Changes in attendance patterns

I've noticed a couple things over the summer I thought were interesting. They may or may not continue during the school year.

Fewer Children to kid's movies. - Even for UP which was a big hit most of the attendance was adults, the other kid's movies we played didn't do great. The matinees just barely broke even. I was planning to play ICE AGE 3 but I don't think I will now. I don't think adults want to see it enough.

Yet more spreading out of business over the nights. - When I first started at Western Film we had a fairly standard pattern, busy weekends and discount Tuesday, the rest of the week was fairly quiet. Over the last few years it spread out until most nights were at least somewhat busy. This summer it got even weirder. Sunday and Monday were often busier than Friday or Saturday?! Tuesdays aren't as busy but sometimes Wednesday or Thursday are busier than Tuesday.

During the school year I attributed this to more night classes plus students going out to other places on the weekends. For the summer I think it's people going away or whatever on the weekend and seeing the movies during the week. I kinda like this trend, it takes the same number of staff to man the theatre for 10 people or 60. If we get the same number of people spread over more nights then we have less problems with lineups or the theatre getting too crowded and people not getting to sit where they want.

In very general terms people seem to be willing to see films they haven't heard a lot about but have heard are good. I'm not sure how much this affects it but a couple people have said they decided to see a film because we were playing it on the assumption that it must be good. It makes sense, as a single screen theatre I'm not going to play a film that isn't good if people also haven't heard of it. I only play bad films that were big hits (I'm looking at you Twilight).