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

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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?



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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.
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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.
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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.



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!



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



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.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
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.



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.



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.

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.
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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.



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I think it was Annie.


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