 "Photo: Reema Desai")
Nearly everyone’s seen the movie Titanic, but not enough have seen Titanic: The Experience. The exhibit takes visitors out of the movie theater and into the ship’s hallways.
Ninety-seven years to the week after that fateful night, the exhibit guides people on a tour of the Titanic while giving them a taste of what life was like for the ship’s passengers — pre-iceberg of course.
“I loved the character acting, it made you feel like you were there, going through all the rooms like on a real-life tour,” said Robert James Bateman, 45, a visitor on vacation.
Bateman’s grandfather was the Rev. Robert James Bateman, a passenger who died when the ship sank. At the last minute he gave his scarf to his sister-in-law as she left on the last lifeboat saying, “You’ll need this more than I will.”
“We learned so much, my son and I, and we got to connect with our family’s history,” Bateman said. “It was a great experience.”
While not everyone who visits the exhibit has an ancestral connection, there is information for everyone and anyone.
“Every tour is different; we always talk about different things, and there’s always something new to learn,” said Jim Trebowski, a tour guide at the exhibit.
First stop on the tour is a room that plays a video with background information on the Titanic. The film gave information on the people involved in the making of the ship iso people can realize there was more to the ship than just its demise.
After the video, the tour guide appears, dressed as a crewman from the Titanic. Going by the name Luigi Gatti and with an Italian accent to boot, he informs the tour group that he’s the owner of one of the finest restaurants on the ship.
The next room is built to resemble a shipyard where workers are building the Titanic. The room is plain, with brick walls and a painted mural of the ship. Everyone’s eyes, however, will likely focus on the gigantic golden propeller in the corner of the room that is a replica of one of three propellers the Titanic used.
Then it’s off to South Hampton in 1912, where the group learns what kind of people the passengers of Titanic were and what it took to get on the grandest ship in history.
Continuing into a large room separated into multiple parts, the tour group sees the Marconi room, where passengers and crew sent messages back and forth on a 24-hour basis using telegraph equiment and Morse code.
The main area is a collection of furniture, personal items and pieces of the ship itself.
There’s the wooden deck chair that passengers would pay $1 a day to rent — roughly $45 in modern times, according to Gatti — and a large collection of jewelry recovered from the wreckage.
“There’s just so much to take in on this tour; the artifacts, the people, and it’s all so interesting,” said Rod Johnson, 48, a tourist at the exhibit on vacation with his family.
Off to the side is a room that has a famous scene in the movie: the upscale millionaire suite of J.P. Morgan. Being a rich investor, Morgan had a luxurious suite built for him, but became ill before the maiden voyage.
The tour moves on to a recreated Grand Staircase — the epitome of elegance.
Remade to show how beautiful the architecture was, this is where Luigi leaves the group in the hands of a new tour guide: Harry Molson, still played by Trebowski.
With a new Canadian-accented tour guide in tow, the group makes way through a hallway recreated to be similar to the hallways leading toward the ship’s steerage. Trebowski tells the group to take note that the third-class passengers could essentially be locked in and trapped on their floors due to the steel gates.
The hallway leads to a cargo room in which another landmark of the movie can be seen: the famous car from Jack and Rose’s steamy scene.
The last stop for the tour is a memorial room for the passengers of the ship. The walls are covered in glass sheets inscribed with the many names of passengers onboard its maiden voyage.
Tour guests, paired with the name of a passenger on the manifest, search for the name on the walls in order to find out the fate of their partner.
“I really liked that we had a passenger paired up with us, and we got to find out more about their life and find out their fate at the end on the memory wall,” Johnson said.
The last bit of entertainment for the night is an ice block on the wall, kept at 31 degrees, simulating the chill of the water that night. The tour guide tells the group to try placing our palms flat on the ice and hold for 10 seconds.
None has made it longer than 5 seconds.
“Now imagine that over your entire body,” Trebowski said. “That’s what it was like for those in the water.”
As guests file out, they find a newfound respect for the passengers of the ship.
They might be expecting a tour on the ship but instead will be pleasantly surprised with getting a glimpse of what it was like to be on the Titanic those many years ago.
1 comments