We review Titanic: Echoes from the Past
We review Titanic: Echoes from the Past
A VR experience that aims to immerse you in history
It was on 15 April 133 years ago, that the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage. The tragic story has been told many times through films, books and exhibitions. Now an immersive VR experience, Titanic: Echoes from the Past, pays tribute to the 2,200 passengers and crew who sailed, highlighting some of their stories while also virtually exploring the vast wreckage.
The experience has been set up in a basement off Camden High Street. There’s not much in the way of fanfair when you arrive at the experience, just a ticket desk where you can buy refreshments and a small seating area while you wait for your group to be called forward. After a briefing on how the VR works, you don your headsets, walk through a virtual door and are soon descending to the ocean floor to begin the exploration, it’s then a mix of underwater scenes and being transported back to the voyage of 1912.
At times it can be a little disorienting – other visitors appear in your field of vision as white outlines and you need to be careful not to bump into them. If you get too close to a wall, you’ll be alerted by a grid that appears. But as you can walk around, it does feel as if you are actually exploring rather than just watching.
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Compared to other VR experiences I’ve tried, it doesn’t have any of the elaborate theming inside the attraction – for example, The War of the Worlds Experience has two ‘real-world’ bars that look incredible as well as a boat you step into before donning a headset so it feels very immersive. Sandbox VR meanwhile is more interactive as you are battling various enemies with weapons.
But the aim here is to impart history in a very visual way. And it works. There are some incredible moments such as when you descend to the ballroom and see the famous staircase or get to wander around the deck and peep through the window at the quaint gym. The point the crew realise that they are heading towards the iceberg is a particularly powerful experience. Being surrounded by jellyfish deep underwater and looking up at the star-filled sky from the deck of the boat are also magical. And the way your headset doubles as a head torch for exploration also works well.
When you hear the tales of some of the passengers, it really brings the human tragedy of it home. The experience is educational (the project is the result of two years of extensive research), immersive and moving.
I took my teens and it was the ideal Easter holiday experience, with the added bonus of being right next to Camden Market for a mooch afterwards.
The experience lasts around an hour if you count the briefing beforehand, with 30 minutes of VR. It’s suitable for 8-year-olds and above. Tickets cost from £20.
