A Unique Way to Free Tickets

On March 8th, I used my Movie Pass to go to an evening showing of "300: Rise of an Empire" at Arundel Mills Mall (my review will be coming in my next update). I'm pretty sure that I go to this theatre over fifty percent of the time that I use my pass. It's relatively close by, and they have more screens than any other local theater (24) which gives me a large selection of films and showtimes to pick from. This film was released in 3-D, and was showing in the theatre's XD auditorium (a similar and competing format to IMAX), but since my pass only pays for 2-D movies, I attended a regular showing.

About forty five minutes or so into the movie, an employee came running into the theatre and announced that there had been an emergency and we had to leave. I was near the front of the theater, so I got out quickly and then, since there was nothing else to do, got in my car and drove home. On the news we saw that someone had set off fireworks in another one of the theaters and that it had been reported to the police as shots fired.

That night I got an email from a friend I'd made doing "Once Upon a Mattress" suggesting that we try to catch a movie soon. We'd talked about movies a lot while doing the play, and he had even bought his Mom a Movie Pass after hearing about it from me. We made plans to catch the XD 3-D showing of "300" that Monday. I was pretty confident they'd let me trade in my ticket stub from the interrupted movie for a better ticket.

On Monday, I arrived early to get to the Guest Services desk, and explained the situation. I knew they wouldn't take me up on it, but I offered to pay the difference in cost between the ticket from Saturday and the ticket with the extra XD and 3-D charges. Of course, they let me have the special ticket for free, but they also gave me a free ticket for my friend. I have to say that I was genuinely impressed by the display of customer service; I did not expect the second free ticket. I found it funny that a ticket I didn't even have to pay for to begin with ended up earning me two more expensive tickets. I hope this doesn't happen again, but it did make for an interesting (and lucrative) series of events.