Titanic adds $1.2M in features

John Joslyn, who owns the attraction with wife Mary, said more than 525,000 guests visited the Titanic museum in its inaugural year.

“It has exceeded all our expectations,” John Joslyn said.

New features installed this spring include a roughly $350,000 redesigned museum entrance, the addition of a nearly $1 million audio tour, a Web cam of the Branson strip and wireless headsets for employees.

“We want to make sure the guests start in the world of 1912 before they come in,” John Joslyn said about the new walkway entrance, a scale replica of the London Waterloo Train Station where many of the Titanic’s most prominent passengers boarded for Southampton to reach the ship before its maiden voyage April 10, 1912. Forced heat for the winter and fans for the summer also were added to keep guests comfortable while waiting outside.

Joslyn said the walkway renovations were designed by Butler, Rosenbury & Partners of Springfield and built by Frank Turner Construction of Branson.

The Titanic Museum will unveil its new audio tour May 1.

“It looks like an MP3 Player – the shape of a small baseball bat,” Joslyn said of the hand-held devices that will rent for $5 each. “It has a keypad that you can punch in a code from the numbers displayed on the showcase plaque (inside the museum). It gives you two minutes of narration on that showcase.”

Joslyn said Bernard Hill, who played Capt. Smith in James Cameron’s “Titanic,” is the narrator. The audio tour also includes the real voices of Titanic survivors who were first recorded by Joslyn for a 1987 TV special he produced called “Return to the Titanic … Live.”

“When you get the real sources, the first-hand accounts, I think people will be amazed,” he said. “They’re so poignant.”[[In-content Ad]]