A Montreal-area mother is outraged after a cinema charged her $7 to bring her six-month-old baby to a matinee. The theatre’s owner says the charge is a necessary deterrent to noisy kids.
Andria Riti is a mother of two, currently on maternity leave. She recently took her eight-year-old and six-month-old girls to a Cinemas Guzzo location on the west end of the Island of Montreal.
“I asked for a general admission for myself and my eldest daughter, and he pointed to the stroller and said ‘she has to pay too,’” Riti recalls.
Riti says she couldn’t believe she had to buy a ticket for a baby.
“She can fly for free on an airplane, she can gain free admittance to Disney theme parks, but she's got to pay to watch a Disney movie,” Riti says.
Cinema owner Vince Guzzo says the fee is meant to make parents think twice about bringing young children to movies. He says he has had many complaints about kids crying in the past.
“Do we try and respect 0.01 per cent of our business who are under three years old or do we respect the other 99 per cent of people?” Guzzo says.
Guzzo says he wants his customers to know that they “at least have a half-decent chance of watching the movie.”
Guzzo points out that children under age three can still see movies for free at some of his cinemas, during a morning screening specially reserved for people with babies and toddlers.
As for Riti, she says she won’t be going back to Guzzo’s cinemas ever again.
With a report from CTV Montreal’s Matt Grillo
