I tried lining up for same-day tickets at the Opera Garnier

I am a Korean office worker.

I usually post about Korea, but I just went to 🇫🇷Paris🇫🇷 for one day recently, so I'll write about that!!

You might wonder why only one day, but it was just the final day of a Mediterranean cruise trip, so I just happened to stop by Paris, which is why it was only one day.

I had already used up quite a lot of my paid leave for the cruise, so I couldn't extend my stay for more than a day...

Leaving those sad office worker circumstances aside, I prefer spontaneous trips, so I hadabsolutely nothing booked in Paris!!

In fact, I only started researching Paristhe day before I arrived.It's Paris, yet I was way too unplanned.

I thought about wanting to go to the Palace of Versailles, but I learned just the day before that it's not exactly the kind of place you can just drop by on a whim.

That's when I found theOpera Garnier tour.

Even though it's called a tour, it's the type where you walk around freely by yourself.
You don't watch a performance, but you can freely explore various parts of the theater.

I really wanted to see the Opera House, and I heard that same-day tickets were available in addition to the reservation slots, and that there was a space similar to the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, so I decided to go.

It seems to be under renovation, so there was a huge advertisement.
Even like this, it looks cool.

Well, the Opera Garnier opens at 10:00 AM.

We arrived in front of the main gate around 10:30 AM.

In front of the main gate, there were clear signs for people with tickets and those without, so we lined up in the queue for those without tickets.

As of 10:30 AM on a weekday in April 2025, the line was about long enough to double back to the entrance.

It's a weekday, but it's incredible...

While the same-day ticket group was waiting in line, the reservation group kept going inside, which was very enviable.

However, once the same-day ticket line started moving, it was surprisingly fast; it felt like they were letting about 30 people in every 15 to 20 minutes.

I started lining up at 10:30 and successfully bought my ticket by 11:10✨

It wasn't a system where you buy a ticket for a specific time; you were just let inside, bought it at an automatic ticket machine, and went straight in.

As for the interior, which is the most important part, it was so wonderful that words cannot describe it,

Everywhere you looked, there were sparkling things scattered about, and it was so magnificent that I wondered if this is what it feels like to be inside a kaleidoscope.

The Opera's famous grand staircase was so crowded that taking a photo from a distance was impossible.

The sight of everyone striking some kind of pose and holding up their smartphones was something even this historic theater couldn't compete with; it looked modern no matter how you saw it. I didn't feel like I had time-traveled at all.

It might be lamentable to some, but since I am a modern person too, I'll blend right in, strike a pose, and have my husband keep trying until we get a great shot (for unknown purposes) on our smartphone.

Unfortunately, we couldn't enter the theater itself that day, but I was very satisfied just seeing the beautiful things in the other areas!

So, that was my experience: going around 10:30 was plenty of time to get a same-day tour ticket for the Opera Garnier!

There were absolutely no reviews from people who went to visit the Opera Garnier with same-day tickets (which makes sense, since everyone is bound to make reservations when they're in Paris),

and I didn't know if it was the kind of place where you had to rush as soon as it opened, so I'm leaving this record for people like me🤣