Thursday night was the premiere of the final installment in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. Allison, Kevin, Alex and I made plans to see the midnight showing. Now before I proceed any further with telling the tale of Thursday night’s events, I must say that the burden of this calamity lies squarely on the shoulders of Kevin.
The facts are these. I missed seeing the midnight showing of HP7, Part 1 because of a work thing, but the others charged on without me. They saw the movie at the swanky CineBistro which is a movie theater where you can pick your seat, have a fancy dinner and adult beverages. Kevin took issue with having to sit on the second row (probably because they waited until the last minute to purchase their tickets) and having to crane his neck back to see the screen. It was because of this that Kevin was adamant about not returning to the CineBistro to see HP7, Part 2. Allison and I relented to Kevin which I hope he enjoyed because it will probably be the last time.
Instead, we made plans to see the movie at the Centro Ybor Muvico in Ybor City. We picked this location because, for the most part, no one ever goes to the movies there and the only people who frequent Ybor are people who live in the area or college types, especially hipsters. We figured hipsters may think they’re too cool for HP. We purchased our tickets online for the 12:02am showing and decided that we’d get a late dinner before the movie.
We arrived at Centro Ybor around 9:15pm and pull up to the valet. The valet attendant was the first to inform us that there was no electricity in the Muvico. A mild case of panic set in.
However, we decided that we’d wait it out because there was 3 hours to go before the movie and we were assured by a Muvico employee that Tampa Electric was already on the scene.
We ate dinner and then went back to the theater at 10:15pm to discover that the power was still out. We were reassured by Lisa, who had clearly drawn the short straw as she was the only employee out in front of the movie theater, that Tampa Electric was still working on it. It was then we made a poor choice. We left the theater and went downstairs for ice cream. Unbeknownst to us, there was a horde of people gathering above us where we could not see. From our spot inside the ice cream/coffee shop, it looked like a small peaceful mob was forming, but we couldn’t have been more wrong. At 10:45pm, we left the shop to discover the line in the movie wrapped around the courtyard of Centro Ybor, so to the back of the line we went and stood. We tried our best to make light of our predicament.
At 11:45pm, the lights inside the Muvico finally came on which caused an eruption of cheers from the gathered crowd. It was 1:00am when we got into the theater and headed for our seats. Now what blows my mind is that people who had stood in line for as much as 4 hours went straight to the concession stand for popcorn and beverages, but not directly in a “Don’t pass GO. Don’t collect $200.” fashion to their seats. Didn’t they make the correlation that at this late hour the movie wouldn’t start before they were in their seats? Guess what? Didn’t. Meanwhile, it is getting later and later and people are getting more and more agitated.
If you're putting 2 and 2 together, then you know what happens next. Those crackers lost their ever lovin’ minds. Allison and Kevin were the ones to get the best vantage point of the chaos. After sitting in our seats for a time, they went out to get some refreshments. They returned with tales of yelling and the imminent outbreak of fighting. Kevin commented that he wondered if this was anything like Katrina. I assured him that this was probably only like 1/32 of what Katrina was.
Another hour later, the lights in the theater finally dimmed and the previews started. Guess what? No sound. We held out hope that no sound would be limited to the previews, but again, we couldn’t have been more wrong. The movie started and there was still no sound. It was now 2:15am, so we decided to cut our losses and left the theater. Harry Potter was not getting in my brain that night. We were going to try to get refunds, but thought we’d be there for a while since everyone trying to get a refund felt the need to cuss a blue streak at the manager before taking the refund.
So, at 2:15am, we left Centro Ybor with no enjoyment of Harry Potter. Moral of the story kiddos, always overthrow the thoughts and opinions of Kevin.
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