tl;dr - Went to the iMAX, it's pretty average but I'm happy Sweden's got one now
Mall of Scandinavia sports Sweden's first iMAX theater. Visited a few weeks after the opening and saw Star Wars: Force Awakens (good flick, 8/10). The venue is nice, clean and fresh. There's a big snack shop as you enter the cinema area which has the usual overpriced stuff but it was well organized. The common areas area all nice and the entire cinema is rather beautiful I must say, nice decorations everywhere and feels fresh with just the right touch of cinematic retro.
On to the iMAX theater. It was striking to me from entering that it didn't feel that big. I've been to my share of iMAX theaters and they all felt bigger than this one. So don't expect to be blown away by the sheer size of the screen area which I've experienced at other iMAXes. Other than that it was nice - with more leg room than usual. It got really hot after a while, both me and my company talked about it after the movie. I was prepared to go a rant about SF sucking, being cheap and not getting adequate AC but noticed another reviewer saying it was cold so hopefully they're still configuring and tweaking the climate setup.
The overall user experience involving SF is always improvable. Their site is horrible but luckily I didn't do the ticket purchasing for this movie. It's also getting really really expensive. From being expensive always it's now leaning towards ridiculous - an iMAX movie will run you 215SEK at the time of this writing. That's about the same for BFI iMAX in London which is a jaw-dropping experience so I can understand why that one would be more expensive.
I'm still happy there's an iMAX in Sweden now. It seems popular and hopefully will pave way for more of them to create some healthy competition. I'll go back, but it's nothing special and that's worth remembering especially if you're used to the iMAX format. read more