It's been a little more than six months since MoviePass faced several disastrous setbacks last summer. Much has happened since.

Its too-good-to-be-true $9.95 subscription plan, which allowed viewers to see one movie per day, was scuppered. Its parent company, Helios and Matheson, faced a potential delisting from NASDAQ. And according to estimates, MoviePass lost 58% of its users at the end of last year, myself included.

Yet a few days ago, Variety reported that MoviePass was set to roll out a new unlimited plan as one of the company's attempts to relaunch the brand. And soon after, Sinemia, one of MoviePass's competitors, announced a drop in its subscription prices as well as a new rollover feature. As a former MoviePass user, I had mixed feelings towards the announcement. After using MoviePass for a little over a year, I was one of the users who jumped ship last summer after several inconvenient changes were made to the service, from its brief introduction of price surging to limits on newly-released movies.

Following in the footsteps of friends, I decided to become an AMC Stubs A-List member last September. On paper, AMC's $19.95 subscription program has several advantages over MoviePass — including ease of use, the ability to make reservations ahead of time and the availability of 3D and IMAX screenings . But I still find myself missing several things about heyday-era MoviePass, and no, it's not just the most obvious one, like the fact that before I could see a movie every day for a ridiculously low price of $9.95.

For the past five months, I've just been seeing movies less. Before, with MoviePass's one-movie-per-day offer, I was seeing movies in theaters once or twice a week, whereas, with AMC's Stubs A-List program, I've averaging closer to three movies per month, despite the fact that the service allows me to watch up to three movies every week. January, in particular, has been a bit of a slow month for me. I've only seen two movies this month: "Free Solo" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." While the difference between my MoviePass and AMC Stubs A-List usage isn't what you would call drastic — I understand that I'm still going to the movies more frequently than an average person — I found it curious that my enthusiasm for moviegoing had dwindled after I switched programs.

One of the most important reasons behind this is, of course, location. With MoviePass, I could easily go to one of the three movie theaters that were just 20 to 30 minutes away from my house in Queens. But now with the Stubs A-List program, my options are limited to AMC theaters, and the closest AMC theater is almost an hour away (it also requires me to take two different buses, and nothing really kills my desire to see a movie than tricky transportation).

Limiting the number of theaters I frequent to AMC theaters also means a far more limited supply of movies. I miss out on a lot of movies that are, for instance, playing exclusively in theaters like the Angelika Film Center or the IFC Center, theaters that showcase more foreign or indie films compared to AMC's selections. It's a wrinkle I didn't really think through before I signed up, but it's one that might become increasingly important to myself and other people with the rise of movie theater subscription programs in a post-MoviePass era.

Since MoviePass's meteoric rise and downfall last year, there have been many competitors out there that have introduced their own movie subscription programs and have seen their membership numbers rise fast. AMC's Stubs A-List program, one of MoviePass's biggest rivals, debuted last June, a few days before MoviePass began to run into a series of issues, such as service outages and the infamous "Mission Impossible — Fallout" blackout. Stubs A-List garnered more than 600,000 subscribers after six months, an impressive feat considering they had initially envisioned hitting just 500,000 users in a year. Movie Club, a subscription plan launched by Cinemark Cinemas in December 2017, now has around 445,000 members. And last July, Alamo Drafthouse began testing a beta version of Alamo Season Pass, in Yonkers. Some 40,000 people were reportedly on the waitlist less than a month after its launch.

Does this mean that movie subscription programs are going to become more popular in this post-MoviePass era? Michael Trafton, the Chief Technology Officer of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, thinks so. In an email, Trafton says that he believes "Alamo Season Pass and other theater-based subscriptions are the future," and that his company's movie subscription program has led to consumers watching more movies . When I asked whether or not the decrease of MoviePass users has brought down box office revenues, Trafton said although they've seen a pretty large drop in MoviePass usage, there has not been "a drop in overall attendance."

Ashton Pina, a public relations manager at Nitehawk Cinema, agrees that there hasn't been a significant change in attendance since the fallen popularity of MoviePass. The dine-in theater, which opened a second location outside of Brooklyn's Prospect Park last December, currently does not have any movie subscription or membership program of its own. According to Pina, Nitehawk's customer base are primarily loyal, frequent moviegoers within the neighborhood, and so its theatrical attendance has remained largely unaffected by MoviePass's downfall.

Still, it remains to be seen whether subscribing to a movie subscription program will become the new norm for moviegoers. At its height, MoviePass had more than three million subscribers and, according to the company itself, boasted more than 5% of box office receipts in the US. It was also attributed as one of the probable causes behind the 4 to 5% bump in attendance in 2018 compared to 2017. It's hard to say though whether MoviePass's competitors will ever reach the same heights.

In a survey conducted by The Hollywood Reporter and Morning Consult last October, only 6% of the 2,201 people surveyed said they were likely to sign up for a movie ticket subscription service. If theaters were hoping to lure more subscriptions, they would have to go beyond targeting frequent moviegoers, the demographic most served by such services, says Morning Consult VP Tyler Sinclair. In order to thrive, theaters will have to try to find ways to attract casual moviegoers, people who only go to theaters once or twice a year.

But even if they don't, the attractiveness of ticket subscription services to frequent moviegoers might still help boost the domestic box office. Although a 4 to 5% increase in attendance might not seem like a large figure, its growth is still worth noting considering the North American box office has been more or less stagnant in the last few years. As frequent moviegoers, those who go to theaters at least once a month, make up nearly half of the tickets sold in the US, the power of movie ticket subscription services to continue to drive up ticket sales shouldn't be underestimated, although widespread subscription of these services among more casual moviegoers might not be happening anytime soon.

For someone like me, who, even before MoviePass launched its $9.95 plan, went to the movies around once a month, movie subscription services are a blessing and something I'd likely stick to since it's hard for me to go back to paying the full price of an expensive NYC movie ticket after using MoviePass for over a year. And while I miss heyday-MoviePass, that doesn't necessarily mean AMC's Stubs A-List program is inferior. Sometimes it's just a matter of a right fit.

For me, the choice of a movie ticket subscription service brings to mind the dilemma of choosing a streaming service subscription. Should I go for sheer quantity, which in the case of streaming services would point to either Hulu or Amazon, or should I put quality into consideration? If I'm judging by the quantity of movies available on movie ticket subscription services alone, that might point to either the Stubs A-List program, since AMC is the largest theater chain in the US, or subscription services like Sinemia, which can be used in any theater and which now has a monthly plan of $19.99 for a movie per day4.

And what about the unique or relatively exclusive content both streaming and movie ticket subscription services offer? I currently only have a Netflix subscription, but after watching "Fyre," I was sorely tempted to pay for Hulu to watch "Frye Fraud," a Hulu-exclusive documentary that also covers the disastrous Fyre Fest from two years ago. The same also applies to my movie ticket subscription services. I find myself reconsidering the usefulness of my A-List membership every time I search for the showtimes of foreign movies or smaller, more independent films and realize that those movies aren't playing in AMC theaters. For the past few months, I've gone to the IFC Center a handful of times to see movies like "Shoplifters" and "Roma" and it has made me wonder whether I should get an IFC Center membership on top of my Stubs A-List membership.

At the moment, maybe I'll still continue on with my AMC membership since it provides, arguably, the best bang for your buck because of its offerings of 3D and IMAX screenings. Or maybe I'll go for a membership program with some of the smaller theaters in New York, theaters which show the indie films I've missed out last year because I was checking up only on AMC-specific showings. Or maybe I can do what I've been doing for the past few months: pay for the full price of a movie ticket when it comes to movies I really want to see in a non-AMC theater.