Bayeux Tapestry - advice for those with tickets

[TheCompactPussycat]

I took the family to see the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum today. It was spectacular and absolutely worth going to see.

However, be prepared for the queues! The experience is supposed to be 40 minutes but don't naively think that your timed ticket means your 40 minutes starts at that time. It took half an hour of queuing after being admitted into the exhibition to actually get to the start and a further 20 minutes before we got a glimpse of the tapestry (and only then because we pushed to the front of the queue past 40 other people - apologies if that was you!).

Hopefully just teething issues at the start of such a major exhibition but I would have preferred to enjoy the tapestry without constantly looking at my watch for fear of missing our coach home.

Allow at least 2 and a half hours inside just for the Bayeux exhibition so you're not stressing!

But it was amazing!

i have tickets for 7.30 in december...hopefully they've sorted out all the problems by then!!

There are several options - coffee and sandwiches sort of things around the Great Court, coffee and cake upstairs at the front, nicer Great Court Restaurant upstairs at the back, Pizzeria on the ground floor, far left. Couple of other options for members too. And loads of options in the surrounding streets.

I was at the BM today, not for Tapestry viewing but it might be helpful to know that if you're entering via the main entrance, there's a fast-track through Security for people holding timed entry tickets to exhibitions.You probably won't even have to slow down to pass through. There was no sign of any queue backing up out of the exhibition space so all seemed to be flowing smoothly.

I went yesterday and it was a miserable experience (wish I'd seen this thread sooner, but it wouldn't have prepared me).

Took 10 mins into the museum - bag search etc - fine.

Took two hours from back of queue into the room with the tapestry. Each time we entered a doorway we thought 'this is it!' only to face another room with nothing but queue.

20 mins along the tapestry constantly hurried by staff. I felt sorry for them but when you've waited 2 hours you do want to get a proper look.

Basically it seems the organisers have massively underestimated how long everyone will take to look at it and have oversold tickets.

Queue management before the tapestry room was non existent. No indication of the length of waiting times so you didn't know whether you had time to go to the loo/ get a drink. Standing for ages, loads of old people, some of whom were having to borrow folding stools. People missing trains home and having to buy more expensive replacement tickets. People joking that they could've sewn their own tapestry in the time it took to queue.

My husband had to go to a work event so didn't even get to see it because he had to leave before we reached the front of the queue.

Zero communication from museum management about what was happening and no apology.

Oh and there was no meaningful information about the tapestry - just a few short video clips saying obvious stuff like 'this was Harold' and 'it was stitched by hand'. Apart from a helmet borrowed from another museum and a sword or two there was nothing else in the exhibition.

It's really put me off going to the British Museum. British Library exhibitions are so much better curated.

My advice - wait until it's back in France and go there instead.

Oh no , I went to see the Marie Antoinette exhibition and it was so well organised and beautifully managed , stupidly I presumed this would a similar thing.

Yes we were there that week too, it was awful. And many of the visitors were elderly and found the standing difficult. Far too many tickets sold for too small rooms.

I asked people at the front of the queue whether they minded us going in front of them. They were happy to let us.

So yes, we "pushed" to the front of the queue in the same way anyone else could have chosen to if they had wanted/thought to.

Too late to be outraged now if that was the intent of your post. I'm afraid I feel no shame in spotting an opportunity and taking it!

That’s not at all what your original (rather gleeful) post says.

I'm surprised so many people are bothering - I saw it in France and while it was vaguely interesting, it's really not worth hours of queueing and expense.

I wonder why people's experiences seem to be so variable? It's not a question of when more tickets have been booked, because they sold all the tickets.

Not in my very first post, no. But it is exactly what I said at 19:37 last Friday evening.

Wait until you discover that it's a lovely wide corridor and I didn't actually "push" anyone!🤣

I walked to the front of the corridor, asked the member of staff how long the wait might be and if there was any chance of getting in earlier so we didn't miss our coach home. She said "Well, you could see if anyone is happy to let you go in front of them." so I asked. I didn't ask everyone, just the people at the front. I'm sure there was plenty of tutting and muttering in my wake but anyone else could have chosen to use their initiative if they'd thought about it. (Obviously if everyone had, we'd all have ended up waiting for the same amount of time. Luckily for me they didn't.)

It's probably luck - some people are probably happy to spend a quick 20 minutes wandering through, others want to spend ages. If you're stuck behind a whole days' worth of the latter, it's bound to be pretty miserable.

I'm really hoping I can see it next year, but I'm concerned at some of the experiences I've heard of.

Like others have said, if I've paid for a ticket and queued I would like to be able to actually see the tapestry at my own leisure. I don't plan to camp out and hog it, but I'd like to take the time to really look at it rather than be hurried along as though we're on a conveyor belt (assuming they don't decide to install one of those...).

London is definitely cheaper than going to France when you don't have passports! Not that we're bothered at all. We can just go and the see replica. Although I've always found that boring too.

I genuinely hope that people with just a vague interest are not going.

But it's not exactly shocking that different people have different interests. I can't really understand why people would want to pay a lot to go to a crowded noisy place to see Harry Styles (for example) but, you know, each to their own.

I went this afternoon (12.20pm), minimal queuing, I loved it. I hadn’t seen it previously and (in my view) it’s well worth a visit.

New story on BBC - they’ve banned photographs to reduce delays
British Museum bans visitors from photographing Bayeux Tapestry https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmd79p4z98lzo

That’s interesting because when I went there were signs saying photos were not allowed and that was a week ago

Bit surprised that photos were ever allowed.

I'm not remotely shocked that people have different interests.

But (for me anyway) there's a difference between interested in something and being willing to spend hours stood in a queue just to spend 20 minutes looking at something.

Photos weren’t allowed when we went on Sunday. It was busy, but we had a great visit. DS (14) loved it, and remembered a remarkable amount of detail of the relevant history from (I think) Y7. For those with membership, I recommend the new members’ room & cafe near the Montague Place entrance, which is so much more convenient and spacious than the upstairs one.

Marie Antoinette was V&A, though, and I find V&A exhibitions a lot more spacious than the BM. Like a lot of people I've decided to wait till the tapestry goes back to Bayeux, tho' I suspect a lot of people have the same idea and it'll be more crowded than before.

I know it was but I presumed ( stupidly) it would be a similar set up seeing as peopl have timed slots.

Pretty much all special exhibitions at all the big museums/galleries are timed slots. How rigid they are varied. I've been to some busy ones when you have to queue, and they're strict about times, and others they wave you in pretty much any time, regardless of what your ticket says. How well they organise the queue for the busy ones varies by museum.

(FFS, autocorrect, just stop miscorrecting my words when I typed the right thing in the first place. 😡)

I really don't understand photos (at least for the vast majority of people - I can see there may be reasons for a few). Much better digital records are available online and printed in books/postcards. Is it a "we were there" thing?

I don’t understand the photos either - you could take one at the entrance or on the balcony with it in the background. It is under glass so photos of it won’t be great.

I was quite disappointed that it was quite difficult to find a standard sized postcard of Harold with the arrow in his eye!