So right before Cineplex's Scene program officially changed their points redemption schedule to the new (less worth) system, I bought two tickets at the old point price of 1000 points each for 007 Spectre at the Coquitlam VIP theater. If you didn't know the old system allowed you to redeem 1000 points for any movie ticket level, whether it be regular, 3D, AVX, IMAX, D-Box, or VIP, but the new system requires 2000 points to get a VIP ticket, and 1500 points for any other type of ticket higher than a regular one.
Coquitlam's theater was the closest one to us, with the other BC VIP theater located in Abbotsford. They have a good sized parking lot on ground level, and an underground parking lot right below as well!
With our VIP ticket, we get access to their VIP lounge, which consisted of a full bar, stylish and modern decor, comfortable seating, and table service to order food and drinks. This was essentially a full on restaurant as they had a full menu of items to order, from appies like wings and chicken fingers, to entrees like burgers and pizzas.
We started off at the cozy seats on the side just lounging, then we figured if we're going to eat a meal, it would be a lot more comfortable at an actual table, so we moved.
Cool textured wall behind our new table.
After ordering, we got our napkins and cutlery.
Their napkins are very thick! You would only need one, and I love it!
I had a Rootbeer $---, which was refillable, and while that is normally a sweet deal, it doesn't bode well if you're about to watch a two and a half hour movie! Drink responsibly!
For mains, I ordered the Pulled Pork Sandwich $--- with fries.
Jess had the Buffalo Chicken Fingers $--- with fries.
She didn't really like the buffalo flavour on the chicken fingers and they were a bit too spicy for her so she had some of my rootbeer. I ate all her celery sticks, which I love! I tried the chicken fingers too and thought they were ok, but not worth ordering, and she would definitely recommend against ordering it.
The service here was awesome, as expected from a "VIP" lounge. When you enter, you're greeted by the server at the front podium where you must present your VIP tickets. This being our first time trying the VIP experience, she was very helpful in answering the questions we had with how this all worked. Basically you can order your food here and eat, and you can then bring any leftovers into the theater, or you can order more food there with seatside service 10 minutes prior to the start of the movie. The seats have a side table where you can rotate it out to go across in front of you, or straight out front like an extended side tray, exposing the cup holder below the tray's original location. There is so much leg room in front of you that your extended tray would not at all impact the walking room of people cutting across. The seats were very large and comfy, and did not make my butt go numb by the end of the movie.
Overall this was definitely the best movie experience I've ever had with Cineplex. The lounge was awesome and so was their food. The service in the lounge was amazing and presumably the in-theater service would be similar. To be able to eat a full meal like that in the lounge and at your seat is just the best. I would definitely do the VIP experience again once we have enough points accumulated again, and I recommend everyone to try this out with your saved Scene points!
Side note, this VIP theater had the best arcade we've seen at any Cineplex so far. They had several games that I used to play at Playdium, like the football throwing game, and they even utilized the original Playdium card system. You buy credits at their desk, which loads onto a card as seen below. You then swipe your card at the game machines to play. The machine will display your current credit balance, and how many credits are required to play that particular game. They also award you with "tickets" for playing, and I put quotations around tickets because the tickets are digitally saved on your card. I think this is just genius, as you won't have to wait for tickets to dispense if you won big, and also, you won't have to carry around bundles of tickets when you're playing the games. If you don't win enough this time, just put the card in your wallet and come back next time! No need to save the tickets somewhere for safekeeping until the next time. This also saves the printing of tickets, which saves them money too! Paper arcade tickets are a thing of the past, and digitally stored tickets are how all arcades should be progressing towards! PS. we won big at a few games with jackpot ticket amounts!
Thanks for reading everyone, munch on!
- Phil
You need to know that our experience with Abbotsford cineplex VIP, has been disappointing for the 3rd time regarding the food, as for one of them; the "Fish and Chips", is absolutely awful and the service is very slow to serve you, so the quality of service is getting worse for what you pay, they "cineplex employee" should make sure customers are happy for what they pay for.
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