I can assure you there are no spoilers used in this. It is just my experience of the premiere night of The Force Awakens at the Odyssey Cinema in Belfast
Wednesday 16th December 2015
21:30 – Arrival at the Odyssey Cinema Car Park
The car park was almost empty, around us no signs of anyone in costume for the premiere of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. Greg and I were in costume and were conerned that if we go in now that we will be the only two there and feel a bit silly. We waited for 15 mins before deciding to head in, on the way testing that our ultimate fx lightsabers work by having a mini duel in the car park. We got a few looks from some people but were happier to see a friend Chris getting out of his car with his force fx lightsaber and jedi cloak. At the doors of the building a few guys in star wars t-shirts were outside which made us feel more at ease.
Once we arrived on the top floor in the foyer of the cinema we could see that we most certainly were not the first there as about 20 people were sitting in a queue already and had been there from about 20:30. The staff had a photograher taking photos of people in the queue and got us to pose for a couple of shots for their facebook page.
22:00 – The Revenge of the Queue
The queue had started to build now with people queuing down the stairs on to the floor below. Our friend Steven had arrived with a few of his mates and joined us in the queue. As more and more people arrived some of the more serious costume guys appeared such as a Stormtrooper and C-3PO. We posed for some photos with them and let them carry on down the queue which was now snaking around the foyer and down the stairs.
22:30 – More people were appearing now in costume and there was a sense of regret from some of the folks who clearly wanted to dress up but were shy to do so. In saying that there were some costumes which didn’t leave much to the imagination either!
23:00 – Rumours had started to circulate that they would let us in to the screen early to allow us to get our seats and concessions sorted. It was only another 15 minute wait until we could go in and the excitement started to grow.
We had booked for the 3D showing and when getting our tickets checked we could see the queue splitting off for the 2D and 3D screen viewings.
23:30 – After taking our seats Greg left to get some food and drinks which seemed to take quite a while.
Thursday 17th November
00:00 – People were growing restless as the cinema was less that 50% full and there was only 5 mins to go. Unfortunately at 00:10 we still had nothing which was probably due to the queue of people still coming in.
00:20 – The adverts start and we notice something is not quite right with the 3D as everyone was getting ghosting and a very flickery screen.
00:30 – The problem with the 3D forces them to restart the show but this time at the bbfc screen for The Force Awakens.
00:35 – The crawl appeared and the crowd gave a huge cheer which unfortunately died down pretty quickly when we all realised that there was still a problem with the 3D. We sat for a further 15 minutes of distorted 3D an extremely bad flickering until low and behold peace was restored. A few patrons had walked out during this time to complain as it did take away from the experience a little. Anyway they got most of the 3D issues sorted (there were a few further glitches throughout the movie but they weren’t major) and we all queitened down to watch the movie.
02:50 – This marked the end of the movie and some of stayed to the end of the credits knowing there would be no stingers but knew there would be a massive queue for the car park payment machines.
Setting aside the 3D issues I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and can’t wait for the next one 🙂