My final full day in America was last Friday. In the morning we had breakfast at a place called Sizzler. We’d had dinner at another branch a few days before and it was nice. This all you can eat style of eating is not something I am used to at home – you get it perhaps in Chinese restaurants, that sort of thing, but it’s not common. So I took advantage and had the equivalent of two breakfasts.
We went to a place called Ripley’s BELIEVE IT OR NOT. There are other ones worldwide, there’s one in the Trocadero in London. It’s just a museum of weird stuff, facts, unusual things. Like a full-size Rolls Royce made out of matchsticks, a shrunken head, world’s fattest man and so on. It wasn’t that great and a lot of the things I already knew about. The sort of museum that should probably be free.
Then we went to the Titanic Experience on International Drive. I was excited to go here. Outside, the track “Rose” from the 1997 film was playing on speakers, which was a bit odd I thought, an albeit wonderful instrumental piece about a fictional character when the exhibition is about the ship, not the film. But on the other hand, what other music is associated with the ship in people’s minds? James Horner ftw.
We were led around the exhibition, which consisted of reconstructions of rooms on-board and rooms with models and genuine artefacts, by a man who I presumed was an out-of-work actor. His story was that he was a worker at Harland and Wolff, the Belfast shipyard where Titanic was built. This worked, although it was hammy, up until the point where we were taken “on deck”. He then turned in to a historian aware that the ship had sunk and doing the “it gets me every time” act.
The exhibition (which I must stress, I did enjoy, as far as one can enjoy such a thing) then turned bizarre as we watched, on a TV screen, a shortened account of the sinking using clips from the 1997 film. This was set to not the Rose music, nor to any other music from the soundtracks, but to Orff’s O Fortuna, most recently popular as the judge’s music from THE X FACTOR. I am sure that part of the exhibition was developed long before Simon Cowell decided to use the piece to announce his entrance on stage, but it still felt tacky. In addition, O Fortuna is a poem about fate and luck. The sinking of the Titanic was due neither to luck nor fate. But I digress!
I liked it though, I really did. There was a large model of the wreck as it was in the early 1990s which was interesting to look at, deckchairs from both the film and the real ship and I’m glad I was able to finally look around. It was definitely better than the Ripley’s place, which to be honest felt more like a glorified thief’s hoard.
The thing about Orlando which is shown most clearly in places like International Drive is that it’s a convenience town. It’s for the people to come and see replicas of things, experience reconstructions of things. The whole place is built around satisfying the tourist – it really is a paper town. It might sound corny to say, but I see Margo’s point now, whereas before I couldn’t understand it apart from a vague awareness that Orlando is extremely tourist-y.
Below is a photo of the first plate I had for breakfast at Sizzler.
