Been using this cinema since I was a toddler for a...

Been using this cinema since I was a toddler for about thirty years now. Since becoming an IMAX it has really improved in many ways and is in general fantastic, with lovely facilities, a brilliant IMAX screen and wonderful cosy club screen.

Don't get me wrong based on the following critiques, this is a fabulous cinema, probably one of the best in a huge radius, but I had to knock off four half stars for various reasons:

1: It has to compete with the nearby Vue O2 cinema, the Odeon is clearly much nicer in the facilities it offers and comfort /luxury factor, but the Vue has more screens and as a result has a wider variety of films on offer; at times it seems like some movies only show at the odeon for a couple of days before being pulled, and some films don't even get a look in at all which is a shame, it could benefit from a better organised schedule perhaps.

2: It has a fantastic comfy bar upstairs which is woefully underused and often unmanned. I hate when I see this, I realise that some managers feel that there is no need to staff bars at quiet times, but if you fail to plan you plan to fail. There are many times I've wanted to go to the Ambar for pizzas and drinks before movies on my days off with friends, but I haven't because I know nine times out of ten it will not have staff there.
Also, there are two sad little coffee shops nearby with an all day crowd of predominantly senior people which could easily be won over if they were aware that there were much more comfortable and similarly priced facilities at the Odeon, and the fact that the odeon offers a good senior discount for movies is a bonus. This is all revenue the cinema could easily capture with very little effort.

3: this is a problem I have with all cinemas today to be fair... Ushers that don't do their jobs. If there are noisy people or groups that sneak in and don't pay or sit in their allocated seats, put feet up on seats, or are generally disruptive during the film, they should be thrown out and /or banned from the cinema. This is something that is just ignored today. Thankfully however, this isn't much of a problem in this cinema as most of the time the crowd are great in this location, but in Camden and in south London it makes you wonder why cinemas employ ushers at all since they don't really seem to serve any purpose.

4: I wish they would show more films at later times, and more midnight premieres. Vue wins out here with films running further into the night unfortunately.

...

All in all this is a fantastic cinema with lots of potential and hopefully it will improve in these respects. On a side note the seats are very comfortable and staggered in a good way with nobody likely to block your view. Vip seating is fantastic, the chairs are much more comfortable than at the Vue although to be fair the Vue chairs are slightly more spacious, but both are suitably large.

Staff seem lovely, unfortunately better training might be useful as they are slow and sometimes it seems like it is the first day on the job for many of them, but they are approachable, pleasant, and friendly which is what really matters.