British Museum Arvostelua 

What a dreadful experience. Why have the museum brought this tapestry over one might ask - not for cultural exchange - rather, it seems for money.
I am a member of the museum. I was so excited to be able to book these tickets . We queued for nearly an hour - I am currently on crutches. We were then rushed through the exhibition. Instead of being allowed 40 minutes, as advertised when the tickets were purchased, it is now 25 minutes. That really is an insult to the tapestry. Automated recordings and staff are constantly telling you to move along. The audio of the tapestry is as if it is in 1.5 speed. Users are limited by the number of times the audio can be paused. If it is paused too often it then locks. I was on scene 27. Honestly the whole process is set up just to rush you through. It is not a celebration of history. The experience was unpleasant and stressful and actually deceiving. I have tickets to take visiting friends next year. I shall try and sell the tickets. A very expensive disappointing experience.

For what was once a great British institution, I was appalled by the "difficult decision" update wrt the Bayeux. I have been visiting and paying for exhibitions at the museum for nigh on 40 years, and to then become a member to find they had moved the goalposts, and were now saying my £120+ membership would get me a paltry 10% off the exhibition... I informed both them and my bank to cancel any payment (BM still to even respond due to high volume of complaints).

I'll see it when it goes back to France

Our tickets were for 1:40pm on 8 October. We were taken in not long after to a room where we queued for about 20 mins to get in another room. In this room we were shown a brief film, and then were taken up some stairs where there was yet another queue. We were in this queue for another hour, and then taken down to the room where the tapestry was. Imagine how disappointed we were to find we had to join another queue at the other side of the room to the tapestry.

However, it was then quite clear why it was taking so long. So many people viewing the tapestry were stopping instead of slowly moving along, as we had been politely asked to, on several occasions. There was little encouragement from the staff to get the line moving. There were two ladies who were constantly stopping and holding up the queue, and yet nothing was said to them, there was certainly no shouting nor barracking from the staff, who were far too polite imo.

After another hour of waiting we finally got the start of the tapestry. Unfortunately, those in front of us were stopping constantly, meaning that the audio commentary was running far ahead of us. In the end, as we had a train to catch we had to overtake these people and miss large chunks of the tapestry. It was so disappointing, and all down to the selfishness of some of the visitors, and the lack of organisation by the staff to get things moving.

It made what was supposed to be a wonderful experience into one that was frustrating and quite stressful. We caught our train by the skin of our teeth!

My husband and I are longstanding members of the British Museum, but this will be our last year. The system for booking a ticket to see the Bayeux Tapestry is beyond incompetent, it couldn't be less user-friendly if they tried. I feel sorry for anyone older or not IT-savvy as you have to wait 8 hours in an on-line queue before having access for only 10 minutes to their website to complete your booking. What many won't realise is that after receiving your ID-checked e-mail for queuing, you still have to log-on to the website as a member, though they don't immediately take you to a log-on screen as any half-competent operator would. You shouldn't need to log when accessing the website directly from an ID-checked queuing link in an e-mail, and of course they don't think to tell you in the e-mail that you need to log on. Heaven forbid you forget your password, or don't realise straight away you need to log on, because you'll be timed out before you've managed to book your ticket. Extraordinary incompetence here from the British Museum, a great disservice to the British public.

I've wanted see the Bayeux Tapestry for many years, and when I heard it was coming to London, I was very keen to see it.
However, I was thoroughly disappointed with the experience of viewing it yesterday. Despite having timed tickets, we still had to queue for over an hour to see the tapestry and all the time were being asked to "keep moving". While it was fabulous to see, the appalling arrangements for this exhibition detracted hugely from our visit. I've read in the press that the Museum denies they have sold too many tickets and are blaming the visitors for spending too much time viewing it(!). If you want to see the tapestry, I recommend avoiding this exhibition, and await its return to France.

Tried to book for Bayeux Tapestry - Am a member but waited 4hrs 2: minutes for my turn . Have joint membership BUT drop down membership would only let me book ONE ticket !
Excellent exhibitions etc when you actually get into the museum but booking for major events is appalling

The Museum is not fit for purpose. Money before visitor experience. Nicolas Cullinan ought to resign. Just an awful experience and the tapestry has become a side show

Waited in online queue for 5+ hours to get tickets for Bayeux tapestry. The online information stated each slot allowed 40 minutes to see the tapestry. We had less than 10 minutes! Even this was spoiled by constant harassment to keep moving sideways from a recorded message and museum staff. If you read the information on the back wall you miss the piece of tapestry its describing. Got to the end and realised totally missed Harolds death! Too many tickets sold. Was it greed or a genuine desire to help as many as possible see the tapestry? Either way, £33 was definitely not good value for money, and not fair on all those who spent even more money on their trips to experience seeing the tapestry! I think all those managing the experience are blind to the real and genuine disappointment of their thousands of visitors 😒

Awful experience at the Bayeux Tapestry, treated like cattle in a money-making machine, continuously berated for not moving fast enough. Queued for two hours to get to the start, only to be herded through the tapestry in the last 15 minutes, with rude and aggressive staff reminding us how lucky we were to even see it.

To add insult to injury, someone later accused my Google review of being fake and even though my appeal has since been approved by Google, at the time of writing the review is still not reinstated. This tells you volumes about who protects whom.

