Theaters have reason to impose a minimum age requirement

This may seem like a small problem, but for the people who save to pay big bucks for Strip theater shows, it ain't.

I'd hope it would be obvious by now that theater personnel need to be prepared for audience distractions: cell phones, flash photography, talking, maybe even people taking their socks and shoes off.

I recently received the following letter (edited here) about a problem that could easily be solved. But what I had to go through to get a simple answer from the higher-ups gives a hint at how difficult easy problems can be.

"(Recently) my husband and I attended 'The Lion King' at the 4 p.m. showing at Mandalay Bay. Two rows in front of us, there was a mother with babe in arms. ... After about 20 minutes of fussing and ruining the show for all the people surrounding her, she took the babe outside. Amazingly, she returned after intermission and the same thing happened.

"How can a theater allow this to happen? ... We were utterly disappointed with this theater at Mandalay Bay. It took Herculean efforts to keep our minds on the show. We felt so sorry for the performers."

To be fair to Mandalay Bay, this sort of thing happens all over town. But I decided to try to find out what "The Lion King" theater does to deal with these situations.

I contacted Yvette Monet from MGM Resorts International corporate public affairs. I asked her what the theater's policy was on infants. She asked to see a copy of the complaint. Fair enough. She also wanted to see any previous column in which I had printed a complaint and provided a reply. I declined that one, because I felt this wasn't about me. I was just asking for MGM's policy. I assured Monet that I had no intention of writing a "Get Mandalay Bay" article.

Then I got this nice-sounding email (edited here) from her.

"Thank you for bringing this incident to our attention. We certainly regret (the) experience. ... Our theater staff takes every precaution to ensure that every guest is able to enjoy the show. ... We discourage parents from bringing infants and very small children as it is difficult for them to enjoy a full-length Broadway musical production. ... In the event an usher does not immediately address a disruption during a performance, we encourage patrons to immediately bring the situation to the attention of an usher."

I then emailed: "Is there a minimum age children have to be to be granted admission?"

The answer I got back was: "No. A seat must be purchased for every child regardless of age."

I tried again. "What is the minimum age for audience members at 'The Lion King'?"

Finally, two weeks to the day after I sent my first email, I got the reply I was looking for: "There is no minimum age requirement at the theater."

Many theaters do enforce a minimum age, Ms. Monet, and apparently there are good reasons for doing so.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@ aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.