A Titanic Experience (Titanic - The Experience)

Member Name: chocaholic110

Product:	Titanic - The Experience
Date:	22/01/09 (203 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A break from theme parks, well organised, tour guide was very interesting

Disadvantages: Expensive

For many years now, even before the film came out, I have had an interest in the history of the Titanic and its fateful maiden voyage. So imagine how excited I was when we visited Florida and discovered that not every attraction there involved overgrown mice. On International Drive, very close to our hotel, there was an exhibition entitled Titanic - the Experience.

Despite the fact that my husband and the children had absolutely no interest in the Titanic whatsoever, I persuaded (ok, nagged!) them into taking a break from theme parks and visiting the attraction.

The whole experience begins with the ticket purchase. Obviously, I hear you say, but this is no ordinary ticket purchase. Each visitor is given a ticket that is a replica of a ticket that a Titanic passenger would have had, bearing the name of someone who actually travelled on the ship. My husband became WT Stead, novelist and spiritualist and co-incidentally one-time editor of our local newspaper, I became Violet Jessop, a stewardess working on the ship (typical!) and my son became Michael Hoffman, a small child who had been snatched from his mother by his father - an early tug-of-love case. I can't actually remember the name my daughter was given, but I do recall she was very pleased by the fact that it was a teenage girl.

After buying the tickets we then progressed to the attraction entrance, where there were several people already waiting. The interactive tour runs every hour, on the hour and bang on time we were greeted by our tour guide.

The Titanic Experience employs actors who take on the role of a person who is in someway connected to the Titanic history. I have heard of people who were escorted by some of the more famous characters, such as Captain Edward Smith and the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, but we had someone who supposedly was one of the ship-builders. All of the actors are in period costume and talk in character the whole time. As we passed through the entrance the character took our tickets and told us little snippets of information about the person whose ticket we held.

The tour itself is in chronological order, beginning with videos of the ship-building process, then it goes through a number of different scenes, including the very grand first class staircase, made famous in the Titanic film. We were told that you are able to get married upon this staircase, which I thought was a nice idea but my husband thought would be very tacky. Along the way we saw scenes from storage areas, heard a lot of statistics, facts and anecdotes, looked at pictures, menus and actual items that had been aboard the doomed vessel. This was quite interesting for all of us, but might have been more so if many of the scenes and exhibits hadn't been roped off which made it difficult to inspect anything very closely.

The children especially enjoyed the more interactive parts of the museum, including a huge wall of ice that the guide challenged us to see how long we could keep our hands on the ice. It wasn't very long at all and it really made you think how cold it must have been on the sinking ship. Another part of the museum was designed to look like a replica of the outside deck of the ship, complete with twinkling stars and absolutely freezing!

Towards the end of the tour our guide revealed his own story; that he was a worker involved in the construction of the ship, who had been crushed to death and lay dying while the owners of the ship held a pre-sailing celebration. It's not a story that I've read before in any book about the Titanic (and I've read a few!) but I have no reason to believe it couldn't have been true. In his own words he was the first, but certainly not the last victim of the Titanic and it added to the pathos of the exhibition.

Finally, at the end of the tour was a giant wall bearing the names of all who sailed on the Titanic, where the names of those who survived were lit up and you could find the name on your ticket to see if your character survived or not. As you would expect, as women and children, the characters of myself and my children survived but that of my husband didn't which did disgruntle him somewhat!

The tour itself was very well done and even though my family had no real interest beforehand they did enjoy themselves and learned something. My daughter, who was six at the time, developed quite an interest in the story which she has retained three years later as, when I said I was writing a review on the Titanic Experience she said "Ooh, I want to go back there!"

One small downside is the cost of the exhibition. The website gives current prices as

ADULTS $19.95 + TAX
CHILDREN (3-11) $12.95 + TAX
SENIORS (55+) $18.95 + TAX

which makes it a quite expensive tour when you consider that it is over in one hour.

It is probably worth mentioning that in looking at the website for this attraction it appears that it has closed down and been reopened in a different building on International Drive. It also appears that it has been extended and now claims to include a new "Interactive Dive Area" and Captain's Bridge.

Overall, I would say this is a must visit for anyone with an interest in the history of the Titanic but can be equally interesting to others and a welcome break from the theme parks!

Summary: I would probably visit again on my next trip to Florida...