When Clive Palmer unveiled the Titanic II project he said many things, including the following:
“Passengers will also be given 1920s-era costumes, which will be included in state rooms upon arrival and will be a part of the ticket fee, to help recreate the experience. First class passengers will not be able to mingle with those in second or third class, but will be able to spend a few days in different quarters, which will require people to change clothing”.
“It will really help you pretend you are in the movie,” Palmer said.
Now the idea of all of the passengers dressing-up in period costume is a fun one, but it sounds very unrealistic to me.
- Some passengers would not want to comply
- The ship will carry 2,435 passengers, given the fact that people come in different shapes, sizes, and sexes, that equates to at least 7,305 costumes in S, M and L sizes, that would be required. (What about Children and, XL and XXL?)
- Where would all of the clothes be stored?
- I like to wear clean clothes every day. How would that work?
- Imagining the poor crew having to wash all of those consumes every week.
- Imaging the expense and work required to provide such a costume service.
The idea about experiencing different grades of accommodation and dining is also an interesting one, but again difficult to achieve.
- The original Titanic had three classes of accommodation – would passengers really want to swap cabin twice during a cruise?
- I assume that the third class (steerage) accommodation would be much more basic (smaller) than the first class. Passengers swapping from first to third might well feel downgraded.
- Imagine the work involved in repacking and moving passenger’s luggage to a different cabin grade once or twice a week.
- Then Mr. Palmer expects them to swap clothing too (clean ones I hope?)
- The original Titanic had 416 in First Class cabins, 162 in Second Class, and 262 in Third Class. Direct swaps would not be possible due to the number of berths in each class is mismatched.
- However, some sort of rota assigning passenger to different dining rooms during the cruise would be more feasible, but once again there would probably be a mismatch of seats in each dining room.
- I assume that the food would range from excellent (First Class) to basic (Third Class).
In conclusion
I love Mr. Palmer’s vision but swapping accommodation during a Titanic II cruise would not be easy to achieve.
Providing clean period costume, of the right size/gender, for everybody on-board a Titanic II cruise would be very difficult to achieve, if not almost impossible.
Malcolm
Titanic II News 