Anne Frank House - variable number of tickets available per time slot?

That number tells you how many spots are left for each entry. People are buying tickets all the time all over the world some go in large or small groups at specific times that is why one number is lower than another.

You may be correct, but then this doesn't make sense when I see that some time slots have 19 of 43 available, or 24 or 37 available. To me, it looks like the first number shows how many are available to purchase, and the second number shows how many were originally available to purchase before anyone purchased anything. To my understanding, the time slot for 9 am to 9:15 am had 117 tickets available, but now there are only 81 available to purchase.

You should email or call the museum then. Having bought tickets online to this and many other venues this doesn't seem odd at all.

I can see how there could be many more slots open for the first 2 times of the morning because the house is empty and people can move along more quickly and spread out. As far as the 2 of 2 available slots, perhaps a lot of tickets have already been purchased through group sales an so there are only 2 regular tickets available for that slot—I’ve bought 48 tickets at a time. The varying number of tickets FOR sale in any given time slot could be based on algorithms showing their capacity and staffing levels. It is odd and I’m probably trying to read too much into this. Sorry I don’t have any definitive answers.

They have regular admission only tickets, admission + an introductory film, group sales and also an educational school tour that has a set program and duration that cannot be altered. I agree, they must have sophisticated algorithms to manage it all.

Adrienne
I have been looking at the same thing in anticipation of our visit there in late April. I do not see any availability for the ticket that includes the 30 min film. Wondering why only showing tickets for entrance to museum itself. Have you found this also?
Karen

Karen, I went to this link to experiment: https://webshopannefrank.recreatex.be/Exhibitions/Register?Shop=AEEF2E42-EF59-4F7F-903B-339F8B9A5C7C&id=09C54DAE-33E3-4465-AEF3-7C7CBEF6B887&refresh=y

and you are absolutely correct - it seems that the museum has not made these tickets available for any of the upcoming dates through April. I would e-mail them and ask them to correct this error.

Thought we share some tips on how to get tickets to the Anne Frank House which are available only online via their website.

Tickets go on sale exactly 60 days beforehand. For example, if you want to tour the House on April 10th, get tickets on Feb 10th. Tickets can sell out quickly, especially the "museum visit+30 minute introductory program", so it's best to plan ahead. The ONLINE QUEUE for buying the tickets can be long. Here are some tips on how to navigate it:

First, if you are buying tickets from the US, Canada or a foreign country, make sure your credit card is OK with charges being made from a foreign country. In some cases, you may need to first login or call your bank and tell them you will be traveling and charging things from the Netherlands/Europe. Don't get through the online ticket booking website and find out that your credit card gets rejected (and you may have to start over).

Tickets go on sale starting at 9AM Amsterdam time (adjust to your local time), although we have found that time might be delayed by several minutes. The website is set up so if many people start to query it, it will establish a queue with a message "This website is currently overcrowded. In order to relieve the server, you have been queued. Do not close this page. The page will be refreshed automatically. There are still 243 people waiting before you..." Note that this queue is to get ON the website to query for available tickets. It is NOT a queue for actually buying the ticket for the day that you want.

This traffic queue creates a bit of a problem -- If you go to the ticket purchasing website too early, for example at 8:30AM Amsterdam time, you may find there are already 300 people waiting in this queue. However, as the queue gets shorter, it might still be too early to be able to buy anything (remember, the April 10th tickets you want won't start selling until AFTER 9AM), so you may end up waiting for nothing, because when that wait list of 300 gets down to you, it may only be 8:53AM so now you'll have to give up, wait, possibly get kicked out by the server (see below), or start over at the back of the queue.

Timing is important -- you can try a strategy of opening multiple browsers (Firebox, Explorer, Chrome, SeaMonkey, Safari, etc) and in each browser, go to the ticketing website and launch multiple wait list in the queue. You may wish to start this at no later than 8:30-8:40am (20 to 30 minutes before ticket sale starts). For example, in the different browsers, you might be number 298, 345, 481 and 515 waiting in this queue. When the queue drops down to your number and let you get on the website, hopefully it will coincide with when the tickets become available for sale at 9AM (+/- a few minutes).

Sometimes, when you get through the wait list queue, you might get the error message, "Server Error in '/' Application. Object reference not set to an instance of an object..." In that case, try and hit the Back button on your browser and wait for the server to respond. If you're lucky, it will kick you into the ticket selection calendar page. Now you can select April 10th and see what tickets are available. If you are unlucky, it may kick you out completely and you'll have to start over (or abandon that browser and go with your next wait list browser.)

For our recent purchase of museum visit+intro program, only 7 time slots were open and only 30 tickets were available for each time slot. All the tickets were gone in less than 15 minutes.

*** If you wait until 10:00 or 10:30AM, additional tickets may also be released and there might not be as much of a traffic jam on the website as the 9AM rush, but it's all a matter of timing, luck and the demand. Right now, it seems AFH releases 7 time slots, each with 30 tickets, every hour or so.

Hope these tips help you buy the tickets you want to visit the Anne Frank House. Good luck & safe travels!

