Citizens waited for over an hour online to purchase admission tickets to the Hong Kong Palace Museum on Tuesday morning ahead of the museum's opening on July 2.
The sales of about 140,000 tickets in the first four weeks opened to the public at 10am Tuesday. Visitors must purchase their tickets in advance through the museum's website or West Kowloon Cultural District's website or app.
After logging into the museum's website at about 9.30am, the landing page said the waiting time remained about 10 minutes, and there were about 400 users ahead.
The number of people waiting in the queue suddenly rose to almost 1,000 just before 10am with about 20 minutes of waiting time and jumped to over 2,500 around 10.15am, expecting an hour of waiting before accessing the website.
After the sales had been open for half an hour, the museum's website estimated more than an hour of waiting with almost 5,000 people in the queue.
The website of West Kowloon Cultural District also told users to wait for more than an hour at 10.30am before they could access the site and buy the tickets.
The 140,000 tickets on sale included the free admission tickets available every Wednesday in the first year. There will only be an on-site ticket office three months after the opening.
About 80 percent of the tickets will be available for sales or reservation at the West Kowloon Cultural District centralized ticketing platform. The remaining 20 percent of tickets will go to three ticketing partners -- Klook, China Travel Service (HK) Ltd, and Fliggy.
For general admission, adult tickets are priced at HK$50 while concession tickets at HK$25. Tickets, including visits to special exhibitions, are priced at HK$120 for adults and HK60 for students or the elderly.
Click here to visit the museum's website to buy tickets.