PRODUCT REVIEW: AMC A-List
(Pipeline - Alan Parsons)
There was a time when going to the movies was a cheaper ordeal than some other forms of public entertainment. For whatever the reason, that is clearly no longer the case. A movie ticket at a well-appointed theater with good audio, video, and seating comfort will set you back the better part of $20, and that's before you take concessions into account, which are an even bigger racket than most college textbooks. The situation only compounds itself if you go with a date, and it gets really bad if you go as a family.
Alone, you're looking at the better part of $30 when you figure in a ticket and concessions. Paying for a date? Double that. Got your 2.5 kids with you? Better save up. Yes, there are exceptions -- I'm looking at you, Cinetopia and Cinemark -- but those exceptions almost always come with compromise in the form of scheduling or experience. Why in the world would you ever go out to the movies instead of waiting for your favorite films to come out on DVD or Digital a few months later?
Let's look at this another way:
Right now, if you head out onto Amazon and search for '75" TV', you can get into a 4K 75" flat, sexy, gorgeous TV for $1,200. The price drops a LOT if you're willing to go down to 65", and let me tell you, for most people, 65" is PLENTY of television. For kicks though, let's go with 75". Now, you can add to that a 5.1 Soundbar system with enough power to shake the neighborhood for less than $200. Again, for most folks, that's way more power than you need. For those playing along at home, that's $1,400. Now hold that up against a $100 theater trip for a family of four; this home setup starts to pay for itself really, really fast. Then there's all of the actual television you can watch and the games you can play, and....and we're back to the question I asked earlier:
Why in the world would you ever go out to the movies?
That frequently comes down to a few key factors for a lot of people. Some folks aren't satisfied unless they can watch the movie through their butt via Dolby Atmos. Some people can't get past the glory that is the IMAX experience. Some people just want an excuse to get out of the house.
It's a tough question, to be sure. AMC, the largest movie theater chain on the planet, thinks they've found an excellent middle ground. They call it 'The A-List'. You can read about it here, but in a nutshell here's what you get for $20 a month:
- Three free movies every week.
- AMC Stubbs benefits, plus double Stubbs points
Here's another way to look at this: If you go to see one movie a month in a regularly priced theater, this membership pays for itself. If you go to see more than one movie a month, the savings really start to pile up, especially if you feel compelled to hit the concession stand before each movie. AMC Stubbs benefits land you a pretty decent discount on all concessions, and that's before you start racking up Stubbs points and get rewards. Once you start riding -that- wave, going to the movies honestly does start to make a little more sense from an entertainment standpoint.
"But Steve," you cry, "What about new movies? Special shows? Theaters are quick to exclude those showings from coupons and discounts." Very true, which is why I was so surprised when I discovered that such limitations don't apply to A-List. I've got friends with the membership that have gone to special screenings with no strings attached, and I just hit Venom two days in a row during opening weekend.
If you're the kind of person who goes to the movies more than once a month and you have AMC theaters in your area, an A-List membership is a no-brainer. Free movies, discounted concessions, and all while earning points that will earn you free tickets and food. Indeed, the only place that A-List lets you down is in the logistics. AMC wants you to make your reservations, order your food, and make plans for future outings on its mobile app, and I'm afraid that's where some of the membership's only warts are living.
On the surface, the app is reasonably well constructed. It's not the most attractive thing in the world, but it's relatively easy to sign into your A-List account, find a movie, and make reservations. Where the app starts to fall down is the thoughtlessness with which several of its features were implemented:
- The reservation process is relatively simple. Pick a movie, pick a theater, pick a time, pick a seat. Everything goes smoothly until it's time to pick your seat. You're presented with a seating chart for the entire theater and you simply tap an available seat to reserve it. Problem is, in order to see all of the seats, the chart itself is TINY, so you struggle to tap the right seat. The solution is a zoom feature that AMC built into the app, but that zooms in so far that you really don't have a good feel for where you are relative to the seat you were trying to tap on. Leveraging simple Pinch To Zoom functionality would have been a God-send here rather than having a 'Really Micro' or 'Really Macro' setting that you toggle between.
- Part of the fun of movies is going with friends. AMC was clearly not thinking about this when they built their app. There's no way to link up with your fellow A-List friends so you can see where they've already got seats reserved for a film. Some people will immediately begin squealing about privacy issues, but there are common sense ways around all of those issues that could be leveraged to provide users with an even easier ticket-buying experience.
