A Gift Shop to Remember
by Anna Merlan
1. A ticket, which will cost you $39.99 per adult. Upon payment, you will be handed an admissions card designed to look like a boarding pass for the real Titanic. On the reverse of this pass you will be assigned the name of a passenger who took that fateful voyage themselves; at the end of your visit, you get to find out whether they lived or sank.
2. Portions of the museum—which cost a reported $25 million to build—are modeled to look like the actual Titanic; that means you can get a photo of yourself in a fancy frame posing on the grand staircase, which runs like $30? I’m not sure. I didn’t get one. I thought very hard about it and then decided I wasn’t sure I liked the symbolism. I did, however, force my husband to stand in the rain and take a nice photo of the outside of the building, which is shaped like the Titanic, with a large iceberg permanently embedded, like an enormous barnacle or a thorn, in its side.
3. The museum experience, which toggles between informational exhibits and weird stunt stuff, e.g. there’s a whole room where you can stick your hand in water the same temperature as the North Atlantic Ocean the night the boat sank. You can do that for free, but some of the exhibits are in the process of being auctioned off, including a pair of eyeglasses that belonged to someone who did not survive, which seems like a terribly unlucky thing to bring into your home.
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