Celebration! Cinema Crossroads

• 6600 Ring Road
• Portage, MI 49024
• (269) 323-0447
• Website

Ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been writing a food blog.  I probably would have been writing a movie review blog.  When I was in college, I saw everything in theaters.  When I wasn’t going to the theater, I was at Family Video picking up classic movies or bad horror movies. 

Things change.  Movies got expensive and I didn’t have much free time.  Still, I took full advantage of my Netflix subscription and still watched 15-20 movies every month. 

Then J and I started dating and I actually had someone to spend my free time with.  We still watched movies, but not as much.  Instead, dining out became our thing.  It’s something we both enjoy and in most cases, we can get a meal for the price of movie tickets and popcorn….oh yeah, and we really don’t have the same taste in movies. 

Since we started dating, we have gone to a handful of movies.  All romantic comedies….and The Hangover.  I’m not complaining.  Some of them I would have watched on my own.  One of them, not a chance in hell *cough*Sexinthecity*cough*

Since she started seeing the previews, J has wanted to see Valentine’s Day.  Well, it came out tonight and she brought it up.  She sold me by saying, “We can have movie theater popcorn for dinner.”  Eh, ok. 

There are multiple theaters in town playing the movie, but we chose to stay close to home by going to Celebration Cinema Crossroads behind the Crossroads Mall in Portage.  The physical address is Ring Road, but it’s easier if you just go into the mall parking lot and drive around to JCPenny.  You’ll see it.

When we went to movies in Lansing, we went to the Crossroads there as well.  We knew we liked the chain and that did have a little bit of influence in our decision.

The Celebration Cinema Crossroads has a really tight parking lot and the snow removal didn’t help much.  It was really hard to maneuver and when you to the end of an aisle, you better hope you didn’t run into another car looking for a parking spot.  There was only room for one to pass.

We knew the movie we were going to see was probably going to be a popular one.  We were only a half hour early, but the crowd hadn’t quite shown up yet. 

We grabbed our tickets and headed to the concession stand.  We went with the Super Combo which is a large bag of popcorn and two regular drinks.  We upgraded to a bucket for a dollar more.  It’s easier to share a bucket than a bag. 

What I really like about Celebration is that they give you the popcorn and two empty cups.  There are drink and flavor stations in the lobby where you fill your own drink and put your own butter on the popcorn.  They also have various seasonings and salt so you get to somewhat customize the popcorn to your tastes instead depending on the kids working behind the counter to tell you how much butter you need. 

We grabbed our drinks and a lot of napkins then put more butter than we should have on the popcorn, but hey, it’s not like we do this all the time.  There’s just something about movie theater popcorn and it has to have a lot of butter on it.  I would never do that at home, but the once or twice a year we go to a movie, I’m gonna do it. 

We found our way into the theater only to find most of the stadium seat section to be full.  We spotted a couple seats in the front of that section and we took that.  I knew I’d have to get up and pee at some point, so I could make an easy exit with no one in front of me. 

Bathrooms…let me vent on that subject for a second.  The bathrooms are outside of the theater area, so you actually have to go back past the ticket taker to get to them.  It took me forever to actually find them because I was looking in the wrong area.  When I went to go back into the theater, I got stopped by the kid taking tickets.  He wanted to see mine.  Hell, I couldn’t remember where I put it.  I dug through my pockets looking for the ticket stub just so I could get back into a movie I had already paid for.  What a pain in the ass.  I don’t know who came up with that design, but they should be kicked in the teeth. 

While I was up, I filled up Mountain Dew.  Bad move.  I had to get up to pee again.  As for the popcorn, we had it gone within the first fifteen minutes of the movie.  We were about fifteen minutes early and there were fifteen minutes of previews, so it took us forty five minutes or so to polish off the bucket of popcorn. 

I’m not going to comment on the movie.  Critically, it’s getting panned.  J liked it, but I wasn’t wild about it.  It had some funny moments, but instead of just being one predictable RomCom, it was like six of them instead.  It was six of everything J likes about those movies and six of everything I hate about them. 

The parking situation was weird and the bathroom situation was annoying, but other than that, Celebration had the most important thing to us, popcorn and Pepsi.  I’m sure we’ll go back if we go to a movie again, but who knows when that will be.  Overall, a good start to our Valentine’s weekend. 

Our Movie Ready Popcorn