New Moon Madness at Arlington

Last night I attended the New Moon midnight showing at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara. I’m not sure who is responsible but I wanted to let you know that the situation was chaotic and dangerous.

I arrived at 10:00 p.m. and by the time the doors opened, people were fighting, yelling and pushing each other. I was nearly trampled as I was pushed along in a sea of people running to get through the doors. I felt that the staff was in danger as people were pushing through and running past them. The young woman who was trying to take our tickets was not able to keep up and actually looked frightened from the way the crowd was acting.

Earlier in the evening a couple of people went to the box office to ask if there was going to be any assistance for crowd control. They were told that it was a public sidewalk and they (the people, not the Arlington) needed to call the police for assistance. Even though this may be the case and the law, it would have prudent for the theater to have had security and had the line roped off.

And soon enough it was no longer on public property but on the Arlington’s property that people began to shove and nearly trample others as the result of the chaos. This was not a Harry Potter crowd and the behavior was remarkably bad and, as I said earlier, even dangerous. I know that the theater is not the “morality” police but there were illegal substances being smoked, foul language, and rude behavior.

When the third Twilight film comes out, in the future, it would be prudent and proactive for the Arlington and Metro Theaters to take last night’s (this morning’s) situation into consideration for planning another such event.-Elena Yee