To find the idea of a Titanic Cruise/re-enactment a bit?

[CremeEggsandHam]

OK, this is the first time I've ever started a thread in AIBU so be gentle.
Surely I'm not the only one that finds the whole 'let's dress up in period costume, eat fine food and quaff champagne while 're-enacting' the voyage' a bit sinister and ghoulish?
Could maybe see the point if it was for the descendants of deceased passengers as a memorial service, but the dressing up and 're-enacting it?!
Leaves me a bit cold just thinking about it.
(Not to mention the fact that bad weather conditions has been mentioned in some reports. Are they mad?! I'd have jumped and tried my luck at swimming to shore while I still had the chance!)

[OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere]

I do not understand it at all.

Even the family members who are on the cruise would not have known those who died surely?

It was a terrible disaster but there have been so many since and before - why this one?

Because it was 'romantic' and the ship was full of pretty things?

I kind of get the paying respects to lost family members but a ship full of Titanic 'enthusiasts' is bizarre.

[Tranquilidade]

I am amazed at the obsession with the Titanic, it was a terribly sad story but the hoohah this past week has been ridiculous.

I want to know if this re-enactment cruise has actually got plebs below deck in third class so as to be really accurate? Surely if they are so into the "reality" they can't all be toffs?

[blapbird]

yanbu I was just saying the same thing to my DP the other day it's like going on a Mary Celeste Cruise we all know how that ends.
Fortunately the ice burgs are more like ice cubes now so not enough to sink a ship.
And whilst I'm here WHY OH WHY would anyone want to spend 6 grand on a looong boat trip?

[blapbird]

Mind you I wouldn't mind Leonardo following me round the boat and taking me to a underground Irish party to drink beer and dance that would be fine by me!

[AgentZigzag]

The fact that there was political and malicious intent behind the deaths in Nazi Germany makes it different Warren.

You could dress up in the clothes of their victims, shave your head etc to sharpen the empathy with the victims, but it wouldn't be fun-filled because doing those things would make you feel like they did.

And I don't believe the people on the ship commemorating the Titanic will be having a fun-filled night either. Although I wouldn't do it myself, I believe the people onboard could have a poignant reminder of the fear of the victims of that night felt, and not having a tanked up jolly under the stars.

[fluffypillow]

YANBU. I think it's a bit sick tbh.

[Lunabelly]

Yanbu.

I'm very interested in the story of the Titanic, but wouldn't touch that cruise with a bargepole. I'm all for commemoration and memorial; it's a human and decent thing to remember, condole and reflect and maybe learn from disasters, but this cruise? That's just ickky :(

I get the ceremony in Southampton, as so many locals were lost. I get the 'festival' in Belfast, as it's a kind of memorial. But dressing up and downing champers? No, no, 1517 times no.

[CaveMum]

i find the idea of listening to lectures on the disaster appealing, but the idea of the cruise makes me feel a bit ill.

I'm also finding it incredible that there are people on Twitter saying things like "OMG, Just found out Titanic was real. I though it was just a film! LOL"


Evidence here

[ohyouBadBadkitten]

I think it is a revolting idea.
Also getting rather annoyed by the BBC calling it 'Titanic ' all pretentious like rather than 'the Titanic'

[PerryCombover]

I think it's fine a long as there is a massive iceberg and huge amount of death

[SuePoiblybilt]

I know the people saying OMG it's REAL are laughable. But really - why should they know about this disaster more than any others? The tragedy of the Titanic is undeniable but there have been bigger disasters - there are more people losing their lives horribly across the world at the moment.
In a way, it's odd that so many of us know so much about the Titanic. It's become romantic and fascinating and I should think a lot of that is because of the glamour.

[OhdearNigel]

I'm also finding it incredible that there are people on Twitter saying things like "OMG, Just found out Titanic was real. I though it was just a film! LOL"

Really puts the Twit in Twitter

[PineCones]

YANBU. That's daft.

[FoxyRoxy]

I wondered if they were going to sink it when they got to the right spot in the Atlantic just to make sure it was historically accurate.

Complete money spinner, disrespectful to those that died and just plain weird.

[DioneTheDiabolist]

I'm in NI. And you can't escape it. It's in the shopping centers, schools, on billboards and bus shelters, it's on the radio and TV constantly. It's awful, awful, awful and I just don't know how much more I can take.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

[startail]

I really hate it too, its my worst nightmare being trapped in a sinking ship. I wish they would shut up about it.

Apart from the fact it is very disrespectful, to the dead of that disaster and more recent ones too.

[sashh]

It's not just me that thinks it's wierd then?

I mean how many ships were built that transported people safely accross the atlantic? But it seems to be a sort of celebration rather than a commemoration.

Some safety measures came in as a result of the disaster and that should be aknowledged but the cruise bit - apparently the people on the ship are queueing for 30 mins to get into the gift shop.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

YABU.... Titanic was a media sensation from the minute it happened. A tragedy peppered with stories of villains & heroes, romanticised and sentimentalised from Day 1. People are quite happy to follow tour guides around the sites of other past tragic events, battlefields, graveyards, murders, even atrocities like the Twin Towers. Not everyone's cup of tea but I don't think it's necessarily ghoulish either.

[Tee2072]

It is totally a jolly. The whole thing is.

As Dione said, try living in Belfast right now. To quote my husband "Come to Belfast and celebrate the deaths of 1,500 people."

[CremeEggsandHam]

Cogito - I 'get' that people visit other sites of atrocities. That's fair enough. What I don't 'get' is what possesses people to re-enact the whole cruise - dressing up in the costumes of the era, even down to eating things off the same menu as the original liner.
Why on earth DO that?! Why would people want to re-create a cruise that had started off in exactly the same way for thousands of excited people, back in 1912, cheerily waving off their loved ones on the adventure of a lifetime?
How can people get on that ship and do the same things, at exactly the same time and all that, and then disembark at the other end in America, when all those poor souls never got to finish their jollies?
It's sick.

[AutumnSummers]

DH and I were talking about this. He wondered if they were also going to use only half the lifeboats also, so that things could be really real if it did crash.

YANBU. It's a bit morbid.

[marshmallowpies]

Can totally see where the fascination comes from, because it was such an iconic event which has somehow outflanked other shipping disasters in collective memory - but yes, the idea of going on the cruise is a bit to me.

It makes me curious to see how the 100 year anniversary of WW1 will be handled - as an event which changed Europe irrevocably and wiped out an entire generation, I imagine most of the commemoration will be suitably solemn, but can imagine if some 'fun' elements creep in, there will be an uproar (remembering the VE day anniversary celebrations which were criticised for encouraging people to have street parties with spam fritters, etc).

And while I think it would be 'ghoulish' to go to the Titanic wreck site, I do want to go to the battlefields and cemeteries of WW1 one day (and the D-Day landing beaches) - is it ghoulish of me to want to do that? (don't have any relatives buried there that I know of, so have no personal connection, but somehow feel it's something I HAVE to do at some point in my life).

[elinorbellowed]

I think it's ghoulish and distasteful. Mind you, I'm a bit unsure about opening the concentration camps to the public as well. I could never imagine visiting them, although I think I would feel differently if I had relatives that died there. I have been to a WW1 cemetery and felt as if I had paid my respects to the people that died for us.

[Lunabelly]

Visiting the site of a tragedy to pay respects is one thing. To make a jolly fancy-dress beano around it is...macabre. And I speak as an over-sentimental armchair history buff and theatrical costume aficionado.