in the mid-1980s.

I’ve never been searched at a cinema in France. Of course, many cinemas here don’t have concessions at all. I presume this is because the French take both eating and film so seriously that one would not attempt to do both at the same time, lest it lessen one’s appreciation of each. You could certainly sneak food in, but doing so would be considered tacky, which to a Frenchman is greater deterrent than fine or imprisonment.

I’ve also never been “searched” at a cinema in the US. Everyone on this thread referring to sneaking in food simply means sticking it in a pocket or under your jacket where the ticket-taker doesn’t see it. At worst you face an “I’m sorry, sir, no outside food allowed” if you were to accidentally drop your drink bottle in front of cinema staff.

Sporting events are an entirely different matter, however, both in Europe and the US.

But I do see where you’re coming from. When I was 12 or so and needed sinus surgery, I had to give urine for a pregnancy test- hospital policy for every female over the age of 10. Very sad. I also do some fundraising for a pregnancy center in a bad part of town, and the director said the youngest client they’ve had was 13.

A couple years ago, a few friends and I were bored out of our minds on Thanksgiving afternoon, so we went to see a horror movie (Can’t remember which. Apparently, like most horror movies, the horror wasn’t the content, but the film itself.). I ended up sneaking in a 2-liter Dr. Pepper, a couple Tupperware bowls and some Ziploc bags of hot leftover Thanksgiving food, and miscellaneous utensils inside my hoodie. I immediately regretted my decision when I realized that, once the movie started, I couldn’t see what I was eating. It got a little messy.

No, this story took place in Canada. They’re their own sovereign nation, honestly. At least the USA hasn’t annexed them to my knowledge, and surely it’d be in the news.

I’ve never had a bag searched at a theater in the US.

Saying that I’m pissed beyond belief is an understatement.

It’s actually very easy to tell where the cinema is going to make money on food and drinks. I generally found that when I went to clean out a screen on a weekday early afternoon, or for an arthouse film, then there would be mostly empty juice bottles, crisp bags, or sandwich wrappers from food that people had bought themselves in shops nearby. For basically all other showings (i.e. blockbusters, kids’ films, Bollywood films, the many crappy romantic comedies and action films that don’t even do that much business) 99% of the rubbish would be from stuff people had bought on site. You also find that in these kinds of films, a far greater percentage of the audience will choose to eat during the film (not eating for two hours whilst you’re in the cinema is an option people!)

So people buy food from the cinema anyway. I think this is for two reasons. One is convenience. The other is that people like the cinema food experience. Sure, you can bring your own crisps, but you can’t bring your own hot popcorn, or nachos. Now, when you work at a cinema, and see the quality of the food, it takes you a while to realise that a lot of people really, genuinely think the food is delicious. In fact, where I worked we often had to disappoint people who came in off the street just to buy a hot dog or some nachos. You need a ticket to get through to the concession stands, so we had to turn them away. The mind boggles.

I’ve also worked in a small independent cinema, where I was involved in admin, so I have some appreciation of the economics. It is very true that, especially with first run films, the cinema makes very little money on ticket sales. It’s something of a catch-22; new films attract big audiences, but the cinema only gets a tiny share of the profits. Old films offer a much larger share of the ticket price, but without the benefit of massive, nationwide promotional campaigns, it is a constant struggle to get people to actually come and see the films, even if they’re established classics like The Godfather or Blade Runner.

So yeah, the markup on food and drink is high, and that’s where the cinema makes their money (although adverts help somewhat). To give you some idea, we used to get an industrial size bag of sweet popcorn (we didn’t pop on site) that was probably enough for about 20 large size popcorns that would be sold to customers. That large bag cost the cinema about £2.50. Each large popcorn we sold to the customer was £4.50. If you buy a bucket of popcorn in a multiplex cinema, I can almost guarantee that the cinema will have paid more for the bucket that for the popcorn that goes in it.

The same is true of drinks. The cost to the cinema of the syrup that goes in a large drink (which retails for about £3.15) is probably between 10 and 15p. Each one is worth so little that if you order the wrong drink by mistake, it just gets poured down a sink round the back of the concession stand. Staff are not allowed to eat or drink any orders that turn out to be mistakes, so a huge amount of perfectly good food and drink gets thrown away every day.

Obviously, cinemas have huge overheads. The machinery is extremely expensive. To run a 15 or 20 screen facility requires a huge number of staff and massive amounts of energy. In a city centre location, the sheer scale of modern cinemas mean that rent is going to be very high. Something else that people don’t realise is how low attendances are for most screenings. A good 50% of my time on a typical weekday shift would be spent literally standing around doing nothing. Perhaps as much as 75% if it was a Tuesday or Thursday (the quietest days, due to no promotions running), or if the weather was good outside. Whilst we might easily have 2 or 3000 customers in the cinema on a Friday or Saturday night, on a Tuesday lunchtime, there would typically be fewer than 20 customers in the building. We wouldn’t even bother showing films on over half the screens until the evening. For the first three or four hours that the cinema was open, it was typical for there to be more staff than customers in the building.

But make no mistake, large cinema chains do far better than just breaking even. If memory serves, in 2007 Odeon made something like £30 million in profits. For independents it’s a different story. The same is true for old cinemas in major chains that were built when 3 or 4 screens was the norm. They are often closed down and replaced with 15 screen out of towners.

On the security issue, the law in the UK as was explained to me is that cinema staff have a right to seize any equipment that they see being used to make illegal video or audio recordings anywhere in the cinema, but if this happens, the police must be called immediately, and they take over when they arrive. They can request to see inside someone’s bag or jacket, if they suspect equipment (or a weapon or a bomb) is being hidden in there, but if the customer says no, all that can then be done is to ask them to leave. They absolutely do not have the right to search customers against their will, even if a disclaimer were to be on display at the point of ticket purchase.

People filming cinema showings is a decreasing problem though, because most pirated copies are now made from pre-screener DVDs, or from the digital media that are sent out to cinemas that digitally project films. Still, in the time I worked at the Odeon, a couple of people were caught in the act, and there were a couple of other suspicious incidents. Although most customers don’t notice, in most showings, a member of staff will come into the screen at least once every 30 minutes and stand at the side. This is partly to check that the picture and sound and general atmosphere are ok, but also to cast an eye over the audience and check for any troublemakers. This is rarely people attempting to film though. Maybe 25% of the time it’s kids making noise or throwing stuff about. Less than 1% it’s pirates, and the rest of the time it’s people getting a bit too friendly with each other on the back rows. I won’t tell you the number of used condoms I found in my spell working there, but suffice to say that it was well into double figures.

Enough is enough, it is a shame that people in other places put up with this nonsense.