Cineplex Cinemas Yonge-Dundas

Best keep your phone in your pocket during screenings here.

Someone couldn’t live without theirs, and not only did a theatre employee show up, but also with an armed guard.

They are keeping this one as Rio Can who is the property owner of the Scotiabank site has applied with the city to redevelop the site with condos and no word on replacing the cinema, so I am assuming they are keeping Varsity and Yong and Dundas as they are both still very busy venues for the chain

This theatre opened on March 28, 2008, with 21, 27 Dresses, Cloverfield, College Road Trip, Definitely, Maybe, The Eye, Fool’s Gold, Jumper, Juno, Meet the Spartans, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Run Fat Boy Run, Semi-Pro, Step Up 2: The Streets, Stop-Loss, There Will Be Blood, and Untraceable. It opened with 5000 seats and has Sony 4K projectors in all theatres, which Cineplex replaced with their own in 2012. From my research, it was originally planned to have 30 screens before changing it to 24. A 4DX auditorium was added on November 4, 2016, with Doctor Strange.

As of 2019, one of the auditoriums is now a 4DX auditorium. They retrofitted one of the smaller theatres with moving seats and special effects.

The VIP section is located on the second floor where Cinemas #16-21 used to be, although the whole area has been completely gutted and re-done. The entrance is located by where screens #15 and #22 are, with a slightly pushed out entrance (#15 and #22 are accessible on the sides via a small hall-way) leading into a main lobby with the lounge on the right hand side as you walk in.

VIP #1-3 are on the left hand side and #4 and #5 are ahead and in the back behind the bar. I also don’t recall this location having VIP bathrooms, either, but there are giant washrooms outside the theaters anyway.

In fact, on some of their digital displays the screens would read “#17”, “18” but my ticket (ALSO for CAPTIVE!) read “VIP #5”). But again, no screen #21 exists.

Also all five screens in this VIP section are floating 1.85 screens with no masking, so movies in scope play letterboxed on this screen.

The former box-office on the ground floor now houses two Cineplex food concepts – Poptopia and a Frozen Yogurt bar. I visited the VIP section last September (I took a few hours away from TIFF to see “Captive”, the new Atom Egoyan movie that wasn’t playing at the festival…draw your own conclusions on that one) and it was a pretty nice experience – the food and beverages we had were fine, as was the service (although only available during the pre-show, a server took our order and settled our bill via an iPad). As for the dine-in aspect, the selection was not nearly as expansive a selection as the Alamo Drafthouse although the quality and experience surpassed AMC’s Dine-In Theaters. My only complaint would have been the price of tickets had we not gone on half-price Tuesdays.

On a side note: I feel as if the VIP market could be an area of entry for another exhibitor if one were to want to try to enter the GTA in those few market areas were Cineplex has some weakness (or if Landmark were to start investing in recliner seats like US exhibitors have been doing).

The five new VIP cinemas open here on Friday May 9. I wonder if they will have a separate entrance like the new ones at the Queensway and where it will be.

Dave, I agree about your students in the lobby comment. Cineplex shouldn’t open the cinema to the moviegoing public until the students have vacated the premises.

Curious to see what the renovations will look like since I’ve always liked it just the way it is. And do you think they’ll figure out how to cope with that strange escalator setup? Newbies to this cinema often can’t figure out how to get up to the theatre, and afterwards, on how to get out. Except for that little problem: I really enjoy going to this complex.

I hadn’t heard about Walter Senior’s demise. Of course I remember him. One of my staff (female) in the art dept. commented on how good looking he was… I always thought he looked like a gangster. When he took over as CEO morale went downhill and the company was never the same again. There was the executive suite and then there were the thousands of others across the country who were responsible for running the theatres – two poles apart.

Jon — Remember Walter Senior he passed away a few years ago after being in a coma three years. That is an absolute fact.

All of us who worked for the company wondered about these things too. No one in the advertising or art dept. was ever consulted about the new Famous Players logo. We were just told to use it. Apparently the head honchos had friends in an ad agency that were paid way too much for their contribution. Sounds like sour grapes doesn’t it? Well, I admit it… it is.

The best logo of all time was the green maple leaf — the original Famous Players Theatres logo. That meant something to the public — all the other logos like Coliseum and Colossus and Silver City sucked. You wonder just how the hell they came up with the name SILVER CITY — it didn’t sound showy or attractive to me. And I do understand the concepts of branding and marketing