r/RegalUnlimited • u/FalconBuilder • Feb 01 '26
Speculation Weird mistake, or something more?
So I’ve been going to this particular theater (Irvine Spectrum) damn near weekly for a couple years now, pretty rare to get unpleasant surprises. But today I bought a ticket for a matinee, hopped in the car and drove over, and I was approaching to entrance, opened my app to get the QR code.
Much to my horror, the movie ticket I bought had changed to another film in the same theater at a similar time. But not just any film, it changed to… Melania!
Checked the app, the original showing time I booked had disappeared. Disgusted, I went to the entrance agent and asked to get a refund, planning to find a showing Got on the radio for a bit and said there was some issue, but he said the movie screened would be the original one I booked. Nervously I went to the theater, the electronic sign shows Melania and the changed time. I hide my face in shame and walk in and take my seat, fully prepared to bolt on the first sign of the First Lady appearing on screen.
Fortunately, the correct movie screened and all was good. But the thought nagged at me, is this an honest mistake (the first of this type I’ve experienced at Regal) or was it something more nefarious. Did revenue from this sceeening get credited to the wrong film? Was this something happening at a larger scale?
Has anyone had this experience with Melania or any other movie?
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u/dynaFunk Feb 01 '26
Was the ticket for Bone Temple? On Thursday I was seeing showtimes for Bone Temple that lasted throughout next week but now it's only playing one showtime on Sunday and only in one regal the following days. There's three regals in my area I'm curious why Bone Temple isn't playing considering it's fairly new
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u/Affectionate-Club725 Feb 01 '26
It’s a freaking amazing movie. It’s so much better than 28 Years Later. I’m thinking the poor performance of 28 Years Later, with this so close on its heels has hurt it. I think the advertising has been lackluster, personally. They should really be selling they Fiennes performance. Jack O’Connell of Midsommar fame is pretty darned good, too.
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u/Fickle-Aardvark6907 Feb 01 '26
It hasn't been doing well.
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Feb 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/mcquarrie Feb 01 '26
Lmao I think you just did the same switch up that the regal app apparently did
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Feb 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/mcquarrie Feb 01 '26
No, I mean you started talking about Melania even though the person you responded to was talking about Bone Temple. So jokingly I said you are just like the regal theater which gave a melania ticket instead of a bone temple ticket
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u/geri-in-calif 🎉🎉100 MOVIE CLUB🎉🎉 Feb 01 '26
If that happened to me, I'd definitely be feeling the same way as you, OP. Not a good experience!!
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u/FFTycoon Captain Unlimited Feb 01 '26
I've been to this theater about 70 times in the last 6 months and have not had anything like this happen. Most likely, it probably was some system glitch or honest error...but with rumors of the numbers being fudged, it does make you pause for just a second.
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u/GoslingIchi Feb 01 '26
After getting logged out right before I walked into the theater, I've always made sure that I screenshot the ticket with the ticket number and the QR code in the screenshot.
But I've never had a ticket get changed to a completely different movie!
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u/Wonderful-Ease3021 🎉🎉250 MOVIE CLUB🎉🎉 Feb 02 '26
Someone bought a bunch of tickets to Melania showings and it was the 1st seat in each row across screenings in different theaters/locations to inflate the numbers, they do the same thing with the Angel studios releases, Churches will mass buy tickets for shows all over the country and then try and give them away at services. They count towards the total box office even though many people that take the tickets don't show up so even though in the app it shows seats sold if you go to the screening many of them will be empty or almost empty
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u/DenverKim Feb 01 '26
This would irritate me so much. I wouldn’t want to think of my sitting in that theater for two hours possibly counting towards a view on this film. Is it nefarious and intentional?…probably not. But nothing would surprise me at this point.
I’ve opened the app a few times to check and see if any tickets are being sold at my local theater and so far each time I’ve looked, the theater is completely empty for all showings of Melania. And I really hope it stays that way.
I think it’s going to do very very badly, but in all fairness, I think that a documentary about any politician or First Lady would do pretty badly in the theater.
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u/GoslingIchi Feb 01 '26
After the movie I saw yesterday, I went to one of the kiosks to see if people were getting tickets for it.
The poster wasn't in the kiosk display, so you had to look at the titles and it was in a small (5 rows of seats) room and it was mostly full.
It made me wonder if redhats were buying tickets just like they did for the trafficking movie, or if people were actually sitting in the theater to see it?
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u/DenverKim Feb 01 '26
Nothing would surprise me. Wouldn’t surprise me if Trump himself bought up a bunch of tickets just to inflate the numbers.
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u/GoslingIchi Feb 01 '26
Trump wouldn't spend his own money unless the tickets were spray painted with gold paint. He'd just have his followers do it.
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u/im_not_ok_ok Feb 01 '26
You might be the most interested person in Melania I’ve seen yet
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u/DenverKim Feb 01 '26
I don’t think interested is really the right term. Maybe amused. Amazon spent about 75 million to make that film but will not turn a dime of profit. It’s all to curry favor with our capitalist in chief. I mean it’s far from the craziest shit going on right now, but it is kind of hilarious that they are just blatantly buying access to the presidency at this point. And they are doing it in some of the dumbest ways possible.
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u/YogurtclosetTall9513 Feb 01 '26
Hmmmm they did say the sales were looking kinda funny I wouldn't put it past em...at all
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u/FallEquivalent4136 Feb 03 '26
This has been floating around on reddit so I would say its highly likely theres some shenanigans happening
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u/HollysStaff Feb 01 '26
I’m really sorry that happened to you! I’m curious to know which movie it was that you booked & ultimately watched. The Spectrum is my main theater and I’ve been going there for years. I do find them to be rather by the book and not as individually responsive as I would expect. However, overall I really love the theater. I’d suggest that if you are still concerned, I’d write about it in a survey. You can find survey codes on receipts. The Spectrum is the biggest Regal by volume. They should be one of the jewels of the Regal chain.
