Last Sunday, after having lunch with some friends in Soho we decided we wanted to go to the cinema. There were various films we wanted to watch and so we got out an iPhone to see what was showing at the cinemas nearby.
There are five Odeon cinemas less than 10 minutes walking distance from the restaurant we were at. So, the obvious choice was to go onto the Odeon Cinema website. However, this obvious choice was definitely not the most efficient choice.
The Odeon website doesn’t let you select more than one cinema at a time. You have to select ONE cinema and find out what films are playing there. Then you have to go back and select another cinema and see what films are playing there. You also have to remember what films were playing at the first cinema and at what time. Doing this FIVE times is very frustrating and slow.
What made the process of selecting cinemas even harder is the way the cinemas are listed. The Odeon website expects you to know the name of the cinema and guess whether it will be listed as a London cinema, or just by its address. For example, the Odeon cinema on Shaftsbury Avenue is listed as “Covent Garden” next to the other cinemas starting with C. However, the two cinemas in Leicester Square are listed under “London- Leicester Square” and “London- West End”. Why aren’t all the cinemas in London listed under London? And how am I supposed to know that the “Panton St” cinema is just around the corner from the other Leicester Square cinemas?
We decided that perhaps a faster approach would be to select all of the films we wanted to watch and find out at what cinemas they were playing. We were wrong- it isn’t faster. The Odeon website doesn’t let you select more than one film at once either! So we were stuck going back and forth between films just like we had been with the cinemas.
Finally we had narrowed it down to two films, one started at 17:05 and the other at 17:10. Now we just had to choose which one we wanted to watch. Then someone looked at their watch. It had taken so long to use the Odeon website that it was already 17:15! What was showing at 17:30 again?
Why the Odeon website can’t show listings for more than one cinema at a time doesn’t make any sense. Don’t they realize that people might not care which of the Leicester Square cinemas they go to? Google Listing somehow manages to display all the cinemas in London on a map and show what each of them is playing. So, is it really that difficult for Odeon to the same on their website?
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