New York: How to get tickets to 9/11 museum for Memorial Day

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President Obama addresses guests last week at the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, built amid the foundations of the fallen Twin Towers. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

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Vernoy Paolini places an American flag at a name etched in a plaque beside of the waterfalls and reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

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A flag and rose left in tribute at the 9/11 Memorial. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

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One of the waterfalls and reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial. The adjacent 9/11 Memorial Museum opened Wednesday. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

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Freedom Tower, rising 1,776 feet to replace the fallen Twin Towers, as seen from ground level at the 9/11 Memorial. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

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Six months after the attacks, in March 2002, the World Trade Center site was still an open wound. (Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)

By Mary Forgione

May 21, 2014 8:15 AM PT

Daily Deal and Travel Blogger

The National 9/11 Memorial Museum on the site of the former World Trade Center complex in lower Manhattan officially opens to the public Wednesday (today). And, surprisingly, the museum still has tickets available for Memorial Day.

On Thursday the museum opened for survivors, families of victims, rescue and recovery workers, first responders and others associated with the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in 1993 and 2001 that killed 2,759 people.

Don’t confuse the museum with the memorial. The adjacent 9/11 Memorial features two reflecting pools and waterfalls on the Twin Towers site. It opened to the public Sept. 12, 2011, a decade after the towers were destroyed.

Both sites pay tribute to those killed in the attacks. The memorial is free; museum admission is $24 for adults and $42 if you want to add on a 60-minute guided tour. Timed tickets are available at the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s website. For example, you can buy tickets for Monday, say, for entry on the half-hour between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., though a few times weren’t available.

Most of the museum is underground amid the foundations of the two 110-story buildings. It will display personal items of victims as well as the Last Column, the last piece of steel to be removed from the site, that was covered with mementos, missing posters and messages of hope. (Two mobile apps provide guides to both sites.)

The museum holds the remains of about 8,000 unidentified victims too. And that’s where some of the controversy comes in. Jim Riches, a former New York City firefighter who lost his son, also a firefighter, told media sources that the admission fee is like “charging people to get into a cemetery.”

The New York Daily News reported that a gift shop opening at the museum angered some of the victims’ families. Among the items that will be on sale, according to the paper: stuffed toy rescue dogs, FDNY hats and books.

Organizers say they need $65 million a year to run the museum and the memorial, and that the gift shop revenue would provide some of that.

Info: 9/11 Memorial Museum