Titanic Artifact Exhibit Museum, Orlando Florida

We visited the Titanic artifact Museum in Orlando.  Personally I wasn't going to miss this since I have always been fascinated with the Titanic.  I taught the book 'A Night to Remember' to my grade 9 class and was hooked.  I mean, who didn't love the movie Titanic with Leo and Kate?

 It takes roughly 2 hours to go through and you go through at your own pace.  The cost was $23.95 USD and we found a $4 dollar discount coupon in an Orlando magazine to bring the price down.  There are audio recorders that you can also rent for $5 extra dollars.  I did pay to rent an audio but it was not worth it.  I would suggest you leave the audio recorder and save the $5 because there is actually under 10 audios to listen to.

To the right is an authentic promotional poster for ticket sales.

This is the main engine room telegraph which is authentic.  If you enlarge the photo you can see the red insignia on the written area to the right of the telegraph.

The exhibit is made up of approximately 17 different rooms.  There is a little symbol that recognizes the authentic artifact as being directly from the bottom of the ocean and the Titanic.  I was more interested in the authentic artifacts.  The others are designed to be and look like replicas of the Titanic era.

Each room is very interesting and they were very creative when they put these rooms together.  For example there is a room that depicts a first class cabin, a room that is to made to make you feel like you're walking outside on the Titanic deck and there is even a room that is about -10° with a humongous giant iceberg in it.  This room had the stars above and the bone chilling cold that the passengers in the lifeboats would have felt. This room was super cool.

There is a ton of reading to do and I found it very dark in the rooms and a little bit hard to read for my 58-year-old eyes.  Now this poor lighting may have been necessary to preserve the artifacts I don't know, but it would have been appreciated if they could have turned it up somewhat.  

The Titanic exhibit does a good job of depicting the differences in the three different classes on board.  There are tons of photos to look at, like the one below of the actual ship.

This little guy to the left is new to the collection and does not have his authentic tag yet, but the staff assured me that this was just given to them recently and it came from the floor of the ocean.

I personally like the stories of different families in the pictures of people who sailed on the Titanic and whether they survived or not?  It lets you know if they made it or not.  There were huge metal plates on the wall of the roll call for 1st, 2nd, 3rd class passengers and crew.  The names are engraved into the medal.  If they survived the print is solid and if they died the print is outlined.  What was surprising to me was that there was a higher percentage of crew that survived than 3rd class passengers.

Like this leather suitcase to the right actually belonged to a person on the Titanic.  It held up quite well at the bottom of the ocean.

 

To the left is a 2-ton fragment of the hull of the Titanic that was brought up from the ocean floor.

When you pay your way into the exhibit you're given a card and this card when scanned halfway through the exhibits will let you know who you are and what your life was like and whether you were a survivor or not. 

The boarding pass that I received was a First Class female and she did survive.  Darren received a boarding pass of a First Class male and he did not survive.

If you're into Titanic history, then this is right up your alley and worth it to go and visit.

At the end of all the exhibits you walk through into a very large gift store where you can purchase memorabilia Titanic type things.  You can see authentic artifacts below, look for the little red insignia.

There is an authentic fruit bowl and cup that came from the Titanic and the other two came from the Olympic to show you what dishes the steerage compartment or that of Third Class passengers would have eaten off of.  The White Star line always placed an emblem on their dishes to avoid theft.  That would have been my Irish and Scottish cousins, sorry White Star.

There was a Fleming female passenger in 1st Class that survived.  She could have been a relative of mine????

Over 110 years has come and gone since the sinking of the Titanic. One would think that the world has changed substantially but has it really?  We literally just got off of the Norwegian Prima two days ago and really nothing has changed in this world.  There is literally three different classes on the boat that we just got off of.  There is the Haven which would be first class, there was the second class which would be the balcony suites and there was the third class or steerage which is the inside cabins.  I will let you guess where we were.

Let's just say Darren and I wouldn't have survived the sinking of the Norwegian Prima.

This was an authentic poster for marketing purposes to provide people in Europe, USA and Canada for promotional purposes and sales of tickets for Titanic sailings.  There were quite a few Canadians on board which was news to me.

If you love anything Titanic then this museum is for you.   It is conveniently located in the Disney area and has free parking.