By the way, to answer your question, the number of "available tickets" is only what is available at this moment.

For example, if the total # of tickets for 9:00-9:15 is 200, and 80 has already been purchased, it will show 120 as the "available". When it says, "102 of 120 available", it means there are 18 people currently looking in the buying queue so those tickets are "partially committed". When those 18 tickets are purchased, the "available" count will drop down to 102.

Clear as mud, right? :-)

Travel_bg, that does actually make sense now (about some tickets being in other people's shopping cart). But the process to purchase the tickets certainly sounds a bit challenging! Thank you so much for all the helpful information. Hopefully I get lucky and time it correctly.

Okay, so if you go here and click on the red Buy Tickets+ box under Tickets for a museum visit + introductory program: and pick a blank, not pink, date you might get a time for this option, but you'll have to scroll down to see it. It's a 30 minute program that starts your tour (Book an introductory program before your visit to the museum. In 30 minutes, we take you through the history of Anne Frank in the context of the Second World War and the persecution of the Jews. You will be well prepared for your visit. The program is in English and costs € 5 extra. The program is suitable for visitors from 10 years old.)

In my test, I clicked on several blank dates starting next week. Some had lots of seats and time slots available. Of course, I had to try a couple of the pink ones and they had none. One day had a bunch of time slots but no seats except at the end of the day, leading me to think those hadn't been released yet for some reason. That was on April 4th. Note that every time slot can't have this program available because the time slots are 15 minutes apart and the program is longer, especially when you consider the logistics around it, but sometimes there are a couple of early ones that overlap.

Now if you click on the red Buy Tickets box without the Introductory Program you see something entirely different. And it's certain that if you try this experiment, you will get different numbers each time you try it.

Purchased 4 tickets for April 21 with introductory tour this morning. Tried at 3am our time (9am in Amsterdam) and the 21st had not yet opened. Tickets for today-Feb 21st we’re selling. Continued to try for another hour with no luck. When I got up around 6:15 am our time, clicked into website and the April 21st times were opened. Process was quick and easy. They accept Visa and MC, but not American Express card.

Paul - thanks! This is good news. :o)

Thanks for all the info. I posted this in reply to another thread as well.

I'm going to try to get tickets for June 18th.

I'm on the US Pacific Coast, which is 9 hours behind Amsterdam. So I need to be ready next Wednesday, April 17th at midnight to attempt to get Museum Plus tickets for 9:00am, June 18th (June 18th 9:00am, minus two months, minus 9 hrs). Correct?

I'm also still confused by the following statement on the website. "Please note: 80% of tickets are released exactly two months in advance at noon, 20% on the day itself. Every day at 9:00 am, the tickets for the day are made available on this site."

Very confusing on their website. It sounds like they mean the 80% advance tickets are available at noon two months in advance. Then the 20% remaining tickets are released at 9:00am on the day of entrance??? I think this is what Paul may have experienced?

Ticket availability is always changing due to cancellations, etc. I missed the 2 month window because we hadn't yet decided on our Amsterdam trip, so there were no tickets available to the Anne Frank House when I first started looking. However, i was able to score tickets recently for Sat. 4/20, but they didn't have tickets available with the introductory lecture, so I booked the tour only. I just checked and other days opened for tour and introductory lecture during the time we will be in Amsterdam, but none that I can use, because of other reservations already made.

To gg96 - I just bought tickets for June 4 and had the same confusion as you. I am only 6 hours behind Amsterdam time, so for several days before my "two months in advance" date I watched the tickets for the Museum + Intro to see how fast they sell. What I saw happen several days in a row was several time blocks (30 people each) were released at noon Amsterdam time, then several more blocks were added over the course of an hour or two. By about 3 hours they were all gone. The earliest time slots of the day seem to go faster.

If you really want to do the intro (we did), I think it would give you peace of mind to set your alarm for 3:00 AM for a couple nights before your purchase date and see them get added to the site. Then you will have confidence on your actual 2-month window of the process. I don't think you'll see them get added at midnight your time (9 am AMS), but that you will see them at 3 am, and won't see them still there if you check at a normal wake-up time for you because they will be gone.

Tickets without the 30 minute intro are available much longer - that was our fallback choice if we couldn't get the Intro tour tickets, but after stalking the website for a while it was not a problem to get them when my window opened up.

OK, I think I have the answer about ticket timing. I emailed the website directly and got the following:

“Thank you for your e-mail. Tickets are made available two months in advance at 12.00 noon. You can purchase tickets for June 18th on April 18th from 12.00 noon on. The 20% of the total amount of tickets concerns the regular tickets. These are made available daily at 09.00 for that day itself.”

So since I am on the west coast of the USA, I will need to be ready at 3:00am (ugh), since we are nine hours behind Amsterdam.

I thought I'd ask if anyone has Ann Frank house tickets that they won't be needing. I need 2, 3 or 4 tickets on April 28 (late), 29, or 30 (early). Maybe you had to cancel your trip? Thanks, Audrey