- There's no family membership option. Each family member has to have their own account. This doesn't seem like a horrible problem at first until you realize that these accounts are bound to e-mail addresses. There's just no good way to have multiple A-List accounts without managing multiple e-mail accounts. Again, that's just poor design. This is already a wonderful deal! Don't make it a pain in the butt for families to use your service, AMC!
- This is more of a personal thing for me, but the AMC A-List app isn't very friendly to screen readers for AMC's blind and low vision customers. There's zero excuse for this. It's 2018. Accessible app design is not rocket science. Shame on you, AMC.
- Say you're at a movie and you're watching your trailers. You see a preview for a film that's supposed to come out in a few months, so you make a mental note to check it out on your AMC app when you get home. There's a wonderful feature where you can flag Coming Soon features so that when they're available for viewing, you can be sure and go. This is a -brilliant- move on AMC's part because it keeps people coming back to the theaters. Unfortunately, they've completely screwed the feature up. Not only can you only browse movies scheduled to release in the next month, there isn't any actual mechanism to add a reminder to the vast majority of them. For some reason, you can only actually flag about 1 in every 4 movies with a reminder to view it later, and that's assuming it's even coming out in the next month. That's a catastrophic oversight on AMC's part. If AMC is showing a trailer for a movie before one of their films, users should be able to go into their AMC app and tag that same film for a viewing reminder when the time comes. They're literally turning free money away by blowing this.
All in all, the AMC mobile app stinks of a company that was in such a rush to get a product out the door that the benefits of some additional prep time clearly never occurred to them. The app is still usable, but as the primary vehicle to interface with AMC theaters, its functionality is disappointingly lacking in common sense.
If you enjoy going to the movies enough that you're willing to do it at least once a month, you should seriously consider giving AMC A-List a try. Amazingly, going to the movies is almost affordable again with this service, even if AMC is failing to properly capitalize on it. Signing up commits you to at least three months of membership before you can cancel, but if you're anything like me, you'll know within the first few weeks if it's the right thing for you. Give it a peek!
There was a time when going to the movies was a cheaper ordeal than some other forms of public entertainment. For whatever the reason, that is clearly no longer the case. A movie ticket at a well-appointed theater with good audio, video, and seating comfort will set you back the better part of $20, and that's before you take concessions into account, which are an even bigger racket than most college textbooks. The situation only compounds itself if you go with a date, and it gets really bad if you go as a family.
Alone, you're looking at the better part of $30 when you figure in a ticket and concessions. Paying for a date? Double that. Got your 2.5 kids with you? Better save up. Yes, there are exceptions -- I'm looking at you, Cinetopia and Cinemark -- but those exceptions almost always come with compromise in the form of scheduling or experience. Why in the world would you ever go out to the movies instead of waiting for your favorite films to come out on DVD or Digital a few months later?
Let's look at this another way:
Right now, if you head out onto Amazon and search for '75" TV', you can get into a 4K 75" flat, sexy, gorgeous TV for $1,200. The price drops a LOT if you're willing to go down to 65", and let me tell you, for most people, 65" is PLENTY of television. For kicks though, let's go with 75". Now, you can add to that a 5.1 Soundbar system with enough power to shake the neighborhood for less than $200. Again, for most folks, that's way more power than you need. For those playing along at home, that's $1,400. Now hold that up against a $100 theater trip for a family of four; this home setup starts to pay for itself really, really fast. Then there's all of the actual television you can watch and the games you can play, and....and we're back to the question I asked earlier:
Why in the world would you ever go out to the movies?
That frequently comes down to a few key factors for a lot of people. Some folks aren't satisfied unless they can watch the movie through their butt via Dolby Atmos. Some people can't get past the glory that is the IMAX experience. Some people just want an excuse to get out of the house.
It's a tough question, to be sure. AMC, the largest movie theater chain on the planet, thinks they've found an excellent middle ground. They call it 'The A-List'. You can read about it here, but in a nutshell here's what you get for $20 a month:
- Three free movies every week.
