About a week ago, myself and two of my "internet mates" (i.e. people I've communicated with on the internet for a long while, and now meet in real life occasionally - which happens to be the opposite way most of my relationships work, but hey) decided we would go up to London today and see "I Am Legend". Being internet nerds, we are of course obsessed with zombies, and one of us has a weird crush on Will Smith, so it was the perfect choice. It was a bit of a spontaneous thing, what with restrictive parents and all, but we organized it quite efficiently, and we were all looking forward to it. One of us even went to the heights of the word "stoked" to describe his excitement.
So we all managed to get up to London without mishap (which is saying something since one of us has a habit of walking along motorways when he can't find the train station) and, after we had sandwiched and cookied at Subway and Millie's Cookies (veritable delicacies, I assure you) we went into the Odeon.
Now, in Leicester Square, Odeon have decided to buy every other building and write their name in big letters above it. So of course, we're not sure which one to go in. We choose a random one, and sure enough there's a Box Office in it. So we queued up, perfectly civilly, without hiding the one of us who is particularly short, and in perfect view bought three tickets to I Am Legend, a 15. We then queued up, again, all of us in perfect view, and bought popcorn etc... We then asked for directions from an usher (again in plain view), who directed us to the building next door. We popped next door quite cheerfully, and went passed the two people are the door, who checked each of our tickets individually (i.e. each of us had our own ticket, so the shortest of us was allowed in) and let us pass quite happily. We then asked directions again, and then finally got shown to our seats by the usher. We sat there quite happily for five minutes, and it was only THEN that the manager comes and speaks to the shortest of us:
"How old are you?"
"15"
"You don't look 15, you can't see this movie."
No arguments; no dates of birth; no nothing. Now sure, he's not 15. Just. But there's another guy in our party who's just not 15. But the manager didn't even look twice at the other guy. Just the short guy. Which I guess is logical. But of course, we weren't due home for another 3 hours, so that left us sitting in Costa Coffee for just under two hours. So I'm (understandably) bitter.
What are their reasons for kicking us out? Well, the movie is a fifteen, so legally they're not allowed to let us in. So how did we get in then? It's not like we were smuggling him in in a backpack (although we did contemplate a giant stuffed dog from the fairground outside)! And to be fair, unless there happened to be an inspector calling that day, they wouldn't get in any trouble: we weren't exactly going to complain, being the ones who were there "illegally". So to be honest, all they were doing was rob themselves of custom.
Of course, if they had let us in, I would be here typing out the exact same story, just laughing at how stupid they were to let us in. They gave us a refund and we had fun anyway. But I just thought it might make a good story. I can now see it hasn't. But I've spent about 20 minutes typing it out, so I might as well hit submit now. >_<
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Man O-O that is the most uptight thing a cinema could do. Vue cinema in Portsmouth did the same to my brother and his mate while were going to see Hitman and being 17 and the legal adult amongst us I had to stand for 5 minutes debating and constantly showing MY college ID to prove I was 17 and that they were with me. I was annoyed but we saw the movie in the end.
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