A million dollar baby

Let’s talk about Jack’s room in Cameron’s Titanic, shall we?

Jack, of course, won his ticket on Titanic in a poker game from two would-be Scandinavian immigrants. Which meant sharing a room with their friends (cousins?). Four men to a room, two bunk beds, barely any space between them, and a bathroom shared with the entire men’s section of the deck. Plus a dedicated dining area for third class that I don’t know tons about. Better than most similar ships would have offered, as transports for Poors often had much worse washroom facilities and no food.

This cost each of them (that actually bought tickets) approximately CAD$1500, adjusted for inflation.

Now on my first two cruises my rooms were in fact about that big and split four ways (if you took the mattress out of the top bunk, you could close someone into the wall… it passed the time). I don’t rightly know what that cost, but it was a high school trip and my parents don’t have their own Wikipedia entries so it couldn’t have been that much, given flights and hotels and dinners and tours were also all included in the total price and they let me do this twice. Whereas $1500 Canadian is just shy of what I was prepared to pay for an interior room on Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas. So let’s compare value.

Here’s what Jack got for his poker opponent’s money:

• A room the size of a broom closet, split four to ten ways
• Three meals per day in the 3rd class saloon, and pretty decent food at that
• Two additional public spaces to have large raucous parties meant to demonstrate how stifling the upper-class life Rose had been born into truly is and how she never truly belonged there
• Use of the lower outdoor decks where first class pets were allowed to relieve themselves (White Star staff almost certainly cleaned up after them, hygiene was a priority even in areas devoted to the Poors), but the Wealthies probably wouldn’t let you pet their dogs
• Being physically barred from any other deck, dining area, or the 1st class gym and pool, possibly being roughed up by David Warner and not in a fun way
• Death (not intended as a benefit of admission but, as it happens…)

(24% of the 3rd class passengers survived, but mainly women and children, and given I am neither but am possessed of deep anxiety over self-advocacy, I’m likely in the other 76%)

Frankly the second class cabins on Titanic are probably closer in room size to Royal Caribbean. These included:

• Semi-private rooms (single men or women would likely share a bunk bed with a rando)
• Mid-range dining room
• Library area
• Outdoor promenade
• Smoking room
• Barber, to ensure the tightest of fades on arrival in New York
• Not being shamed for your selfish opulence and cruelly frigid lifestyle in a movie 85 years later
• And, yeah, death (58% of second class made it off, but, well, see above)

Now these rooms cost, adjusted for inflation, about $2600. So quite the jump already. By contrast here’s what I would get for that on my usual cruise line, which at this rate would probably get me an interior balcony room and the deluxe beverage/internet package.

• A room twice the size of Jack’s for me and one other person, but a person I already know, in beds with no ladders, place your own judgement on if that last thing is a perk or deficit
• In-room TV
• Mini-fridge
• Closet space
• All-day access to multiple buffets
• Nightly three-course dinners in the primary dining room
• Free use of the pizza place on 5th deck and the taco stand on 14th
• Multiple pools, including the adults-only Solarium
• Free tickets to any shows or movies in the theatre, aft deck auditorium, or ice rink
• Access to any of the non-included restaurants, from Johnny Rockets to the steak house, albeit at an extra charge, but frankly throw one in and we’re probably still under or at $2600
• Unlimited beverages, including alcohol, of up to $14 per drink (all cocktails and perfectly adequate wines by the glass)
• A souvenir cup with which to use the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines, allowing guests to pour any blend of Coca-Cola branded beverages the mind can conceive, like Barq’s root beer mixed with Vanilla Coke and a splash of orange, how’s that for luxury, J. Bruce Ismay?
• Wifi for one device anywhere on board
• Running water
• Private washroom/shower
• No I did not mention either of those as Titanic amenities
• A view looking over the Central Park district of the ship, rather than the oppressively terrifying pure darkness of the sea at night
• Adequate supply of lifeboats
• The comfort of knowing that should the worst happen, I will not be locked into the lower decks so that my attempts to survive don’t inconvenience a Wealthy

