Okay, they already have these in Thailand, but I have never seen it in the US, so...
In Thailand, when you buy your movie ticket, you are shown a little map of the theater seats -- similar to like you might see when buying a concert ticket. You buy your ticket and point to where you want to sit. You get your movie ticket which, in addition to the title and time, says H22 (or whatever row and seat you picked). This is especially handy when you go see a movie with a bunch of friends, now you know before hand if you can all sit together. No more wandering blindly up and down the aisle saying 'Are those taken?'
The chart (usually shown on an in-table-top monitor, but sometimes a laminated sheet) shows all of the seats that are taken so far. You can see if the entire row ahead of you is going to be full or not (so you could choose another place). No need to run grab seats before buying popcorn ('Oh no, I left my coat in the car how will I 'mark' the seats!?'), your seat awaits -- no one's gonna take it because they have their own, which they happily picked themselves.
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The IMAX theaters have seating just as described.
This is a great idea-I would love to see it more commonly used. I experienced it in Europe, both buying concert tickets and at a movie. Makes it all less stressfull, too.
I saw this in Eurpose, too. Much better than wandering into the theater late and looking for a seat in the dark...
This idea is good ONLY if you can pick your seats. Theaters in St. Louis tried an "assigned seating" system a few years back and quickly killed it. It was AWFUL. Yeah, it's great that if you buy your ticket 5 days in advance, you don't haev to show up early to get a good seat, but everyone has different preferances for where they'd like to sit. Any system taht assigns arbitrarily is bad....
As I'm typing I also thought... Friday/Saturday night, the lines are long and everyone choosing their seats for every movie will make the ticketing process very lengthy. Many theaters already have kiosks for printing out pre-paid tickets (booked over the Internet or phone). Perhaps assigned seats should only be given out to people who prepay (and can choose seats on the website) or buy their ticket at the kiosk. With enough kiosks (and presumably, people will get faster using them with time), the lines can move quickly with people making last minute decisions will have open seating (though someone needs to figure out how to prevent them from sitting in a pre-assigned seat.
I'm kinda writing as I'm thinking so it isn't the best fleshed out comment here. But, I like the IDEA, but it needs to be implemented JUST RIGHT for it to work.
Hey, just noticed I could use HTML tags for emphasis instead of caps, will do that next time :).
Well, yeah, being forced to take some arbitrary seat would be a pain, but then that's pretty much the opposite of what I'm suggesting.
The many theaters I've seen where this the you-pick idea is commonplace, the buying of tickets takes maybe a couple of seconds longer. It's a couple of seconds well spent.
The problem is that if you are late you have to locate your seat in the dark. in england they have guys with flashlights that take you to your seats, but this is annoying and expensive. i am pretty happy with the way it works now.