I Tried AMC Stubs A-List, How’d It Work For Me?
The news just continues to look worse and worse for MoviePass, and while it once was a good service, and I definitely stand by my recommendation of it last year, I can't help but feel the need to apologize to you for suggesting you subscribe to what turned out to be such a dumpster fire of a subscription service.
First came the ticket verification, then surge pricing that would cost as much as a ticket, then the service outages, then the price hike, and now they've dropped it down from unlimited movies per month to just three. That's less than one movie per week. All the while they're dropping press releases and social posts that everything is fine, when it's blindingly obvious that everything is not fine in the world of MoviePass. At this point, I'd rather be in an actual, literal train-wreck, than to work for the metaphorical train-wreck that is MoviePass.
Live Security Feed of MoviePass Headquarters
But speaking of trains, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, at least for people in Quincy, and surrounding areas. You see, we have AMC Theatres. They've beefed up their Stubs rewards program to be a subscription service where you can see three films per week, no black outs, no up-charges for special screenings, and you get rewards points on your monthly subscription fee.
The fee is $19.95, which is about double what MoviePass charges, but you get four times as many movies. And AMC isn't rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. They're a financially stable movie theatre chain.
I used it for the first time over the weekend to see The Spy Who Dumped Me. It was an entertaining film, Kate McKinnon stole the entire movie, everybody else was fighting for 2nd place. It got lost in its own overly convoluted plot, but brought it back home again and stuck the landing.
Anyway, it's quite simple if you have the AMC app. You log into your account, set up a reservation for the day and time you want to go see your movie, and you're all set! It doesn't matter if it's later today, or on Thursday, if they have a showing for it, you can reserve it.
The only downside was they didn't make it explicit that I had to tell the clerk that I had a reservation for it. I thought since it was on my account, and I had the rewards card on me, if they scanned the card, it would show up. Nope, I had to say to the clerk I had the reservation, and she had to look up the reservation in their system. It caused some confusion and delay at the counter, but no big deal, my girlfriend and I still got our tickets and into the theatre in time for the film.
So other than the confusion, it's a real easy transition from MoviePass to A-List. And seriously, if you're still holding out on MoviePass to come around, I'd just go ahead and walk away now. There's nothing left for us over there.