Review: AN IMMERSIVE VOYAGE ON TITANIC at Union Station

Titanic… An Immersive Experience. The Exhibit has opened at Union Station for a multi-month run through April of 2026.   The key word is “Immersive.”

 “Immersion” means that audience members are meant to feel like they are part of the experience.  The Titanic Immersion Voyage is the next logical step towards achieving what it must have been like to have been aboard the RMS Titanic on that cold April night in back 1912, 400 miles east of Newfoundland when she struck an iceberg, foundered, and lost 1500 of her passengers and crew to the icy north Atlantic while on her maiden voyage to New York.

Everyone knows the story of the Royal Mail Ship Titanic, the magnificent, four-piper, luxury ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank during her maiden voyage. Titanic was designed with davits for 32 lifeboats, but because Titanic was believed to be unsinkable, only 16 lifeboats were ever installed according to regulations of the day.

It turns out that Titanic was indeed sinkable.  The damage done by an unexpected iceberg exceeded what the ship could survive.  Cost saving decisions in the construction phase allowed watertight compartments to end too low in the hull.   As compartments filled, water lapped over into the next compartment and great ship went down. More than 1500 passengers and crew died in an icy north Atlantic.  About 700 passengers and crew survived. Many of America’s Gilded Age Elite were on board.

The Titanic sinking was so horrific that it has been retold numerous times.  Why?  At 873 feet in length, RMS Titanic was the largest moving object that man had yet constructed in 1912. 

Titanic was luxury itself and thought to be unsinkable.  That she did sink, though crewed by the cream of the White Star Line staff, and equipped with the latest in wireless communication makes her loss with so many of her passengers even more improbable and mysterious.

Oceanographer Bob Ballard discovered the wreck in 1985 and ghostly photos reinvigorated interest.  There have been at least three major motion pictures telling the story and a two major Broadway musicals.  There are at least four permanent museum exhibits that I know of: at South Hampton UK where she left on her never to be completed first journey, at Belfast, where she was built, and unlikely as it seems; reconstructions of Titanic at Pidgeon Forge Tennessee and Bransom, Missouri.  

A tourist company called OceanGate constructed a submersible to visit the Titanic wreck site.  In 2023, repeated visits aboard the carbon fiber hulled ship caused a catastrophic implosion event killing all five persons inside.

There have also been at least two, major, traveling museum exhibits.  Both exhibits have visited Union Station.

The current version of the Titanic story covers 35,000 square feet of the main gallery at Union Station.

The first 5000 square foot gallery shares what was happening in Kansas City contemporaneously with Titanic’s construction and fateful maiden voyage. The eight hundred and seventy-five thousand square foot Union Station was under construction, and almost complete, and awaiting its Grand Opening in 1914.

Everything was “up to date” in Kansas City in 1912.  The exhibit shows the state of technology in KC at the same time Titanic was being readied.

The remaining 30,000 square feet of the Titanic exhibit recreates what you might have seen as a typical passenger.  From the KC exhibit gallery, visitors encounter the side of the great ship and enter via gang plank before visiting “the grand staircase,” “the bridge,” dining rooms, and what staterooms for all classes were like.

Titanic was the first of three sister ships built at the time.  Many of the recreated rooms in this exhibit have been salvaged from Titanic’s sisters.

Video displays with touch screens allow visitors to explore the great ship in detail.  You can expand the detail at your will in excruciating detail.  Another screen shows each soul on board the great ship.  Designers have bothered to allow each individual to be accessed and their biography to be displayed on the touch screen.  With over 2300 individual entries, the level of detail is worth seeing.     

There is a great deal of interest in new methods of presentation like “Immersion.”  At many points along your exploration of the ship, you intentionally feel like you are on board. A companionway just slightly in the distance appears to fill with seawater and engulf you.  Finally, you enter an empty room except for a lifeboat and what seems to be the sea all around you. Suddenly, you see the iceberg and an animation of the great ship as it crashes, breaks apart, with her lifeboats all around her.  It is very effective.

In the next room, virtual reality headsets are offered (for an extra charge) and the experience becomes even more intense.

My interest in all of this comes from an interest in history, and the current trend in Broadway shows that they should also become immersive. 

A new off-Broadway revival of “Cats” involves audience members in the Jellico Ball.  A short-lived production of “Here Lives Love” allowed audience members to line dance along with the cast. “Cabaret” was presented with audience members as customers of the Kit Kat Club including dinner and pre-show interactions with cast members.

Right now, a new production of “Phantom of The Opera” is being presented in an off-Broadway building in immersive style. This new version is being called “Masquerade.”

An audience of about 50 is walked through the various settings of the “Phantom” in the bowels of the Paris Opera House.  Everyone comes to the show in formal attire and a mask. The show is performed multiple times a day.  The effect is supposed to be intimate… immersive and told from the perspective of the “Phantom.”

As Star Trek’s Mr. Spock might have observed.   All this immersive stuff is “fascinating.”  They all seem like steps towards what eventually must be something like “a holodeck” on the later versions of the “Starship Enterprise.”

The immersive Titanic exhibit at Union Station is worth your time and perhaps a great place to park many of those out of town visitors during the holidays.  It took me about two hours to get through the exhibit.  Immersive Titanic remains at Union Station through April 2026.