A Chinese theme park is building a full-scale replica of the Titanic for guests to overnight on. The replica of the world’s most famous luxury liner will be the centrepiece of a Sichuan province theme park, despite being more than 1,000km from the sea.
And if a faithful replica of the Titanic wasn’t enough, the park is also constructing a replica of Southampton Port – as it would have looked like when the Titanic set sail on her fateful journey in 1912, or at least how it appeared in James Cameron’s blockbuster 1997 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The film is wildly popular in China.
Everything from the dining room to the luxury cabins and even the door handles are styled on the original, which was built in Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard.
The construction project has taken six years so far – longer than it took to build the original ship – and used 23,000 tonnes of steel, over a hundred workers and cost around €140 million.
The owners expect to charge €140 to spend a night on board for the “five-star cruise service;” the owners emphasised that guests will feel like they’re at sea, including the rumble of functioning steam engines. And presumably that’s where the similarities will end, as the original ship struck an iceberg and sunk with the loss of over 1,500 lives.
