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9/11 Memorial Visitor Passes Sell Out for Most of Opening Week

By Julie Shapiro | July 11, 2011 12:10pm | Updated on July 11, 2011 6:06pm

LOWER MANHATTAN — Visitor passes to the new 9/11 Memorial are selling fast.

Just a few hours after the memorial launched its online reservation system Monday morning, all the tickets for Sept. 12 and 13, the first two days the memorial is open to the public, were already gone.

Tickets for Sept. 14, 17 and 18 also sold out by Monday afternoon — and tickets for the rest of the week and the following weekend are disappearing quickly.

In all, visitors reserved more than 23,000 tickets by 4 p.m. Monday, a memorial spokesman said.

The free tickets are a requirement for anyone who wants to visit the memorial. Visitors need to pick a specific day and a time between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays or between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekends. Visitors also need to give the names of everyone in their group who will access the memorial.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is using a reservation system because the memorial can only hold about 1,500 people at a time while the rest of the World Trade Center construction continues around it.

Visitors will be allowed to remain on the tree-shaded memorial plaza — which includes waterfalls in the Twin Towers footprints, ringed by plaques inscribed with the victims' names — as long as they want.

Tour groups and 9/11 family members can reserve their tickets separately.

The memorial will open just to victims' family members for an anniversary ceremony on Sept. 11, and then it will open to the public the following day.