Last Supper Tickets thru World's Worst website

Sometimes it can also be your web platform. Try more than one.

I have never had an experience even remotely like this on any other site.

Alhambra (spain) ticket site doesn't like US credit cards
Premier Inns (UK) will show up hinky dates on certain browsers, but their app is good.
These are just 2 common complaints.
It is really frustrating, and okay to want to share the pain, but there are numerous examples of incompatiblity - for various reasons. I have to say, I commend you for sticking it out in the middle of the night. I wouldn't have worked that hard.

I've never had any trouble doing it by phone - at the appropriate time of course.

You aren't able of making a phone call thousands do everyday and It's italy that's inefficient? Have you ever heard about Occam's Razor?

Incidentally, Santa Maria delle Grazie is owned and managed by the Dominican Friars who are a Vatican's organization.

Why would they want to make it easier? Its always sold out.

I can relate to Matt. I went through the VERY SAME experience; got up at oh-dark-thirty today when "The Last Supper" tickets for May were going on sale (9:30am Italian time zone). I logged on to the cenacolo vinciano website, went through the gymnastics of having to register and receiving multiple "TICKETS UNAVAILABLE" for dates and times in May that were clearly marked as BEING available and then incurred significant international charges for trying to order tickets via the phone and receiving only a recorded message in the Italian language that operators were unavailable. I still don't have tickets for flexible dates in May of either 18th or 19th so Matt at least was successful in accomplishing his objective.

I'm a huge Rick Steves fan and we plan the itinerary of our multiple European trips for low the past 12 years using his exceptional guide books. Rick advises folks who want to see "The Last Supper" in Milan to plan ahead as reservations are mandatory. It might be a good idea to add another statement to the part in that associated guidebook which states that good luck getting reservations as they are almost impossible to get!! I'm frustrated and disappointed beyond measure. I'll keep a hopeful heart and try to get ahold of the reservation folks by phone until I've spent all of my savings on the international calling charges.

. . . or you could just bite the bullet and buy a tour from one of the third party sellers. Thats what we ended up doing. And frankly, we were glad that we did, since the packaged tour included several other interesting sites (such as La Scala) whereas the 15 minutes everyone is allowed at the Last Supper was not enough to make it worthwhile by itself (IMO).

*. . . or you could just bite the bullet and buy a tour from one of the third party sellers. *

Yes, unfortunately that is who has figured out how to corner the market on tickets. I wonder how many "slots" go unused because the brokers could not sell a tour spot.

Update to my earlier posting. WHOO - HOOOOOOOOOOO!! Got two tickets for the requested May dates by consistently repeat-dialing the call center. This entire experience took me almost 8 full hours of due diligence in order to achieve success, but success is mine, nonetheless. I'm exhausted - but I've got tickets to see DaVinci's "Last Supper" masterpiece!! Insert big cheesy grin and happy dance. :)

But you don't need to spend lots of money calling. Use Skype (other very cheap VIOP providers are available) and you can count on one hand the number of pennies a minute it will cost.

Jawamer8c--Exactly my experience. Congratulations on finally getting tickets!

I wanted to share my successful experience last night buying five tickets for our family. It took much longer than I expected. I only had two choices for tour times when I could finally make the purchase. By the time I completed the purchase, the month of May was almost completely booked.

Besides being lucky, here is how I did it...

We will be in Milan for about 17 hours in May, so we have the narrowest of windows to see The Last Supper. We live in California, so I woke up at 1:25 AM Pacific to try to buy tickets at 1:30 AM.

I tried calling and buying online at the same time. As Rick's book advised, the line may be busy, and it was, but I kept trying. I got through on maybe my third attempt. I was thrilled! But there was an outgoing message in Italian. I don't speak the language. In his book, Rick suggests pressing "2." I did. Nothing happened for a moment. I held my breath. Then I got a busy signal. I hung up and then dialed repeatedly while I also waited to log in to their servers (Rule #1 of travel: Be patient!) - and got the busy signal or I got through but pressing "2" got me nothing but another busy signal.

