Isn’t it about time that NYC movie theaters offered a VIP option?  For an extra fee (could be yearly/monthly membership fee or just a higher price per ticket), movie goers can reserve seats in a movie theater.  There’s nothing earth-shattering about this idea; we’ve all seen it done in many other businesses.  But seeing a movie in NYC (and I’m sure other places as well) has become a pain.  You have to get to the theater BEFORE the previews in order to get a good seat, so you have to sit through the PRE-previews, then sit through the actual previews.  I would gladly pay more money, if i knew I could stroll into a movie theater 1 minute before the actual film starts.  I could save about 30 minutes per movie.  Since I see a lot of films - and often like seeing them in the opening weekends (crowds=fun) - this would flat out save me both time and aggravation.

I’m sure there are ways to implement this which would be ineffective, inefficient, and annoying, but other ways could be perfect.  Maybe just redesign the whole movie-going experience and make it completely a reserved-seat method, like in concerts and theater.  The theater could have a two-tier system, where x-amount of seats are allowed to be reserved, and the rest are general admission.  Why not?  Seriously.  Just as long as you leave the option for people to not HAVE to pay extra for the reserved seats, no one will be hurt, and people can pay more for the added convenience.  In certain situations, I sure would.