Trick? Or treat?</p><p>Starting Friday, moviegoers will be able to choose their seats when they buy their tickets at AMC&rsquo;s Town Center 20 megaplex in Leawood.</p><p>For this reserved seating they&rsquo;ll pay an additional $2 &mdash; raising the cost of admission for a weekend evening show to $12.</p><p>It&rsquo;s part of an effort by the national theater chain to make a trip to the movies an enhanced experience.</p><p>Movie theaters have tried many things in recent years to pull patrons off their comfy couches and away from their high-def TVs. Some theaters, such as the Legends 14 in Kansas City, Kan., offer cheaper tickets during the week. Others, such as the Cinemark Palace at the Plaza, go the high-end route with VIP seating, offering drinks, food and a waitstaff.</p><p>AMC spokeswoman Sun Dee Larson said audiences at AMC Mainstreet, a plush, six-screen boutique theater in the Power & Light District, have embraced reserved seating since that facility opened last winter. But the Town Center program is the Kansas City-based chain&rsquo;s first attempt at theaterwide reserved seating in a megaplex. The difference is in scale: Mainstreet seats about 500, while Town Center seats about 2,500. </p><p>If reserved seating goes over well at Town Center, AMC will consider offering it at other large theaters throughout the city and possibly the country. </p><p>&ldquo;Wherever we&rsquo;ve had reserved seating, it&rsquo;s been positive,&rdquo; Larson said. &ldquo;Customers like the idea of knowing exactly where they will be sitting. We thought it was time to try it in a traditional theater.&rdquo;</p><p>But some patrons aren&rsquo;t so sure. </p><p>Sixteen-year-old Jacob Jordan said the policy would prohibit underage moviegoers from sneaking into R-rated movies, but he thinks the policy is fair.</p><p>&ldquo;If you buy your ticket first,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you get the best seat.&rdquo;</p><p>But several of his Blue Valley Northwest High School classmates &mdash; who had come to the Town Center last weekend to see &ldquo;Whip It&rdquo; &mdash; were dubious. </p><p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re going to lose their audience,&rdquo; said Paige Kime, 16, after she was informed of the new policy. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t have the money to pay $12 for a movie ticket and for concessions, too.&rdquo;</p><p> Said Jordan Bliss, 16: &ldquo;I get the motive behind it, but it&rsquo;s really for old people. They should do this only on weekdays. I&rsquo;m telling you, over half the teenagers won&rsquo;t come.&rdquo;</p><p>And perhaps not just teens. Fifty-somethings Lori and Steve Greenberg regard the Town Center as their neighborhood movie house and usually go there two or three times a month. But now they&rsquo;ll think twice, Lori said. </p><p>&ldquo;What with the bad economy, we&rsquo;re looking for reasons <em>not</em> to go to the movies. This just gives us another one. Another $2? Forget it.&rdquo;</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Making a comeback</span></strong></p><p>Reserved movie seating isn&rsquo;t exactly new. In the 1950s and &rsquo;60s, film extravaganzas &mdash; epics such as &ldquo;Ben-Hur&rdquo; or musicals such as &ldquo;The Sound of Music&rdquo; &mdash; often were presented as &ldquo;road show&rdquo; attractions with reserved seating and glossy programs.</p><p>But the rise of the multiplex &mdash; an idea originated by AMC in Kansas City &mdash; changed America&rsquo;s moviegoing habits. With its ability to screen several films at once and stagger start times to minimize the wait, the megaplex pushed filmgoing from a somewhat formal affair into a come-when-you-like, come-as-you-are experience.</p><p>Now reserved seats are making a comeback. For the last year they&rsquo;ve been required at the three plush dine-in Cinema Suites auditoriums at AMC&rsquo;s Studio 30 in Olathe. Last week the reserved seating policy was expanded to include the eight adjacent Fork & Screen auditoriums (a more modest version of the Cinema Suites). The reserved seat policy does not apply to Studio 30&rsquo;s traditional non-food-service auditoriums.