Some pointers for people who are buying in the next round (July/August and beyond):
- EVERYONE is logging in at the same time you are. You may get "timed out." As with calling, keep trying.
- Use Chrome as your browser. I typically use Firefox. Chrome, however, automatically translates websites to English. So when I'm booking hotels or other events for our trips I use Chrome. Yes, some sites provide an English option, but I never found the English option for the Last Supper tickets. My experience was that EVERY Vivaticket page is ONLY in Italian, more about this in a bit.
- Register with Vivaticket, the e-commerce site you'll use to buy the tickets, well ahead of time to get your user name and password. Vivaticket is the same site you'll use to buy tickets for the Uffizi in Florence, too. If you're going to other museums that use Vivaticket to sell their tickets, you'll need to register, anyway.
- Have multiple credit cards ready to use. I typically only use one card for such purchases just to keep everything organized for me. The Vivaticket site confirms a credit card's validity in ways that seem significantly more critical than any other e-commerce sites I use. When I bought my Uffizi tickets, I went through three credit cards before I found one that Vivaticket would approve.
- If you're going to Florence and Milan for your trip, buy the Uffizi tickets first. That way you'll have your user name and password, and you'll know which credit card works, so you won't panic when you run into these technological roadblocks as you try to buy Last Supper tickets.

After I FINALLY got into the Last Supper site I had the option to log in or register to log in. So (at about 2:00 AM) I tried registering using the extremely obscure user name I use for such websites, but the name was already taken! (It was already taken by me when I registered to buy the Uffizi tickets! But I didn't figure that out until later.) Panicked, I made up another name, and received an email with the new user name and a link to go back into the site.

I clicked on the link in the email to get me to the ticket-buying site again, and since my computer defaults to Firefox, I was sent back to the Last Supper site ON FIREFOX, not Chrome! Now what? I didn't want to lose my place in the online queue, but I couldn't understand the language. So I opened up my Chrome browser and used the translate feature. If it sounds like I am selling Google, I surely ain't... This is my experience.

That's when it hit me that this was the same e-commerce site as I used to buy the Uffizi tickets. So I used the credit card that had already been verified by Viviticket... (Otherwise, this would have been another opportunity to panic.)

But I was in -- and I still had two time slots that fit my oh-so-narrow window. Lucky me.

Vivaticket is the same site you'll use to buy tickets for the Uffizi
in Florence, too.

Just a comment that the Uffizi's official e-commerce site is b-ticket, as it is for other State museums in Florence.

http://www.b-ticket.com/b-ticket/uffizi/default_eng.aspx
The Uffizi's own website links to this one when purchasing tickets.

I've never bought a ticket on any Italian website, so I'm not in a position to comment about the comparative difficulty of using the website for The Last Supper tickets, but I hope folks have paid attention to some very useful suggestions made by others up-thread--things I have needed to do when I sought good tickets to tricky sports events in the US:

• Pre-register. That eliminates one possible delay at the critical point when tickets go on sale.

• Try a different browser. It's surprising (to me) how often that works.

• Have a stack of credit cards handy (I've needed to switch for other European purchases).

And I'll add two of my own:

• Try a different type of computer (tablet or smartphone instead of laptop/desktop, or vice versa). It seems as if some entities just can't be bothered to keep all access points to their website working smoothly.

• Notify your credit-card issuer of the purchase you plan to make. Sometimes that step is needed.

Clearly, what this site should do is make each day's tickets available 60 or 90 days in advance. That way there wouldn't be a big crush of callers/ web site visitors flooding/overloading the site the few times a year that they release tickets. But that would probably interfere with their ability to offload the overwhelming majority of tickets to the tour operators.

Preregistering and putting travel notices on a couple credit cards are great advice.

