this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Not all airlines assign seats. I learned this last year. Southwest doesn’t assign seats but you get assigned groups for boarding. You can probably pay for earlier groups but I don’t know, I wasn’t the one who purchased the tickets directly.
Anyways, you line up in order of your boarding assignment. The earlier you get on the plane the better seat you get.
I hated it. Just assign seats.
The no seat assignments policy on SW is awesome. You literally just check in on time to get on the earlier groups through a mobile app. Click a button 24 hrs before your flight. Boom you're in group A. B at worst. It's straight first come first served. At worst, you can pay $25 extra for the early bird to be in the A group and not stress about check in. Then then line you up based on your spot, and you just walk on and pick which seat you want. Plus SW doesn't charge you to check a bag.
Egalitarian shit. None of this class based, money grubbing crap. Those types of policies are the reason we have "fast passes" at airports now and then of course then even faster "fast passes".
Other airlines are also charging you after your tickets to choose your seats and they charge more based on the seat. And charging for bags. And everything else.
Assigned seats also ruined the theater experience for the same reasons.
Have to disagree with you on this one.
I love being able to choose what seat in a theater I'm purchasing, versus if it's a full theater first come first served and you end up getting a horrible side or front row seat.
I'd rather skip a showing and go to a later showing with a more favorable seating arrangement, and having assigned seating allows me to have that.
I actually kind of dislike the assigned seating at movie theaters myself. It now doesn't matter if i go early, the theater might already be nearly booked. The only way around this is to either make two trips to the theater or pay extra to buy online.
On the other hand, it does eliminate any rush to get there early once you have the ticket
I'm kind of confused why you don't just call or check their website from home and reserve the seating, versus going down there in the first place?
If they're full you've saved yourself a trip going down there to reserve seating, when you can do it from home online or via the phone. And I've never had a situation where I've had to pay extra for the seats, doing it over the phone or online.
Yep, makes it really stress-free. You just walk in there and walk through the front door and just sit down in your seats.
Honestly, if they didn't charge extra I'd probably not be so annoyed, but the theaters around me all add like a $3 "convenience" fee for booking online, which is complete bs since it's actually saving them money not needing to keep as many people working
Capitalists will capitalist, though
Yeah, extra fees to do that would suck like a vacuum cleaner set to high. Try letting the manager of the theater know that its b.s. to do that, you never know.
I actually got my local theater (long time ago) to stop having commercials shown after the lights go down, by talking to him (I'm not paying to watch commercials argument, basically).
Assigned seats mean you can hardly just ad hoc decide to see a movie nowadays. You basically have to plan it out. Used to be "hey let's see the showing at 6. Ok let's get there at 5:30 then." Now, you go look and people already took the best seats and shows up mid preview. Or people buying literally all the seats weeks ahead of time for blockbusters.
How fun.
I haven't seen any blockbuster on opening weekend in probably over a decade because I know the good seats are already purchased.
Also, the seating maps aren't great.
That's not true. You can still ad hoc it.
At the time you want to go to the theater you just go, and when you buy your tickets you choose from whatever seats are available.
I don't see how that's any different than if you just walked up to the theater and bought tickets and got in the first come first serve line for seating.
The difference is that before you walked up and got in line or got in early enough that you walk in and choose your seats. And your position was based on your arrival order. Now, you walk up and sorry all seats but the front were bought up and no they aren't here yet of course. Why would they be? It used to be you just timed it so you got there 30/45 minutes before the start.
I'm just yelling at clouds honestly. It's not that big a thing, and I reserve seats nowadays often, but mostly because I basically have to. Also, theaters are only ever crowded enough to care during tent pole releases and nowadays I just wait a few weekends.
I just find the social contact of getting to the venue when an event takes place early/on time to get your pick a better experience than choosing a seat on an app early. Probably a condition from growing up pre reservations.
Fair enough, thought I'd argue that was still first-come-first served, but I get your point.
This is why I won't fly Southwest unless I have no other choice. Nice planes and otherwise lovely flight experience; shame about the seat policy. Every time I've tried, it's a confused mess of pushy or perplexed people in line, and I end up completely annoyed before takeoff.
On the flip side, it's free birth control. 😋
I'd rather sit and knit until my group is called and stroll up without rushing as I know exactly where I'm sitting. I watch people stress. SMH
Yeah, it wasn’t so bad except for the boarding. But I’m with you. I don’t want to rush to be crammed into a can of sardines any longer than I have to be.