B&B Theatres Chenal 9 with IMAX

Good theater in a great part of town. Ticket prices are fair. Very clean. One exception however. We went to a pretty full showing of Star Wars. There was an empty string of about 7 seats so my wife and I go to sit down there only to be told by some guy that the seats are reserved… at a packed showing. I’m not sure what their rules are for reserving that many seats but it will make me question going back to that theater if they continue to allow such behavior.

Ok, so we just left Panera Bread on Kanis. Had waaaayyyy too much tea on free refills so I had to use the bathroom before the movie starts. ALL stalls were empty on seat covers. It smelled pissy, seats were pissy, floor was pissy. I would understand if it was opening weekend for a popular box office movie… it was 10:15AM…no opening for anything. I guess the night shift didn’t clean up. My sneakers are still sticky. Disgusting!

The actual theater is comfortable. The seating is well spaced out giving you enough room to get comfortable and see the screen from any seat. The draw back to the theater is that they play the sound so loud your ears ring afterwards (I’ve seen several movies here in different theaters) and at some points the sound actually hurts! The other major drawback is that the popcorn sucks! They do not have salt for your popcorn, at all! Seriously, what self respecting popcorn concession stand does not have salt???

I recently encountered a problem at the Little Rock, AR (Chenal 9) location. I was recently given a gift card to the theatre and decided to take my son to the movies. I used my gift card to purchase two tickets and was then told I had $ 15 remaining. I proceeded to the concessions to use the remaining $ 15 balance. Much to my surprise, the concession associate said something was wrong and blamed it on the slow systems. He proceeded to tell me how bad the registers were and that he couldn’t wait until the new ones were installed.
They tried running the card several times and one of the associates went to get the manager on duty. He walked up and swiped my card and told me there was nothing on my card. I relayed to him that the cashier said I had $ 15 remaining. He then took my card and disappeared. He returned to again tell me I was wrong without saying there must be a mistake or apologizing for the inconvenience. He then walked back to the ticket area with my card.
I followed him to ask for my gift card back. The manager again proceeded to tell me he showed no balance and he said the card had never been used or loaded even though I told him that is how I paid for my tickets. Frankly, I was embarrassed and mad. To have the manager argue with me and suggest that I was lying by saying the card was never loaded was embarrassing to happen in front of my eight year old son.
I would definitely suggest some coaching and training your associates on not discussing their displeasure of the equipment with the customer. Also, management needs some serious help in customer service training when problems arise.
I’ll stick with The Rave and Breckenridge Theatres moving forwards until this place can get it’s act together.

like Unilocal says, as good as it gets! (:

It’s a pretty good movie theater as far as theaters go in Little Rock. Took a couple stars off because the last time I went to a movie, they didn’t even clean out the theater — it was absolutely filthy and disgusting with all the trash from the last movie left over.

LOVE Seeing movies in IMAX, been coming here for the last two years mostly during the summer and will continue to do so, even though I have to drive an hour to get here. The only negative is that you have to pay extra for popcorn refills.

Good theatre. Ok prices.

Saw my first motion picture in IMAX here, «The Hobbit, Desolation of Smaug». Was better than other theatre experiences for me. Place is clean and they actually give military discount!!!

This theater is managed by people that loves movies and it shows. I spoke to the manager as we were getting tickets and his enthusiasm for the movies was contagious. A fantastic theater in a fantastic location.

I saw a showing of Metallica’s «Through the Never» at 4pm. The Imax sound and picture were awesome. The theater was pretty much empty which always makes for a better movie going experience.

In general, this is a good small movie theater. It has the only IMAX in Little Rock. The lines are usually short except for shows after 4:00. You need to get tickets early, especially for IMAX shows.
The long line for nighttime IMAX shows seems a little ridiculous for the size of theater. Each theater is clean. The wait for popcorn can be long as there are not many employees behind the counter. Purchasing tickets could be easier if the automated ticket machine worked. Each time I try hoping it has been fixed, but no such luck.
Parking is adjacent to the theater. It is not terrible but expect to walk a bit so allow a little extra time.
There will be free kid movies on Tuesday afternoons during the summer (summer 2013).

Clean. Tried to buy a damn hot dog because I was hungry and they didn’t bother to cook any even though they advertise the damn things. Theatre is nice. Good chairs. I didn’t fall down the stairs which is good.

So you’re there for the matinée showing, and the movie has started and there’s no sound? Well, you’re in luck! Just find your way to the beleaguered ticket counter or the concession stand, both of whom are busy helping other customers! They will surely wonder aloud where the non-​existent managers have disappeared, and half an hour later, you might actually have sound in the IMAX theater you paid extra money to view! You might not have to plug your ears because the audio levels are too loud in the auditorium… but best of all, you might manage not to notice the «screen door» effect on the IMAX projection!
Or you might just have to sit through two hours of awful, flickering projection. This is a bad place. Go to the Rave.

The IMAX screen is incredible! Best way to watch a movie.

This is the better theater option for Little Rock. It’s located in a shopping center, so you can do some shopping while waiting. Seating is more comfortable than Rave, but since it’s a smaller theater, there is less selection in terms of movies and showtimes. I particularly like their «power hour» promotion that runs from 4−5pm everyday. Movie tickets at $ 5 for any non-​IMAX, non 3d movies with showtimes in that one hour window. It’s also $ 5 for a popcorn/​drink combo during power hour. FYI don’t trust the showtimes listed on any other site (ie that movie app on your phone, google showtimes, imdb, rotten, etc) besides the one on their official site. I’ve gone here a couple of times hoping to catch a movie only to realize that the showtime was not accurate.

Saw Dark Shadows here and was my first time at this particular theatre. Small crowd in a not-​too-​large space and there were probably 40 of us viewing a hilarious Johnny Depp doing his Barnabas impression. Well kept up and the sound was fantastic. I did not eat there but will say the bathrooms were clean. Gosh… I just want to talk about the movie but that’s for another time!

The hot dog machine is either broken or they are out of dogs («Please come back in 15 minutes…») almost every time I see a movie here. Also, out of 5 movies recently, two of them had sound issues and someone had to go tell the management. In short, I think a change to more competent «management» would make these problems go away.

Chenal 9 is an excellent theater for viewing movies in IMAX as well as non-​IMAX. The auditoriums have been clean both times I have been there (HP7 PT1 and TRON: Legacy) and the audience was OK during the movies (no cellphones went off!). My only complaint is that it is so out of the way for me. But that’s the way things are happening in Little Rock in general, everything out west.

This is really biased since this is the only featured film IMAX theater in central Arkansas, otherwise I would give this an average review. Overall, great service in a great location (The Promenade at Chenal) with abundance of parking spaces. Rave is a great alternative to this place and I still go to Rave for all my non-​IMAX movies.