What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

I read a few people talk about how long they waited in line to see the movie, "Grease", and how it was worth it, etc etc... I've never had to wait in line for a movie? Have you? If so, how long, and which movie?

I was young but I remember the line for Scarface went outside and all around to the side of the building, and it was a big building.

I've never had to wait in line. I just pop a DVD into the player, push play and that's it.

It was probably the opening night of Star Wars when I saw it opening night in Denver, 1977. It was a midnight showing.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Took me three weeks to see "Jaws". Be damned if I was going to wait in lines that wrapped around the theaters. Never have and never will see a more anticipated film!

When we were younger, Hubby liked to see the superhero movies on opening night, so we used to go to the theater about 3 or 4 hours before the midnight showing so we would be at the front of the line.

But as these movies became more and more popular, the early crowd started to get too rowdy, so we stopped going opening night, and eventually, as the crowds got worse, we just completely stopped going to the theater.

Now we just wait for the movies either on a movie channel or on DVD.

One hour for The Empire Strikes Back the second or third night after its opening. Even after buying a ticket my friend and I had to go the back of the line which went around the side of the building to the back parking lot. This was one of those all-but-defunct grand movie palaces that we had to see tESB at. No regrets.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Spider-Man 3. Went with friends on opening night. The entire line was full of teenagers like us. I think we spent about three hours there. The wait in line was better than the movie: Popcorn war, good laughs with friends and nice folks that was close to us. Inside, it was hell. So much noise, another popcorn war, people running around in cosplays. I had to watch the movie again weeks later to really pay attention and the movie was so bad I missed the line...

There was this other night we went to see one of the twilight movies, almost three hours too. Yes, we hated those movies, but we went for the fun. We even took some firecrackers and small bombs with us. Damn, that was wild. The smoke in the movie theater... I laugh only by remembering it. I don't think anyone actually watched the movie, but this one I made sure to not come back later.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Probably Endgame for me.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Star Wars, it played at the same theater in my town for over a year. My parents took me after it had been playing for a couple months and still the line went way up the street and took hours and hours to get in!

I think it was Annie.


I have no idea why there was such a long line for Annie.

Never waited in line for a movie & have no intention of ever doing so.

I stood in line for three hours to see The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears. This was during TIFF and I hadn't gotten tickets in advance. It was pretty chilly out, and the movie ended up being awful and gave me neck pain to boot (I was in the front row, and there was a sequence with flashing splitscreens).

I have waited in line for tickets to Deep Purple's reunion tour in 1985. Ten hours, does this count.

The Boy's Episode's 1/2 got a screening ticket but they overbooked it and I missed out. Ended up having to see La Lorana...pretty pissed off about that one.

I'm pretty sure I waited 1-1.5 hours for the Star Wars theatrical rerelease back in 1997. I went with my dad, and it was fun chatting up the other dads and their kids while waiting, all of whom were wearing either Star Wars swag or costumes. I still remember making a mad rush to the best seat in the theater when the doors opened since someone on the opposite site of the theater did the same thing as if we wanted to collide with each other. Besides maybe seeing Grindhouse on opening night, it's my most treasured theater memory.

This is probably the best place to put this. The true answer is either of the multi-hour waits for the Hollywood sneak preview of The Shining or the original release of The Phantom Menace.

Growing up, the first theatres I went to were the Compton, Lakewood and Bellflower Drive-Ins. My parents would take my brother and me, and we'd watch some adventure films or comedies. When I got older, they'd drive us to the local walk-in theatres. The two in my neighborhood were the Arden in Lynwood and the Allen in South Gate. I found an image of the Arden Theater.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t...dentheater.jpg

This is the theater where I saw a rerelease of Ben-Hur (1959) and the original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It had 940 seats, but it's been torn down for quite awhile now.

I couldn't find an image of the Allen. My brother and I would see lots of dubbed horror films (Blood and Lace, Reptilicus) and some Disney flicks (The Love Bug, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) at the Allen. Heck, I even saw the Chuck Heston Planet of the Apes, Patton and the first R-rated movie I ever saw at a theatre, MASH. It wasn't quite as old or grand as the Arden, but we didn't care as long as we were at the movies.

30 years ago, I had a variety of theatres to choose from. I lived in the city, but it's not like Los Angeles. All the cities in Orange County blend together. There really wasn't anything like "downtown" around there. However, there were at least 100 different screens in several complexes within a ten-mile radius of my house, the closest one being less than a mile away. However, if I wanted to go to a large theatre, I'd have to drive about 15 miles to Fashion Island to the Big Newport.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t...dsnewport6.jpg

It was originally a two-screen theatre, but they added more screens over the years. The Big screen is 40' x 80', and the auditorium has 1,108 seats. I've had some of my all-time favorite film experiences at the Big Newport, including all of the first three Star Wars films (now called Eps. 4-6), a "Back-to-Back-to-Back" screening of the three Back to the Future films, Alien, Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, etc.

I believe I've posted some of this info in another thread about theatres. :cool:

There was also an IMAX theatre about 20 miles away at the Spectrum in Irvine. We've seen The Return of the King, Beauty and the Beast (animated Disney) and Fantasia 2000 there. Excellent.

Now I'm in Los Angeles, but since I'm bedridden with a stroke, no more lines for movies.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Genuinely no idea - Jaws, Star Wars and Alien all generated huge queues for the evening showings so one of those but time really wasn't a concept I took much notice of back in those days.

