June 15th, 2026

I'll give you three guesses what Tim and I did this past Friday.........give up?  We met our friends, the Minocks, up in Tampa to visit the Titanic Exhibit!  Woohoo!

It was the travelling version of the exhibit not the permanent structure one and I've been told how the permanent one is even more awesome than the travelling version, but Honestly, I find that hard to believe coz this one was Awesome!

Well start with, yes, Tim played hookey so that we could go on a weekday, the assumption being that it would be less crowded on a Friday. It was also toward the end of the exhibits run which, presumably also helps there be smaller crowds.  And it worked!  While there were other folks there enjoying it all, it was very do-able and Sam-friendly!  

If you haven't been, I'll tell you a bit about it.  We were given our lanyards to begin with AND a paper that assigned us the identity of an actual passenger of that fated ship. I was Mathilde Weisz of Belgium - a Second Class passenger.  Tim was David Bowen of NYC and he was travelling third class.  Much like Jack of Rose and Jack fame.

As we walked through, we saw actual Titanic artifacts and also wonderful photographs that really help to tell the story.  We learned all about how the Titanic and her sister ships, the Gigantic and the Olympic, came to be, who the officers were on the ship and where she sailed from with all stops along the way.​

We learned all of the crazy unexpected things that happened along the way, each thing unfortunately, leading directly, though unintentionally, toward it's tragic end.  For example, at the last minute, one of the officers was re-assigned to a different ship and naturally he followed orders and immediately headed to his new post, without realizing that he had the key to the binocular locker in his pocket! Oh no!  Additionally, it all happened in the dark of night, on a flat calm sea (which makes distances harder to determine) AND there was a hazey fog kicking up.  None of those things were ideal for spotting ice bergs!  We also found out that there was an unprecedented amount of ice berg activity in the area.  Oh there were more small things that all added up to disaster, but  I'll leave a few for your own eventual discovery.

 Just for fun, we also got a pose on "deck" of the great ship:

We also got to pose at the bottom of the Grand Staircase.  Not the real actual staircase of course and oddly there were no photographs taken (that anyone ever found) of the real Titanic Grand Staircase.  The one seen below is of the Grand Staircase of the Olympic!  

At Eventually we made our way to a total surround video that was brilliant, very sad and made me kind of dizzy.  It wasn't just on all four walls but also the floor and ceiling!  Total Immersion.

At one point we got to look up our New names to find out what happened to our people. Were they rescued?  Did they survive?  (mine did, Tim's did not - very impactful)

The second to last part was an oppportunity to do a Virtual Reality deep sea dive to explore the wreckage!  Wow~!  I actually declined that part.  I'm clumsy enough in The real reality, I don't need an extra opportunity to damage myself.  But everyone else had a blast :)  Here's Tim getting into it.  By the way, He LOVED the VR experience.

At the very end, of course, we ended up in the gift shop, which is where the posters came from.  But my favourite part was an AI thing that, if you wished, took your photo and then after a moment produced multiple version of your face in Titanic era fashions.  That was fun.

It was a terrific history lesson, interactive, interesting, and creative!  if you have the opportunity and have not yet done it, I recommend it highly!  Rank super high on the Sam-Scale of museums.