Gnomeo and Juliet

 

Saturday, we planned on taking Hailey to see Gnomeo and Juliet.  The previews looked really cute, so I was actually looking forward to a cartoon which normally make me crazy.  Jessica decided that she wanted to go to the movie as well, so we piled into the car and got to the movies a few minutes early,   with time enough to get popcorn and drinks, or so we thought. Turns out, there were two fricken birthday parties happening for the 4:00 pm show.  We didn't notice this until we spent a small fortune at the concession stand.

Once we got in the theater my heart started racing.  I hate crowds to begin with, but this was nuts.  Four entire rows were roped off for the birthday parties and there were maybe 10 seats left in the entire theater, in the first two rows and not together.  For once, it was not my turn to freak out.  Rich promptly turned around and stormed out.  We all followed as he approached the manager, who said he would gladly ask people to scoot together so we could fit in the FIRST row.  Yeah right.  Rich finally convinced the guy to give us a refund, at which point I am only thinking about the $20 in popcorn and drinks in front of me. Of course he couldn't refund us for the concessions; instead he offered to give us refills for the next show at 7:00 if we kept the drinks and popcorn bag.  Did he not see the 3 year old with us???  I was so pissed about the entire experience that I told Rich to go ahead and get tickets which were now going to be even more expensive for the night show because I was not going to lose the money put into the popcorn and drinks!  I knew we could be setting ourselves up for a potential nightmare with Hailey at that time of night, but what else could go wrong at this point? 

We took her home and made her take a 45 minute nap before returning to the theater 30 minutes early this time.  Guess what?  It was already packed.  It's a good thing we already had tickets in hand and our ghetto cups and bags ready to be refilled as we squished by everyone else in line.  Luckily, we were able to get good seats and  Hailey got out of her funk after about 20 minutes.  The movie itself was very cute and entertaining.  This was the first time we'd been to a kids movie that was sold out and it ended up being a lot of fun because all the little ones were giggling and moving around, so I didn't feel like I needed to keep Hailey quite.  I would recommend going to see it, but wait a few weeks! 

On a side note, I am so glad that this theater (which I should note I usually LOVE) has learned its lesson about showing 3D movies to little ones.  It just doesn't work.  I was miserable when we went to see Despicable Me because of my glasses and having to constantly fix Hailey's glasses.  2D is the way to go until the kids are at least 8 years old!