Michigan Central excitement overloads registration to get tickets to restored landmark

DETROIT (FOX 2) - Mekenna Reid has spent years looking at the old Michigan Central train station. Even absolutely empty, she's thought to herself "it looked so majestic and magnificent."

"I’ve been following the revitalization of a lot of the other historic buildings in Detroit and this is just on the list," said Reid. 

The grand unveiling of Ford's newest office space is less than a month away and Reid thought she'd be one of the first to see the restored landmark. But, when registration to get tickets finally opened up Tuesday, she was met with technical difficulties.

"I thought it was something wrong with my internet because the page wouldn’t load and I kept getting error messages," she said.

She wasn't the only one.

It appears Ford underestimated the energy behind the unveiling. Even before the registration window opened, the website where someone could score free tickets became bogged down with issues. 

Eventually, it crashed. 

Those on Ford's Instagram page made their thoughts known, including a few playful comments:

• "Site has been down since noon on the dot lol"
• "Waited hours just to have the site crash. Hopefully it will be up soon!"
• "Billion dollar building. Couldn’t afford bandwidth.  ford’s technology hub for the world"
• "The site is down" *sad face*

"Well, I was comforted to know I wasn’t the only person suffering and just sad because I never try to get tickets to anything," Reid said.

Michigan Central sent us a statement reading in part that it appreciates the community's excitement, the demand for tickets exceeded their highest expectations and stress tests for website capacity.

After pausing ticketing for both the concert and the open house, Michigan Central announced registration will reopen on Wednesday at 9 a.m.

Tickets to the concert will be available here, while the open house tickets will be available here.

The official opening is June 6. Find more details here.