- AMC Stubbs benefits, plus double Stubbs points
Here's another way to look at this: If you go to see one movie a month in a regularly priced theater, this membership pays for itself. If you go to see more than one movie a month, the savings really start to pile up, especially if you feel compelled to hit the concession stand before each movie. AMC Stubbs benefits land you a pretty decent discount on all concessions, and that's before you start racking up Stubbs points and get rewards. Once you start riding -that- wave, going to the movies honestly does start to make a little more sense from an entertainment standpoint.
"But Steve," you cry, "What about new movies? Special shows? Theaters are quick to exclude those showings from coupons and discounts." Very true, which is why I was so surprised when I discovered that such limitations don't apply to A-List. I've got friends with the membership that have gone to special screenings with no strings attached, and I just hit Venom two days in a row during opening weekend.
If you're the kind of person who goes to the movies more than once a month and you have AMC theaters in your area, an A-List membership is a no-brainer. Free movies, discounted concessions, and all while earning points that will earn you free tickets and food. Indeed, the only place that A-List lets you down is in the logistics. AMC wants you to make your reservations, order your food, and make plans for future outings on its mobile app, and I'm afraid that's where some of the membership's only warts are living.
On the surface, the app is reasonably well constructed. It's not the most attractive thing in the world, but it's relatively easy to sign into your A-List account, find a movie, and make reservations. Where the app starts to fall down is the thoughtlessness with which several of its features were implemented:
- The reservation process is relatively simple. Pick a movie, pick a theater, pick a time, pick a seat. Everything goes smoothly until it's time to pick your seat. You're presented with a seating chart for the entire theater and you simply tap an available seat to reserve it. Problem is, in order to see all of the seats, the chart itself is TINY, so you struggle to tap the right seat. The solution is a zoom feature that AMC built into the app, but that zooms in so far that you really don't have a good feel for where you are relative to the seat you were trying to tap on. Leveraging simple Pinch To Zoom functionality would have been a God-send here rather than having a 'Really Micro' or 'Really Macro' setting that you toggle between.
- Part of the fun of movies is going with friends. AMC was clearly not thinking about this when they built their app. There's no way to link up with your fellow A-List friends so you can see where they've already got seats reserved for a film. Some people will immediately begin squealing about privacy issues, but there are common sense ways around all of those issues that could be leveraged to provide users with an even easier ticket-buying experience.
- There's no family membership option. Each family member has to have their own account. This doesn't seem like a horrible problem at first until you realize that these accounts are bound to e-mail addresses. There's just no good way to have multiple A-List accounts without managing multiple e-mail accounts. Again, that's just poor design. This is already a wonderful deal! Don't make it a pain in the butt for families to use your service, AMC!
- This is more of a personal thing for me, but the AMC A-List app isn't very friendly to screen readers for AMC's blind and low vision customers. There's zero excuse for this. It's 2018. Accessible app design is not rocket science. Shame on you, AMC.
- Say you're at a movie and you're watching your trailers. You see a preview for a film that's supposed to come out in a few months, so you make a mental note to check it out on your AMC app when you get home. There's a wonderful feature where you can flag Coming Soon features so that when they're available for viewing, you can be sure and go. This is a -brilliant- move on AMC's part because it keeps people coming back to the theaters. Unfortunately, they've completely screwed the feature up. Not only can you only browse movies scheduled to release in the next month, there isn't any actual mechanism to add a reminder to the vast majority of them. For some reason, you can only actually flag about 1 in every 4 movies with a reminder to view it later, and that's assuming it's even coming out in the next month. That's a catastrophic oversight on AMC's part. If AMC is showing a trailer for a movie before one of their films, users should be able to go into their AMC app and tag that same film for a viewing reminder when the time comes. They're literally turning free money away by blowing this.
All in all, the AMC mobile app stinks of a company that was in such a rush to get a product out the door that the benefits of some additional prep time clearly never occurred to them. The app is still usable, but as the primary vehicle to interface with AMC theaters, its functionality is disappointingly lacking in common sense.
If you enjoy going to the movies enough that you're willing to do it at least once a month, you should seriously consider giving AMC A-List a try. Amazingly, going to the movies is almost affordable again with this service, even if AMC is failing to properly capitalize on it. Signing up commits you to at least three months of membership before you can cancel, but if you're anything like me, you'll know within the first few weeks if it's the right thing for you. Give it a peek!
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