We are getting closer to winter when our most reliable “bad weather closings” can be expected. However, unexpected events of Mother Nature happen frequently and we want you to be aware of our policy on bad weather closings.
Yesterday, around 2:00 pm, we made the difficult decision to close for our last shows. The earlier shows had been incredibly slow (we had only 20 guests all day and turned off many movies because they were empty). The emergency personnel were encouraging everyone to avoid certain roads and flash flooding warnings were in effect. We wanted to make sure our customers and staff were able to get home in the daylight.
We do not frequently close early, but it has happened. In the future, we want you to be prepared and know where to find the most up to date information.
We will always update our recording if we close early unless an outage prevents this. If the decision to close happens overnight and we are unable to change our recording, it may indicate that we are open. If we expect that closing may be a possibility, we will start by saying “If you are hearing this at whatever time (usually our scheduled opening), we are closed.” However, in the event of something like what we experienced this week, and the closing is unexpected, please check online. We will also post on social media, but you may not see the post in your timeline. Please visit our pages directly and look for updates. We will do our best to get the showtimes updated on the website, but this is a more difficult process. It takes more time and if you do not update your browser, the changes will not be visible. Also, in the event of a power outage, we may not be able to get to the website to change it.
We received the following email after closing and are sharing our response in case you find yourself in a similar situation.
Message Body:
Wednesday 30 November
Our family of 6 after looking at your web site drove all the way over from spring city to see a 4:00 pm movie. You had locked the doors and closed early. That is BS as there are no warnings of any kind this afternoon . You did not post the closing on your website!
Our family has come to your theater on average if every week to two weeks spending over $100.00 per visit. That’s pretty bad about closing and not putting it on your website. We waited in town for three hours to see the 4 pm movie. So you caused us to waste our afternoon and ruined our family outing!
I am linked to the weather channel , all they are calling for is rain…..
thats no way to conduct business
We could have went to the Pinnacle Stafium 18 at Turkey creek and spent our money there all of these times that we came to your theater, but we were trying to help support the small business man. From now on I believe we will spend our $100.00 per trip to the movie there. They will at least be guaranteed to be open when we go and appreciate our business!
thanks a lot !
Our response is as follows:
I completely understand your frustration and our decision to close was a difficult one. We did update our website around 2:15 after we made the decision to close for our later shows. We did not have a 4:00 pm showing scheduled at all for yesterday, but we did cancel all shows after the 2:15. If you did not refresh the browser you were looking in, the website would not have automatically updated. We posted the closings on our social media in addition to changing the website and our recording and outside signs. We do not regularly close without notice and have only done so a handful of times in the past due to unfavorable weather conditions.
We understand that many of our customers travel far distances to watch movies at our small town theater, however, due to the horrible conditions many of our local residents were facing, we made the difficult decision to close. Emergency personnel were asking everyone to avoid the roads except for emergencies and we felt that with all of the debris and downed power lines, it would be safer for our customers and employees to get home while there was still daylight. Many areas were experiencing flooding in our county.
We cannot apologize enough for the inconvenience we put you through and just want to reiterate that the decision came out of concern for the safety of our staff and customers and was in no way indicative of not caring about your business.
We are a small town locally owned theater and cannot survive without the support of our community. We do not have numerous locations like the big corporations that can use other locations to offset bad days. We rely on every dollar we get to pay our bills. We do appreciate your business and I am so very sorry we made you think otherwise. Owning a small business is incredibly difficult and we are often faced with tough decisions like this. The safety of our community is our top priority. When weather is a factor, we always encourage our customers to check for updates frequently as our status can change by the hour. While this is not a frequent issue, Mother Nature is unpredictable.
We do hope you will accept our apology and come back to see us, but we understand if you decide not to.