Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Slaughter Lane

amber anderson 2 months ago

I never leave bad reviews for places, especially places I loved going to. I used to come to Alamo a LOT, I’ve lived in Austin since 2008. I went yesterday for a matinee, I used to get a hot pretzel with beer queso and fries. When I walked in to buy a ticket, no screens were on to tell you what theaters were showing which movies. Nothing. I had looked up the movie the day before, the attendant rang me up, was absolutely lovely, and told me which one to go to. Sit down, QR code ordering through my phone. UGH. Menu has changed, ok. $7 for a fountain Coke Zero? Absolutely not. HARD NO. Pretzel breadsticks with queso and mustard, didn’t want the mustard, but $4 for extra queso? No thank you. The queso I got was disgusting. Tasted like bland white queso. Breadsticks had so much salt on them I picked 70% of it off, and they were bone dry. I was starving, so ate them, but there was no one to even complain to. $15 for that? Never again. $9 for fries? Obviously something has changed, and that is YALLS AUDACITY. There is way too much competition now that is way better than this. I will drive 45 minutes out of my way to go somewhere else. Another Austin staple that is circling the drain.

Torrin Glick 2 weeks ago

This is not the same Alamo it used to be. Really sad, I used to love going to Alamo, especially for the food. I cannot believe how much the quality has gone down over the years. “Back in my day” a human would take our order and the food that was delivered was delicious. Today we ordered on our phones and were charged an auto gratuity for poor quality.

JPDG13 3 weeks ago

Good but pricey and impersonal. Alamo Drafthouse just switched to digital menus only. Which is more efficient and I get that. But they charge an 18% automatic service fee along with another 5% afterwards for already very overpriced food. I feel as though they've created a system to milk people for as much money as they can while offering as little service or interaction as they need. The feeling I get from the experience is used, not seen, and insignificant. It has an unfortunate Disney vibe to the business.

James Bilodeau 2 months ago

Wow. I used to love this place. They just killed the experience doing away with (most) waitstaff and implementing a clunky mobile phone ordering app. Everyone around me was fumbling around with it as the movie was starting entering in credit card numbers and figuring out how to order. It was remarkable someone could think this was OK to do movie goers. A key part of their brand had been keeping phones "dark, silent and out of sight." Despite the disappearance of most waitstaff, they still included a mandatory 18% gratuity to pay for... an app? And then only after the movie was over did I found I had received a text stating that they had added another 5% on my bill by default. This extra tip on top used to be "not expected but greatly appreciated". I would of course tip to get to >25% for human waitstaff welcoming you taking your order and making your experience seamless. But now they just take the additional 5% on top of 18% as default to pay for the pleasure of fumbling around with their app. I've been going to his place for 20 years. I'm sad to say it's time to say goodbye now that their new corporate overlords have turned this Austin-born gem into yet another company who thinks its OK to treat their customers with this kind of disdain. Farewell Alamo.

Lizzy Harris 4 weeks ago

Not only did they changed to the mobile ordering, but right when they did their food got HORRIBLE. Used to be real quality and now you can taste the Cysco freeze-burn from everything like their new beer cheese queso (RIP to the fantastic OG queso) and grocery-store pre-made pretzels to the frozen pizzas. I feel so bad for the servers who are going to suffer from everyone resorting to sodas and popcorn like at normal theaters - bring back the real food.