04:46 PM CST on Monday, November 21, 2005

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- He isn’t Sting, Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney or U-2, but Tai Shan is proving quite the draw anyhow.

AP

Tai Shan gets an exam at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

More than half of the tickets for the National Zoo’s public debut of the popular giant panda cub were gone within the first hour of an online ticket offering, zoo officials said Monday.

Some 13,000 free, timed-entry tickets were made available for the public to get a glimpse of the little fellow beginning on Dec. 8. But an hour later, nearly 8,000 tickets had already been reserved, and the ticket Web site was turning out error messages, said Friends of the National Zoo spokesman Matt Olear.

The zoo had expected the tickets to be “extremely popular, but I don’t think we expected quite this amount so quickly,” Olear told WRC-TV. “We’re just asking people to be patient, and bear with us. Just keep trying.”

Tai Shan’s parents will also be on display most days while Tai Shan is being shown off inside. The public will not need tickets for outside viewing.