With five tickets on offer, even my “too cool for school” teenage nephews were thrilled to be invited. Reservations are made in 15-minute intervals, so there’s plenty of room for attendees to wander without feeling overwhelmed.

As we entered Dockside Boarding, a beautiful recreation of the Port of Southampton, we were ushered not only to receive our boarding passes, but also to pose for a group photo and to be greeted with a virtual welcome on board by Captain Smith.

If you wish, via an augmented reality app, you could be guided inside the exhibition. This is available in five languages

The show begins in traditional fashion: you stroll along the pier, lined with posters detailing everything Titanic history. Seagulls squawked and steam engines floated as, after boarding, we moved into a large room filled with beautiful porcelain from other White Star Line ships of the time.

There were examples of outfits that first class passengers would have worn, along with original artifacts from the 1997 film. There was also a replica of the Diana of Versailles statue that would have been seen in the first class lounge and has now been identified from the seabed.

And then we moved into the first room – after passing all sorts of fake cabin doors that looked like we were supposed to peek in – and arrived at the chair-filled virtual reality room, where we were shown to a group of five people and asked to put on our headsets.

Wow, oh wow! We were immediately transported aboard the Titanic. The music played was a specially composed piece entitled “Until The Orchestra Fell Silent” by Rene Merkelbach and performed by over 50 musicians from the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and Audiocult Choir. As we listened, not forgetting to turn our chairs and get the full 360-degree experience, we entered the iceberg room where we saw that massive block of ice next to a replica of a lifeboat.

When we left the room, we literally stopped for a while to reflect on what we had just seen

As we continued walking, we entered a huge area with 360-degree floor-to-ceiling projections as we followed the Titanicprogress through laying the keel. We sat hearing the launch of the Titanic in the waves and met the fictional Callaghan family: a father with his little daughter playing hide and seek all over the ship.

The room took us from the beginning to the iceberg. In fact, a little girl sitting next to us was so scared when the iceberg hit that she jumped up and ran across the room to where her mother was. The projections were so real that they gave us seasickness warnings. As the ship sank, and you were facing astern, you could see it rising, the water coming in and crashing through the Great Dome above the Grand Staircase. It was a wonderful recreation.

You could actually watch this part of the show as many times as you wanted, enjoying the wonder of it all.

On our way out of the Immersive Room, we stopped at the Command Center. It contains interactive board games where you could dodge icebergs as you pass through them, a la carte menus served on board, along with legends and detailed accounts of survivors, all verified by the exhibition’s historians.

For the record: only my nice nephew managed to get over the iceberg, while I didn’t even get out of the port!

And then came the interactive journey into the Metaverse incorporating 5D sensory elements. We waited outside while listening to a speech detailing what to expect. We were then taken in small groups to a large room showing the Titanic resting on the ocean floor as we gradually moved through the ship. My niece Victoria and I were so disoriented that we held hands as we groped.

We marveled at the Café Parisien, the Grand Staircase and peeked into the first and third class cabins. Finally, we were greeted by Captain Smith, who greeted us and showed us where to go through the door. Convinced that we had been wandering up and down stairs and in and out of cabins, we were amazed when, taking off our headphones, we realized that we had been in one large room all along!

Moving past a second photo opportunity – where you could pretend to be Jack and Rose – there’s a sketch and post area where the family is invited to draw their own Titanic images and take an interactive quiz.

And of course the visit wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Café Parisien, obviously inspired by the original, for tea and pastries and then a visit to the souvenir shop, where we collected the photos taken as we boarded.

Until February 2026, adult tickets cost £24.00 and children’s tickets cost £16. Under threes go free. Getting there is super easy too – it’s literally a hop from Canada Water to the surface.

I literally cannot praise this immersive exhibition enough – it was fantastic, fantastic and any other adjective you can think of. I actually think I’ll go see it again.

You can find out more and book tickets on their website.

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