Experience All the Fun of the Titanic Without Any of the Death

Have you always wanted to experience the thrill of being on the Titanic but have been afraid of drowning in an icy sea? Well, then it's too bad you didn't book a ticket aboard the ship that's retracing the Titanic's route beginning today. They're skipping the shipwreck part—or so the tour organizers have promised anyway.

Yes, for a mere $4,445 to $9,520, you could have booked passage on the Titanic Memorial Cruise from Southampton. As the ship prepared to set sail, passengers stood on the decks, many wearing period costumes that turned them into "first-class passengers, crew members, steerage passenger and stewards." Okay, this whole cruise raises a lot of questions, but foremost among them is who in the world would choose to ride in steerage on the Titanic? Didn't they see the movie? Sure, they had fun dancing down there, but those people were the most fucked of all in the end. Plus, they had the scratchiest clothes.

Anyway, this blessed experience is supposed to last for 12 nights and was planned to coincide with the release of Titanic 3D. J/K! It was actually planned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ship's doomed voyage. The ship, the MS Balmoral, will carry 1,309 passengers, the same number of people (not including the crew) as the original boat had. Some of them are relatives of people who died on the actual Titanic, while others are family members of those who survived.

It may be a bit morbid, but the cruise won't all be focused on the tragedy. Says, USA Today of the planned activities:

The organizers are trying to recreate the onboard experience — minus the disaster — including the food and a live band playing music from that era, in a tribute to Titanic's musicians who reportedly played their instruments until the ship sank.

Glad they clarified on the "minus the disaster" part, because that would probably have cut down on the number of tickets sold. It actually does sound sort of fun, but it will have its serious moments. On April 13th, the night before the Titanic sank, they have a special dinner planned that will consist entirely of dishes served aboard the original voyage. There is also a memorial service planned for April 14th at 11:40 p.m., when the boat reaches the point where the Titanic hit the infamous iceberg. Let's hope the iceberg has disappeared in the intervening 100 years—or that this boat is equipped with some kind of equipment to detect such threats. And, finally, there will be another memorial at the moment when the ship went down. Then I guess it's back to playing board games on the deck and romping around with lovers you met at the all-you-can-eat buffet?

That all sounds fine, I suppose, but what we really need is for there to be two horny teens onboard who fall immediately into a star-crossed love affair. That way when the ship has a totally uneventful sail and returns to port, we can see what the alternate ending would have been for Rose and Jack. In other words, we can see just how dull and unromantic it is when a relationship dwindles from the pressure of carrying on a cross-socioeconomic status, long-distance relationship.

Cruise ship retraces voyage of Titanic 100 years later [USA Today]