So it feels like we’re struggling to compete here. Ah, but what of first class? Where you would find the Guggenheims, John Jacob Astor and his pregnant child bride, Molly Brown, and that absolute chode Cal Hockley? Mayhap that’s where our cash flow is? Well, let’s look at that. Berth rooms in first class were (still adjusting for inflation) $6,433.52, while suite rooms, like the one where Jack painted Rose like one of his French girls, were, in 1912, a mere 850 British Pounds Sterling… or in present day, CAD$190,000. For like a six day cruise. That someone who may or may not have been J. Bruce Ismay decided was too long so they went full speed through a patch of icebergs in the dead of night.

Most cruise ships have suites that are, in my estimation, every bit as nice if less Edwardian in decor than Titanic’s, but they cost closer to the berth rooms. And yes, first class had their own high-end dining room, gym, pool, and promenade, filled with class-traitor staff keeping the Poors out, but… okay. Look. Here’s the problem.

Those suites are not what’s keeping your Titanic II going. First Class is still the minority of rooms. The Titanic II lives or dies based on how much it can appeal to the Wilsons from Manchester, the middle class family of four with just enough fun money for a week long cruise but not so much that they can blow a total of $24K (or the Pounds Sterling equivalent) on a berth room in first class. The Wilsons from Manchester have their choice of cruise lines, and they are not going to pick one that is still designed around delivering a pristine experience to the 1% and “basically livable” to everyone else. Forget the frankly huge ask of shelling out $6000 total for the family to stay in a closet, the segregated decks and dining rooms are what will kill you. Nobody is going on a Titanic replica if they can’t soak in that 1st Class opulence the whole time, and if the Poors can go to the fancy restaurant and the Wealthys’ promenade, who’s paying sports car money for their six night cruise? There are more elite, luxury cruises out there, priced to ensure only a certain level of attendee, which Titanic could not be, because definitely nobody rich is buying a steerage ticket.

Even if they doubled the size of the 3rd class cabins (compromising the whole “exact replica” thing and, more importantly for the bottom line, reducing maximum occupancy) a huge part of the 1st Class experience was exclusive use of the elite, fancy areas, and in the modern cruise landscape that dog will not hunt, monsignor. Royal Caribbean had all of one lounge I couldn’t go to, reserved for the highest tier reward members, and “cruise with us like eight times a year” wasn’t a concept Titanic had the opportunity to think about.

And also it must be noted that the first class dining room simply was not designed to seat a couple extra thousand second and third class guests, so now all three dining rooms need to be that nice, so I hope for your sake the other two also have a view and a super fancy foyer.

Sure you could charge less, get ticket prices in line with what this experience is delivering, but as much as we all assume (often correctly) that corporate greed is destroying everything, we must open ourselves to the possibility that the original ticket prices were at least mostly based around the expense of operating this thing. Crew wages, including luxury servers and presumably a Michelin-star-worthy kitchen team, two less top-end kitchen teams, food cost, fuel, paying to cover up murders and assaults (look Succession didn’t pull that plotline out of nowhere), housekeeping… cruise liners are expensive to operate, plus there are construction costs to recoup, assuming no one is dumb enough to trust Crocodile Trumpdee to pay them only after the ship turns a profit. Sure, yes, I assume that going to the bow of the ship for a “King of the World” or “I’m Flying Jack” photo is an upsell, call it US$150 a pop, but all cruise ships will sell you souvenir photos and they still need to charge for WiFi and have upsell restaurants and a casino and that wine bar that can end up costing thousands if you don’t pay attention to the cost-per-ounce of the fancier wines.

So our problem is that Amenity Creep, the bane of hospitality professionals everywhere, has rendered the original Titanic experience obsolete for its price point. So maybe the way you hook them is nostalgia?

Well, now we have a new problem.

Next page: trauma tourism?