No Harry Potter for you, young lady!

Alice and I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight. Perhaps I should rephrase that. Alice and I went out intending to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight.

The day they went on sale I had bought us best-seats-in-the-house at The Embassy for opening night. I was mighty proud of myself. Being a lazy kind of person (and because it hasn't stopped raining in, like, a month - well, it feels like a month, anyway) I didn't get around to picking up the tickets before the show. As things turned out, it would probably have been a good idea if I had...

We went to Catch for sushi beforehand, and then made our way to the Embassy. Funny... we couldn't see a single bit of posterage for Harry outside the Embassy... that's strange, they usually do really good job of advertising their movies... and where are the massive crowds waiting to go inside? Have we got the wrong day??? No! It's the 11th! It's opening night! Did we get the time wrong? No! I'm sure she said 8.45pm...

So we make our way up the stairs and there are literally about 3 people milling around waiting to go in... curiouser and curiouser - I was sure it was going to be really popular! I grab a copy of the screening programme from the counter and.... Harry is nowhere to be seen... Uh oh!

Seems that The Embassy's been having some kind of disagreement with the film's distributors, who pulled the movie from the Embassy the day after tickets went on sale, and sent it to Auckland instead! The rotten buggers! The poor old Embassy had no way of getting in touch with people who had already bought tickets (maybe they made an announcement - if they did, I missed it) so they must have been apologising to disappointed customers for the last two weeks - and tonight they had a couple more.

They were very nice, gave me my money back, gave us two free passes to use at the Embassy any time we like, said sorry (lots) and gave us the times/places of where it was screening around town... but they must be gutted. That would be quite a financial kick in the teeth for them. And what a pain! It's become quite a tradition for us to see Harry Potter at the Embassy... bummer...

So we rushed to Reading Cinema - sold out. Then we rushed to the Manners Mall cinema. Already started and sold out. Rats! So we wandered back to the Reading and booked tickets for tomorrow night instead, and the guy felt sorry for us so he gave us good seats at a cheaper price. Nice man!

After that we went to Espressoholic and drowned our Potterless sorrows in hot chocolate and cake. And tomorrow we'll (try) to do it all over again. Properly, this time!

Technorati tags: Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, movie, Embassy, distributor, dispute, cinema, theatre, Wellington, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.