Hard of Hearing and Going to the Movies: How do you deal with it?

I haven't been able to see movies in theaters for about 35 years, due to Meniere's and the action moving back and forth across a big screen. I can't even tolerate a really big home TV if there's action, like a basketball game. It struck me recently, after decades of being HOH before dropping lower on the scale, that I don't like to watch movies on TV (no captions available, thanks to %^#(&*%&$&^ Charter). I believe it's because you can get to know characters in a TV series and anticipate what they may do/say, while the same actor in a movie may be entirely different. We do get one channel with captions, which shows old Law and Order shows three nights a week, so I watch that and do lots and lots of reading.

I don't go. They crank the volume up to ear damaging levels, and I don't want to lose any more of my hearing.

When they come out on Netflix or Redbox I can watch them at home with captions.

I wear noise cancelling head phones and use the caption device many theaters now provide. The sound is so loud for most movies, I can still hear the music etc. I get what folks are saying and enjoy my time at the movies!

But not all movies offer the closed-caption capability, and I don't know how to find out which do unless I actually go to the movie theater, buy my ticket, and inquire. And all closed-captioning devices provided by theaters do not function reliably, but they only turn on (or fail to) as the movie begins. I gave up on seeing movies for those reasons. Wait for them to be shown on TV and watch with closed captions.

All Regal and AMC theaters offer closed captioning devices. Hope this helps.

I agree. The ALDs at theaters are generally not good. Lack of maintenance and dead batteries are common in my limited experience. And if batteries are dead the staff present usually doesn't know where to find fresh batteries.

Even with fresh batteries the audio at most movies has so much sound effects that it makes the speech impossible for me to understand and follow the movie. My preference would be a separate sound track with the speech only delivered by induction loop. I'm sure acoustic sound in the theater would be more than enough sound effects for me even with occlusive hearing aids. That won't happen in my lifetime.

That leaves captioned (open and closed) movies. I still keep hoping that open captions become more accepted by the general public and offered more. If hearing people had to watch movies with the captioning devices generally available (no audio) they'd understand. It is good that ALDs in use now allow a lot of people to enjoy movies, but they don't help many of us. So for those of you who can enjoy movies - good for you. I'll just go do something else for entertainment.

All theaters that have the digital projectors SHOULD offer captions via the CaptiView or Sony Glasses system. However, I don't think all movies have captions but I may be wrong. For the theaters that still have the old analog projectors, you'll only find an FM or infrared system. There may be some theaters that are still inaccessible but I would hope that people would advocate to get that changed. When I first tried the CaptiView several years ago, the captions only came on when the main show started. This stinks since there is no way to know for certain if the device is going to work until the movie starts. I just saw the new Star Wars movie last week. Most of the previews had captions so I was able to know that the device would work when the main movie started.
Tony in Michigan

We have one theater in out little podunk town of 9,000 30 miles away. It is a Suick theater and they have CC and ALD, but finding out which movies have captions is a little challenge. You have to call the theater and getting someone to answer the phone is "iffy". I'm nowhere near a movie expert but I've never seen anything on a movie advertisement regarding captioning.

arrowshooter, I know it's a long shot, but if you can band enough support, the theaters can get open captioned movies so that everyone sees captions without an auxiliary device. In Michigan, there are quite a few d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) groups that have Facebook pages. I sometimes see posts regarding open captioned movies. We try to get support for those movies since the theaters do go out of norm to get these films.
Tony in Michigan

Not really a long shot Tony. It already happened. That's exactly why I started this thread. In my first post (third paragraph) I told of hearing about an open caption movie to be shown as the requested by a deaf/hard of hearing person. I found out through the deaf community and wanted to support the effort. I hadn't been to a movie in a long time and this one was open captioned. I enjoyed the movie and sent the theater a "thank you" for their consideration. I saw about 6 other deaf/hard of hearing people there that I knew. That was over 10% of the people in this small theater. I thought it was great that SOMEONE listened. We need to do more of this.