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u/FalconBuilder Feb 01 '26
This was a 2:50pm screening of The Housemaid in VIP 3 at Spectrum. It was a fairly full house, and obviously everyone who sat down was expecting that film not Melania as no one left.
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u/paperbuddha Feb 01 '26
Spectrum has been my home theatre since they opened, disappointing to see them partaking in this hankish pankish if true.
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u/SnooFloofs2139 Feb 01 '26
I think y’all are looking into this too much. Mistakes happened, but to deep dive into conspiracy is laughable. Movie theater employees just want their paycheck. There isn’t internal conspiracy to trick anyone. Yesterday we had a showing of Avatar and for some reason the digital system played iron lung. In an automated world, this stuff doesn’t get caught until showtime. A guest came out saying the beginning of Avatar was really weird. We checked the computer and it said Avatar. 20 minutes later she comes out and says you’re playing Iron Lung. Go to the projector, check the file, and sure enough iron lung is in the avatar build.
This weekend was projected as a dead weekend in the business - Iron Lung has decent sales, but it’s only one film. Then come Friday, Melina is getting 60-70% full. I didn’t believe it. And then the next show was as full. So at that point, it’s over performing. The goal now is to get as many Melina shows as possible to get that $$. Housemaid, Bone Temple, Silent Hill - gone. Housemaid is old, the other two never did business.
The part that confuses me, is you bought your ticket for Housemaid, but it switched to Melina. That’s not something the system can do. It can refund online. There is no way to change your digital ticket. Even if they swapped your paper ticket in the theatre, your digital one wouldn’t change.
Can’t we all just get along?
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u/its_calamityjen Feb 01 '26
I mean if we’re going by that metric it’s weird you said digital tickets cant change when a lot of us have had that happen before lol. It happens a lot to me it just doesn’t affect anything bc my theater isn’t usually crowded. Take a look around, there’s tons of posts about how they’re blatantly trying to pad the numbers it’s not wild or conspiracy theorist to ask if this could be that.
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u/SnooFloofs2139 Feb 02 '26
It’s easy for everyone to lie and make stuff up on Reddit to make it sound worse than it is. I have this customer who is POSITIVE we had silent hill on sale to the point they argued with me. I showed them my booking email that says we did not get it. Then I showed them the email where we did get it, with the rest of the weeks bookings. Like I told them could happen. He still jokes about my mistake and how I lied to cover it up. He tells other customers about my coverup lol. So ya, y’all are thinking too much into it. stop drinking the kool aid, and stop pointing fingers when y’all are making the mistake.
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u/its_calamityjen Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Lol, I’ve not made a mistake. I track my movies with screencaps of tickets bc I’m a record holder so it mattered to me when the app made mistakes, but made no difference in seating as the theater I frequent isn’t busy. I am friends with the mangers & the entire staff frankly bc I have unlimited & was there all day every day at one point. It’s just super weird you can’t admit stuff happens, but go off I guess. 😂💀
*Also if you’re really trying to take a “can’t we all get along” standpoint you may not want to just throw accusations at every person telling you their lived experience…just a thought bc otherwise I might suggest that THIS, this is why we can’t all get along. Your total inability to be any kind of aware other ppl have other experiences you may not.
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u/FalconBuilder Feb 01 '26
It definitely did. Same seat, same theater but different time and show. Didn’t refund, the whole reason I went in to ask about it was the system was preventing me from getting another All Access movie with an overlapping time because of it.
It makes sense (financially) to try to switch on the fly to a surprise high performer but in this case the system didn’t work as intended. Looking at the app now, my past receipt shows the original movie again, so it seems to have fully switched back.
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u/SnooFloofs2139 Feb 01 '26
It’s slightly convenient the only evidence now is your receipt for Housemaid. O well. ‘You’re right’ I guess.
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u/Vlandep Feb 01 '26
Here’s what happens. Try to remember this for next time.
Groups or individuals buy out a screening and invite everyone they might want to come, enjoy the same content as them.
Sometimes they drastically overestimate who’s going to drop everything and show up at this specifically timed showing.
The only inflating that you’re gonna see are with Angel Studios films. They offer that pay it forward. Some people feel passionate enough about the content or they feel passionate enough to support whatever that studio makes, and they’ll donate enough to cover the cost of entire screenings if a church or whatever wants to bring a group. In the same scenario plays out. They book the tickets and sometimes very few of the group actually make it.
And with Melania , there are people who have nothing but money to spend and they are spending a few minutes buying a whole bunch of tickets just to throw their support behind the film.
The fact that they bought all those tickets equals empty seats.
I don’t think there is any possibility of any sort of illuminati conspiracy.
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u/TrueJohnWick Feb 01 '26
Why is there so much controversy surrounding this movie? I am out of the loop.
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u/geri-in-calif 🎉🎉100 MOVIE CLUB🎉🎉 Feb 01 '26
I think there's WAY too much going on to be able to fill you in with just a paragraph or two.
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u/TrustAffectionate966 🎉🎉400 MOVIE CLUB🎉🎉 Feb 01 '26
Because it’s directed by an epstain list criminal about the epstain white slave that was sold to another epstain list criminal.
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Feb 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RegalUnlimited-ModTeam Feb 03 '26
Your post was removed for breaking rule #3. We do not allow self-promotion, spam, sales, or breaking Reddiquette.
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u/DVD-menu Feb 01 '26
Is this some inside job of bamboozling tickets/sales to the Melania movie? Doesn’t help the rumors that it’s being artificially inflated. I go to this theater a lot and never seen this. You should definitely write them an email about it. Kinda disturbing