| rev:text
| - Studio Movie Grill is like a sad shell of what Mez used to be.
While Mez had it's problems before Studio Movie Grill took over (Paying higher price for regular seating, they called it "Premium Seating"), SMG added a host of other issues.
First I'll hit on some positives and as to why I didnt rate it as 1 star. We bought the $5 Groupon, and ordering tickets online was a breeze, and picking your seats beforehand is a really good idea and I think that movie theaters should all implement some sort of seating arrangement so that you don't walk in to the theater with 5 people only to find that you have to split up or sit in the very front row. The web experience is awesome.
Now...on to the concerns.....I thought at first that the idea of a movie/dinner hybrid would be a good idea. I was wrong. I went to this theater twice after buying the Groupon. The first time, when I got to my seat, it was covered in a white powdery liquid, like someone had a baby and it upchucked on the seat or something. We told one of the waiters just to see if we could get it cleaned or get a towel or something to sit on...and then they said they would be right back. So I stood....and waited...and waited.....20 minutes went by before I grabbed another staff member and asked them to clean it. After that I waited another 10 minutes before a staff member came by with what looked like a spray bottle and a paper towel and tried to spray it down. No luck. All the waiter said was "Thats pretty gross, I wouldnt sit there either. Sorry, theres not much I can do".....NOT "Let me see if I can find you another seat" or "We are sorry, have a free movie on us" or anything. It was just "suck it up and sit in the goo, or go home". My wife slid over in her seat and we pretty much shared one seat for the entire movie.
Upon leaving, we had our parking "validated"...meaning one of the staff members looked at the ticket, acted like she was doing something to it, and then handed it back. When we left the parking garage, we found out that it WASNT validated, all the staff member had done was just write an X on it or poked a hole in it or something. We had to pay an extra $10 for parking.
The second time we went was just as unpleasant. This time we were able to get seats that were decent. We got to our seats, and placed our order, which was just popcorn and a soda. That was all we ordered. About 10 minutes later, the guy next to me ordered a hamburger and a couple other things. 20 minutes later, once the movie started, the guy who ordered the hamburger received his meal. We were still waiting. It wasnt until 30 minutes into Iron Man 3 (1 hour later!) and after checking with the staff on the status of the popcorn that we finally received it. Well, then we bit into the popcorn, and it was the absolute saltiest thing I had ever tasted. I love salty foods, I put salt on a lot of my food. This was unbearably salty...like the kind where it almost stings your mouth. I took two bites and tried to flip the popcorn over, because I thought that maybe the bottom half would be less salty. Didn't work. I dont normally send things back unless they are unbearably bad....I sent it back and asked for a lot less salt. 10 minutes later, we get the popcorn again, this time it had NO SALT at all. We just ate it anyway.
On top of all that, my wife missed half the movie trying to fix our salt situation.
Having the waiters and waitress going up and down the stairs with their iPhone/ordering devices was also extremely distracting.
We had better experiences at Northlake or Concord Mills theaters. We probably wont be going back to SMG.
Overall, Mez just seemed more upscale. While the ticket prices were sometimes outrageous there, SMG seems like a cheap knockoff. The atmosphere is very different then Mez. Mez was more like an upscale club that had a nice theater attached. SMG feels like a cheap movie theater that happens to have a restaurant, and they don't know quite yet how to make the two work together well.
We went to Mez several times just to eat at the restaurant.....After seeing the food at SMG and experiencing the service, I doubt we'd go just for the food.
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