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We recently completed another successful theater renovation project which included the conversion of eight existing slope floor auditoriums into stadium seating. As is typical with most stadium seating retrofit projects, one third of the total seat count was lost as a result of the conversion however; based on feed-back from our client, their ticket sales and overall revenues have increased dramatically. For those of you operators that have gone thru a stadium seating retrofit project, has your experience been the same?

Do you have any pictures of the renovations would love to see!
Also how many seats did you start out with and then after the stadium how much were the new total at?

JKR - send pictures! Please!

What would be a normal rise & run for the seat risers when you convert?
What would be a minimum distance from the top riser to the projection centerline?

Thanks

The photographs we have of the auditoriums were taken during construction and do not represent the final product. I will take pictures of the completed work during my next visit to the theater.

The change in seat count varied with each auditorium converted. Existing auditroium layout, proportions and ceiling height all have an impact on the stadium seating layout and final seat count. Our goal is to try and maximize the final seat count while maintaining standards for good presentation and addressing building code and accessibility requirements. Some of the auditorium seat count changes included:
254 seats existing to 206 seats converted
239 seats existing to 173 seats converted
224 seats existing to 173 seats converted
156 seats existing to 128 seats converted
108 seats existing to 73 setas converted

The typical seating aisle riser height was 1'-0" for the back of the auditoriums and 6" for the front of the auditoriums. The width of the seating aisles was set at 3'-6". There was an excessively deep auditorium where the limited ceiling height resulted in having to go with a 6" seating aisle riser height at both the front and back sections of seating.

We prefer to set the back seating platform 4' below the projection booth elevation (which typically sets the center of projection port 8'-0" above the back row platform). Projectors can be set on a platform when existing projection booth elevations are an issue.

We have converted 3 of 7 screens to stadium in a closed market. Overall responce has been good but no dramatic change at box office. In a competitive market stadium makes all the difference-closed market-I am not sure.