LOWER MANHATTAN — Those who didn't snap up a free ticket to the 9/11 Memorial's opening week are in luck — the memorial foundation is releasing a new batch of tickets Thursday, a spokesman told DNAinfo.
The free passes for the week of Sept. 12, the first week the memorial is open to the public, disappeared quickly after they first went online in July, with more than 20,000 reservations pouring in in just a few hours.
In response to the enormous demand — more than 200,000 people have reserved tickets for days after the memorial opens — the 9/11 memorial will put more passes online Thursday morning, the memorial spokesman said.
"Beginning tomorrow, more passes will be made available for the public opening of the 9/11 Memorial on Sept. 12," the spokesman said Wednesday afternoon.
"We encourage people to plan in advance…and return to the online reservation system [to] see if the dates that were previously unavailable have been freed up as a result of the additional passes."
The spokesman declined to say how many new passes will be released.
The memorial plans to periodically release additional tickets as the opening of the memorial approaches and may also release more once they have a better sense of how long visitors will remain on the memorial plaza.
Capacity at the 9/11 Memorial is limited to 1,500 people at a time because it is surrounded by construction.
The memorial features an 8-acre, tree-shaded plaza with waterfalls in the Twin Towers footprints, ringed by bronze panels inscribed with the names of the attack victims. The memorial will open to victims' family members for a ceremony on Sept. 11 and then will open to the public the following day.
