"Savage Beauty" In Under One Hour

The main reason for Maddie's visit this weekend was to see the Alexander McQueen exhibit - "Savage Beauty" - at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Since this was Savage Beauty's final weekend, the crowds have been massive - with people waiting hours to see this awe-inspiring exhibition. But Maddie and I really wanted to see it, and were prepared to wait however long it took. But we DID decide to get there really early in order to (maybe) lessen the wait a little. So we woke up at 6:00 am this morning (I know, right?!?), and arrived at the museum by 7:30 am.

When Maddie and I got there, we found a surprisingly short line - maybe 150 people or so ahead of us - so we jumped right in.

Here's what we thought would happen:

The museum-at-large opens at 9:30 am - so we thought we had a two-hour wait ahead of us. Which was FINE.

Here's what actually happened:

The line we were standing in, it turns out, was for museum members only. We had already been waiting for about 15 minutes when someone informed us of this important fact. Apparently the general admission (non-members) line was on the other side of the museum and was already massive:

However, a museum staffer informed us that we could purchase basic museum memberships ($70) and not lose our spot. Furthermore, the $25 we had already spent online to purchase our general admission passes was able to be used toward the $70 membership fee.

The icing on the cake was this: The membership line (which as I said, we were mistakenly standing in) was opening at 8:00 am - 1 1/2 hours BEFORE the general public. Needless to say, that was the easiest $45 bucks I ever spent.

So, after waiting in a rather short internal line, we made it to the exhibit hall just before 8:30 am - less than an hour after we arrived. And when we finally left the museum at around noon (we did other stuff after McQueen), the posted wait time was 5 1/2 hours.

And it was SO worth it...

.