MORE than 300,000 people descended on Yuyuan Garden over the weekend in the run-up to today's Lantern Festival.

As of 9pm last night, 146,404 had entered the attraction, and the number of visitors on Saturday surpassed 163,000.

After 4pm yesterday, only ticket holders were allowed into the entire garden, and at that time, there were more than 19,000 people at the site, prompting the introduction of stricter crowd control measures, such as requiring all visitors to walk around the site in one direction, including the famous Zigzag bridge.