African American Museum’s same-day passes are snapped up quickly on website
Like tickets to hot concert tour, free same-day passes to the National Museum of African American History and Culture were snapped up in minutes Monday morning, the day the museum the museum debuted a Web-based same-day-ticket system instead of having people line up in person.
The museum distributed 880 free passes, grouped in 30-minute time slots between 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The tickets became available at 6:30 a.m., and by 6:34 the banners saying “unavailable” and “sold out” covered every time slot. The passes represented about 10 percent of the 8,700 distributed for the day.
More than 643,000 people have visited the Smithsonian’s newest museum since it opened Sept. 24.
The museum announced the change to its same-day policy last week, saying the colder weather was the reason for eliminating the in-person line. Every weekday since opening, people had lined up along 14th Street, often by the hundreds, for the chance to obtain passes when staff began distributing them at 9:15 a.m. Often visitors lined up before dawn to ensure entry.
The change surprised Robin Choi, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Howard University. Her classmates had been successful nabbing passes by lining up by 8:30; the switch to online caught her off guard.
“I’m not super bummed,” she said. “I’m fortunate enough…