Hey, that was one of the longer waits for me, too... Oddly, it was a double feature with Annie's obvious companion piece, Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kahn. I was with my grandmother, and I insisted we stay for both films. She declined. I insisted again, and told her I was not going to her car after Annie, but she could sit in it if she wanted, backing in the pleasant Southern Arizona sun. She claimed she was hungry, so I recommended the nachos from the snack bar. Once she had her tray full of broken chips and cheese whiz, we sat down to enjoy Star Trak II. That is, I sat down to enjoy it - she sat down to absolutely hate it.

Ah, childhood memories.

Anyway - pretty sure the longest I ever waited was for either The Empire Strikes Back, or Clash of the Titans.

Maybe this joke is going over my head -- that happens often to me. You're joking of course. Please tell me you're joking.

Annie's okay.

I assume John Huston's entire extended family showed up at the same theatre as Crumbsroom.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

For the record, I love Annie, and just watched it recently with my threenager...

Same goes for Xanadu!

If there was any joke, it was on me as I began to realize what I was standing out in the rain to see.

I know it is probably sacrilege to say this now she's just died, but man I ****ing hate Xanadu

The '97 re-release happened to open on the first night of carnival parades here in NO, and our local theater happened to be on the parade route. So while the rest of the country stood in long lines, my brother and I just waltzed in to our sparsely attended screening. Always felt lucky about that.

Edit: I guess we missed out on the cosplay and all that, but I was pretty old by then anyway, so I was just happy to have a good seat

Nope, terrible film. I love every second of it.

I actually remember seeing some really long lines for Scarface myself.

I didn’t wait in these lines but the last few Harry Potter films often had long lines.

My dad didn't have the patience for long lines, so it's not something I encountered often unless I was with another family.


1. Waited in a very long line with my aunt and uncle to see Rocky II. This was memorable because after being in line forever, some yahoo came running out of a prior screening yelling,
Everybody hated that guy.


2. A friend's birthday happened to coincide with the release of Return of the Jedi. So we had a slumber party the night before and went to the theater the next day for the first showing. The line was so long that we didn't get in and had to wait for the second show instead. In the meantime we stayed in the lobby playing the Journey arcade game. Good times.

And in Scarface!

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

I try to avoid long lines. I never went to the first weekend showing of a movie and we had second run movie theaters for $1.00 when I was a kid. So usually we would wait for the movie to get to those theaters.

Gosh, maybe The Running Man? That was when I was in grade school so I don't remember the wait so much as I do the shoulder-to-shoulder lobby area where everyone was in a winding line for concessions. Those lines bled into the other few lines forming to enter the theaters proper, for all the soon to start movies along the corridor.

Used to be, here, they blocked off the hallway entrance with velvet rope until everyone safely exited the theater and crew could clean up after. I can also remember catching Batman (1989) in theater a few weeks after release and that was still so full that my mom and I had to be escorted in the dark to our seats by staff with a red cone flashlight. We were placed into the right wing column of seats because he couldn't find two that were open next to each other. I remember that theater was ....warm, and that MIGHT have been my first self awareness of my developing OCD. I had troubles sitting still that movie. I was nervous, too, because I had the impression that Batman was going to be more like a horror movie.

Now that I'm all grown up, I rarely go for an opening weekend viewing. In fact, I usually give most movies a two-week window (longer for blockbusters) before I even bother. Even then, I take in a Tuesday night flick if it's just me.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

It was about 1 1/2 hours, for a grand opening of the Fellowship of the Ring. The kids HAD to see it or they would surely die. They had to see it first. Our local neighborhood theater (yes we have one of those, a grand old movie palace), advertised having a first generation, top of the line print. We got to the first showing, bought tickets ahead of time, got middle of the row seats and there it was. Orcs in all of their glory, the Balrog and Sauron, all on the big screen.

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

Gods i can't recall how long ive waited but the only one that comes to mind that i have waited for would have been the 1st Lord of the Rings movie at the cinema. My mum and dad took my sister and myself to watch it. I was feeling awful at the time due to some non contagious infection but I'd wanted to see it so bad so i put my game face on, loaded myself up on some meds and watched it. I regret nothing lol.

I’ve never had to wait in line for a movie. Not because there weren’t any movie worth that, but because it’s never been necessary…

I was born mid-90s so most of my cinema ticket ordering was done in the 2000s. And usually I think my parents would just call to order tickets. And then later, when I ordered by myself, a webpage had launched here in Denmark that made it possible to order tickets online for every cinema in the entire country basically. And that still exists today.

So that’s where I do my ticket buying. I don’t show up in no lines. But for movies like Endgame or No Way Home you do have to be in an online que. But you can easily do something else at the same time.

In a way I would’ve loved to grow up in the earlier days where waiting in line for a new movie was the norm. Sounds like something that could really build the anticipation for a movie. And make it an event. Something that’s really missing from today’s movie-going experience. The “event” part. Though seeing Endgame and No Way Home on midnight premiere/opening night was something to remember…

Re: What's The Longest You've Ever Waited In Line For A Movie?
 

"And make it an event. Something that’s really missing from today’s movie-going experience. The “event” part. "

That's exactly it. When those LOTR events happened, many people came in costume, the crowd was completely wired and the line was like a pre-party. Same thing for some of the Star Wars iterations. If you needed to take a quick bathroom break, people you didn't know would hold your place in line. I've seen plenty of movies in theaters over the past two years and the big event part is really missing. It's creepy to be in a 900 seat theater, be one of 20 people and have them widely spaced by the seating software.

When NOPE opened a couple weeks ago, it was about half of an event, actually the best theater night I've had since The Before Times.

That's very nice.


When I was in Australia, an Estonian friend of mine told me his mother read all the Harry Potter books to him, and in 2012 (or 2013), I remember him paying $25 to see it at midnight. The next day I asked him how it was, but he fell asleep as soon as it started, lol.