The other option, if you don't want to do a full Milan tour and you sit by a computer all day, is to have the website up and refresh it a few times a day. Tickets get released/ canceled by others/ whatever and suddenly become available. Be ready with your registration and cc and hope the boss doesn't walk by just as you're trying to pay for the tickets.

This helps to explain why some tourist sites, like Anne Frank House and the Statue of Liberty, only post a portion of their tickets at a time. This confuses customers who think that once-sold-out means always-sold-out. But it reduces website overloads and slightly harms bloodsucking reseller scalping.

Quite shocked at such a horrible experience we shared! Hope for booking tickets to Last Supper through Vivaticket is nil.
What tour website I can go to to book tickets that include Last Supper and La Scala as someone mentioned?
Thank you in advance.

It's definitely the worst. Got up to log on at 4:30am East coast time, and was put into a queue for 15 minutes. By then all the times were taken for the date we will be in Milan (June 16). We already had created an account, so didn't have that issue, but no tickets :(. Still trying to get tickets by refreshing the site. I'm at work but may try calling the ticket office when I get home.

I was on the site, logged-in, pre-registered, and translated to English (I had done trial runs previously) 10 minutes before opening of sales (9:30 AM Milan time, 1:30 AM Seattle time). When the time came the site immediately crashed, and I went into panic mode. Re-logged in and got put in a 3 minute queue, which actually worked nicely. Unfortunately my first attempt to choose the time I wanted failed as it only showed 1 ticket available, I went back to the home page, selected an earlier time and was able to purchase my two tickets easily. It said you could purchase 5 tickets, so I went back in to see if I could get two more for friends that are possibly meeting us in Milan, but it continually said I had reached my limit. I don't know if that was a glitch in the system or if they decided to limit sales to two tickets each. All in all the site worked much better than the experience I had trying to get Garth Brooks tickets from ticketmaster last year, so I was happy it went as well as it did. For anyone that wishes to get tickets for July/August I recommend to do as I did, pre-register, translate the page to the language of your choice, bookmark for quick access, do trial runs in advance, have your credit card ready, know the dates and times that you need, and be sure to be logged in and ready to purchase!

I had been planning the Last Supper tickets for months. I watched how the April Tickets sold out in 30 minutes. So I knew I had a battle to get tickets. I called the Cenacola site in advance for advice and pre-registered with vivaticket to ease my purchase.

I awoke at 3:25 am to be ready and wasn't able to connect via phone or Website. I then realized I was an hour early being 8:30 am in Italy, I guess daylight savings time!. So I tried sleeping for another hour and awoke at 4:25 to start the process again. 20 calls with no connection and multiple browsers going for the ticket site and loading very slowly. I was finally able to add 2 tickets for one of 4 time slots posted. No time to be picky on times available..

Horrible process. But glad I was successful. I checked back again within about 15 minutes most of May and majority of June were sold out!

My hotel recommended a Milan City Tour that has last Supper Tickets. So if you were not successful you may want check with your hotel. I was also told that the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum of inventions in Milan has full size digital photograph of the Last supper painting that is viewable with enhanced color and imagery. I might actually go see that display as well.

Good Luck.

I realized last night that my reminders to remind me to get up for the ticket sale didn't happen. Of course, there were no tickets available last night. I don't mind paying a reseller or taking a tour and I imagine they all got tickets yesterday but as far as I can tell none of them have updated their websites yet to include the afternoon of June 7 - the small slice of time we have in Milan after our Village Italy tour and before we fly home the next morning.

I got my ticket two years ago through Viator. I didn’t mind paying a bit more because there was absolutely no hassle and I was able to get the date I wanted.

When we went we did a Milan City Tour which included the Last Supper. I'm glad we did, as someone else posted earlier. We had a nice tour, which ended at the Last Supper. Our guide was very knowledgeable, and pointed out a number of things about the painting that we would probably not have noticed, ourselves. She also discussed different interpretations of the painting. It was well worth the cost.