I went to see the Bayeux Tapestry. I was in line early for the 2:50pm tix time, then waited :30 more was refused entry along with the 50 of my time group and 50 behind us were refused entry bc of "time and space restrictions" with prepared leaflet. Not a one-off. I came from Seattle to see this. We waited hours for our tix. So far no email offering options to rebook or refunds. This on Sept 30.

my wife is registered blind and cannot use a keyboard - the booking system for the Bayeux Tapestry appears to be a compulsory online queueing system. I have tried to contact the membership desk on several occasions both by phone and email over the last few weeks to raise the issue of contravention of the Equality Act by not offering alternative means of booking (I note the BM has already fallen foul of the Act regarding lack of audio guides.

Arrived for 16.20 slot. Queued for 1hr 40 minutes. Got to the tapestry just after 6 to be informed that the lights would go out at 6.15 so only saw 60% of it. Directed to the ticket office to discuss refund. None forthcoming. Wrote to info@bm but got an AI constructed reply informing me that they were sorry and would let the curator know. Which they did already, judging by the reviews.

Three stars for the tapestry 0 for the museum.

Our slot was 3.20pm finally got out at 5.40pm. Out of that time we had around 10/15 minutes looking at the amazing exhibition.

Stood for 2hrs in a dark hot corridor with no toilets or water along with no seating.

Rude staff telling everyone to move forward, like it was our fault. Too many tickets sold with two shorter timeframe.

Disabled people using a wheelchair got to the front of the queue after around two hours and were not able to see the tapestry because it was seated too high, utterly thoughtless from start to finish

No apologies were given just staff shouting to move forward.

Bayeux Tapestry exhibit is clearly massively over-subscribed. If the only way they can keep queues to a reasonable level is to have people barking instructions to "move along" every minute or two while viewing the tapestry itself, something has gone wrong. I'm by no means a dawdler, but it was really hard to enjoy what should have been a special event.

Absolutely shocking management of queues! Entered exhibition at allocated time slot of 1pm, herded in to a dark airless corridor, continuously shouted at by staff to move along. Stood for 1 hour and 20 minutes before getting to the tapestry. Tickets said 40 minutes to view …. we had less than 8 minutes to shuffle along viewing the tapestry, without stopping. No information given regarding queue times along the way. Spoke to manager on duty at the museum who admitted they had oversold tickets! An absolute shambles!

Went to the British museum to see the Bayeux tapestry arrived early so looked at some other exhibitions which was fantastic to see but the temperature was very warm even for September must be awful in the summer. Went into the Bayeux tapestry held in a queue for over an hour over our time slot none of the staff seemed to know what they were doing when we got to the tapestry we were rush along, the tapestry was amazing but the museums organisation was very bad.
We went into the gift shop about 4.50 and the museum shuts at 5pm to early in my opinion and a member of staff was telling us to stop browsing and to get in the queue to pay or leave don’t they want the money and why not give people the chance to go in shop and shut at 6pm.

A really good place to take the kids, they enjoyed it. We went on the weekend, it was busy but we still got to see everything. Would recommend.

We visited the Bayeux Tapestry on Saturday 19th September. We were a group of 4 and the tickets cost £33 each. Our time slot was 12.20pm. We went into the first entrance on time. We were held outside another door and told about the first raised balcony part and that we had to keep moving when we were looking at the Tapestry. We were also told that on this particular day they were trialling no photography. We later learnt that this was nothing to do with preserving the tapestry it was to try and help with the horrendous queuing system.
We went through the door into the dimly lit next room to watch a short video and then climbed the stairs to the next part and that is where is all went wrong. The balcony part was packed with people as far as you could see. The next video ran twice before we could see it and then we just waited in the dim corridor.
We spoke to staff who were lovely but said the queuing system works for the first few people in the morning and then it all goes wrong. They are asked to control the people going down the stairs at the end of the corridor from very early on in the day.
We waited 45 minutes to even get down the steps to the long room where the tapestry is displayed.
The museum has printed leaflets for the guests at the end of the day who are unable to get in to view the tapestry despite having paid for tickets, so the organisers of this event are aware that the ticketing system is not working.
Once you get to see it, the tapestry itself is amazing, but whoever is in charge of the organisation has failed miserably.
If you buy tickets for the next trance make sure it’s early in the day so you get in.

Bayeux Travesty
2 hours in queue after your time slot.
20 minutes rushed time with Tapestry.
Too many tickets sold exhibition overwhelmed
British Museum should hang their heads in shame.
Have demanded a refund due to breach of contract.

We queued ten minutes before our 16:30 allotted time, and were constantly lied to throughout the queuing process because they all knew full well if they told us how long each queuing stage would actually take then there would have been uproar.

We were funnelled into multiple corridors and finally arrived at the Tapestry at 18:00, at which point, we were told that the lights would go off at 18:20. We were not granted even 30 seconds of peace, being constantly harangued by staff about the fact that it was closing. This urgency meant that there were multiple layers of people around the glass which obstructed everyone's view of the Tapestry. No water was on offer throughout, either.

The Tapestry itself is breath-taking, and if you are able to get a morning visit then go for it but if you are elderly, and unable to stand for long periods, and don't fancy queuing for up to 12 times the projected time on the ticket then avoid like the plague.