Awake: 6:24am Temp 55 sleep 7+14 rain…then sunny overnight @ Branson.
Before breakfast, Gary & I walk the campground for (30) min of exercise.
@ 8:45am, our bus departs for the Yakov Smirnoff show…(15) min away. Yakov, a Russian emigrant, has done well in the USA, especially when coming to Branson. He has some good stories to tell & he is funny but….his Christmas show & skits were blah. We applauded his stuff anyway. Then we are bused back to our campground.
@ 2:00pm, tech talk with John in the clubhouse; this tech talk is always good for us guys & some of the ladies. As these Newell motorhomes continue to be more high tech, it’s challenging for some of us to keep up to date with the latest and/or understand the present.
5:30pm, cocktails in the clubhouse…then our bus departs for dinner aboard the Titanic, downtown Branson. Jackets suggested for men, cocktail attire for the ladies.
The Branson Titanic is, of course, a scaled down, partial version with a few rooms copied to perfection as the real Titanic would have. You enter Titanic through a stucco iceberg wedged into the side of the ship. Once inside, you're invited to chill your hand on a wall of ice; a reminder of what brought this marvelous & unsinkable ship down to begin with.
You're issued a "boarding pass" with the name of a Titanic passenger or crew member, and won't find out if you live or die until you're almost to the gift shop. But you can make an educated guess about your fate. For instance, if you are Reverend somebody, you drowned after giving your life jacket to some heathen…
Kathy’s travel name: Edwina Celia “Winnie” Troutt; age 27. She boarded @ Southampton, England as a 2nd Class passenger; her destination: Auburndale, Massachusetts. Kathy will follow her activities as the cruise ship speeds toward America.
My travel name: Thomas Leonard Theobald; age 34. He also boarded the Titanic at Southampton, was married & living in Strood, Kent, England. Thomas is a 3rd class passenger.
Costumed historical interpreters wander about: men in double-breasted officer uniforms, women dressed as chambermaids. Audio atmospherics are everywhere: foghorns, clanking bells, muffled voices.
You ascend a replica of the Titanic's Grand Staircase & find yourself in First Class. There you'll see a sumptuous suite of rooms, and a guy resembling Titanic's captain Edward Smith, walking around, assuring everyone in a sonorous baritone that everything is fine.
The Sinking Room has a series of progressively steep sloping decks you can try to stand on, a lifeboat in which you can sit, and a bowl of 28 degree salt water where you can immerse a finger. Endurance is timed by a nearby clock, and you probably won't last a minute. It helps you to understand why nearly everyone in the water quickly succumbed.
The Memorial Room comes next -- where you can scan for your name on a glass wall to learn whether you're alive or dead -- and then the Recovery Room, which displays the 26-foot-long model of Titanic's collapsed bow used in the Cameron movie.
On the night of the sinking, Kathy’s travel name: “Winnie” retired to her cabin but did not completely undress. Her cabin mate, Nora Keane, heard a cock crowing earlier in the evening & took it as a bad omen. Shortly before midnight, Winnie felt the engines stop, investigated & returned quickly to warn her cabin mates of the situation’s urgency. She & Nora went to the boat deck together. Winnie resigned herself to dying, believing it was wrong for a single woman to board a lifeboat when so many married women & mothers should be saved. Suddenly someone handed her a small baby; feeling responsible, she then boarded a lifeboat & lived.
My traveling name: Thomas, on the night of the sinking, being a 3rd class passenger, proceeded through an open watertight doorway to stairs leading up to the 2nd class salon. Upon approaching a doorway guarded by a crew member, the men were held back. Thomas, fearing he might not be allowed in a lifeboat, took off his wedding band, handed the ring to a women he knew who would survive saying, “If I don’t see you in New York, will you see that my wife gets this?”
The "museum" contains 400 artifacts, more than in any previous Titanic attraction: a dollar bill carried by the Titanic's barber, a menu from the Titanic's dining room, some letters written on Titanic stationery, a couple of life vests, two deck chairs, a pocket watch from a dead passenger, etc.
We did enjoy a delicious dinner onboard the Titanic: Caesar salad in crisp Parmesan shell followed by an entrée of filet mignon, baked potato & green beans.
We returned to our campground @ approximately 10:40pm. What a great day this has been!
Lights out: 11:27pm
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