In September 2015, visitors queued for hours along the seafront at Weston-super-Mare for walk-in admission to Banksy's temporary installation Dismaland. Online tickets cost £3, but people without reservations competed for only 500 tickets released each day. On the Friday before closing, hundreds waited along the promenade.
More than 150,000 people visited during the installation's short run. It was estimated to have generated £20 million in additional local revenue and 50,000 extra overnight stays compared with the same period a year earlier. The anti-establishment “bemusement park” ended up testing the seaside town's real capacity for visitors.
The art mocked the conventions of a theme park, but scarcity at its entrance was genuine. The daily number 500 converted a critical art experience into a long and ordinary order of waiting by the sea.