UCI Newbridge

ooh look. it’s a little baby multi-​plex. This newly arrived cinema is on level 3 (I think) of the fairly newly built Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge town. It just has 6 screens. It’s an odd feeling of a much larger cinema slotted into a small enough space. The auditoriums are smaller than you might expect for a UCI but the screens in them seem plenty big. They are also set up for 3D which all seems to function well. Because the auditoriums seem small it’s probably a good idea to book in advance as myself and a friend discovered as we tried to go to a sold-​out 3pm showing over Christmas.
Another slightly odd thing about this cinema is that, apart from access to the screens, there’s not really a designated ‘you are now entering the cinema’ area. Tickets and food are sold beside the entrance to the screens from counters which open out onto the main thoroughfare. Having queued twice here my impression is that the queues move at a glacial pace. But they’re new so maybe the staff will speed up when they get their bearings. The other thing that I noticed (or perhaps failed to notice) was that I didn’t see designated cinema toilets, but the shopping centre toilets are quite nearby so maybe in the interests of squishing a multi-​plex into a small space they decided that was the way to go. Or perhaps I just missed them.
On the plus side you can access the cinema from level 3b of the carpark without having to go through the busy shopping centre. So if you just want to nip to the cinema and avoid rabid shoppers you can.
Overall it’s a handy little cinema — a surprisingly good facility in a small space. Just don’t buy a bottle of water there — it costs something like 3.50!