Da Vinci tickets for National Museum in London?
December 9, 2011 1:47 AM   Subscribe

Has anyone bought tickets on the day for the Da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery in London?

I know that the advance tickets are sold out but a limited number are sold each morning. The gallery opens at 10am, and I will be in London on Friday of next week. Does anyone have any idea on what time I need to be there to get tickets? Would 9am suffice?
posted by StephenF to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (8 answers total)
 
We tried our luck a week or so ago, and were told by the security guard that people started queueing from 6:30 am. He said that anyone who got there after 8:30 wouldn't be getting in that day.
posted by timshel at 1:49 AM on December 9, 2011


Response by poster: Timshel was that a weekday or at a weekend?
posted by StephenF at 2:37 AM on December 9, 2011


I have a friend who got in on a weekday morning just last week. She waited for about an hour and a half, starting around 10 (which is much later than she intended to get there, but it worked out.)
posted by swingbraid at 2:49 AM on December 9, 2011


It was on a Tuesday morning
posted by timshel at 2:54 AM on December 9, 2011


Can depend on the weather, a couple of years ago we just walked into the "buried Chinese Army" exhibition at the British Museum because the weather was bad and attendance that morning was poor.

So trying your luck at the start of the day can pay off but make sure you have alternative plans. Or wait a few weeks for the attention to die down.
posted by epo at 3:06 AM on December 9, 2011


I've been told that unless you queue early (as in hours before the exhibition starts), you're very unlikely to get in. The advice from people at the Gallery is to wait until after New Year's if you want to see it without queueing for unreasonably long periods.
posted by anaximander at 4:52 AM on December 9, 2011


I tried 2 weeks ago and was told by the desk staff that queueing from 7:30 would get me a ticket. Unfortunately was only in London for 3 days so didn't have time to try again.
posted by DelusionsofGrandeur at 8:22 AM on December 9, 2011


Response by poster: To close out this thread: I got there at 8.25am on Friday morning at which point there were about 100 people already in the queue. The exhibition opens late on Fridays so they were giving out 700 tickets in total, versus the usual daily 500. I was at the ticket desk buying two tickets at 11am, so 2.5 hours total queue time. We had a choice of entry for any time after 1.30pm, and chose 2pm. Once you're in you can stay as long as you want, though there is no re-entry. The exhibition was full but not miserably so, and we there was enough space to appreciate the magic of even the most popular stuff. It worked very well for us to go anti-clockwise through the rooms instead of the standard clockwise progression. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to see, highly recommended.
posted by StephenF at 1:40 PM on December 18, 2011


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