The difference is that before you walked up and got in line or got in early enough that you walk in and choose your seats. And your position was based on your arrival order. Now, you walk up and sorry all seats but the front were bought up and no they aren’t here yet of course. Why would they be? It used to be you just timed it so you got there 30/45 minutes before the start.

I’m just yelling at clouds honestly. It’s not that big a thing, and I reserve seats nowadays often, but mostly because I basically have to. Also, theaters are only ever crowded enough to care during tent pole releases and nowadays I just wait a few weekends.

I just find the social contact of getting to the venue when an event takes place early/on time to get your pick a better experience than choosing a seat on an app early. Probably a condition from growing up pre reservations.

Assigned seats mean you can hardly just ad hoc decide to see a movie nowadays. You basically have to plan it out. Used to be “hey let’s see the showing at 6. Ok let’s get there at 5:30 then.” Now, you go look and people already took the best seats and shows up mid preview. Or people buying literally all the seats weeks ahead of time for blockbusters.

How fun.

I haven’t seen any blockbuster on opening weekend in probably over a decade because I know the good seats are already purchased.

Also, the seating maps aren’t great.

The no seat assignments policy on SW is awesome. You literally just check in on time to get on the earlier groups through a mobile app. Click a button 24 hrs before your flight. Boom you’re in group A. B at worst. It’s straight first come first served. At worst, you can pay $25 extra for the early bird to be in the A group and not stress about check in. Then then line you up based on your spot, and you just walk on and pick which seat you want. Plus SW doesn’t charge you to check a bag.

Egalitarian shit. None of this class based, money grubbing crap. Those types of policies are the reason we have “fast passes” at airports now and then of course then even faster “fast passes”.

Other airlines are also charging you after your tickets to choose your seats and they charge more based on the seat. And charging for bags. And everything else.

Assigned seats also ruined the theater experience for the same reasons.