Scramble for London Owl Café tickets leads to website crash

Feathers flew in London as owl lovers made such an on-line scramble for tickets to a new pop-up bar that the website crashed.

Barn owl Image by Lucie Provencher / CC BY-SA 2.0

The ‘Annie the Owl’ case has taken wings ever since it was first mooted a few months ago. The aim of the pop-up café organisers was to give patrons the chance to drink smoothies in the company of six of the birds.

However following a sustained campaign by animal rights campaigners about the birds’ welfare in such surroundings, the planned opening in Soho was cancelled last month.

A new venue and event was rescheduled for central London next week, but when tickets were released in two batches through smart phone app Locappy, yesterday, the problems really began.

About 500 people had been selected after a ballot to get tickets and were directed to a link via the app.

But the Evening Standard reports that because there were 1300 people attempting to buy the tickets at the same time, the server crashed.