My Social Media-less Life

Well, here’s a fun post for you! Every time I close my eyes, I see my Virtual Reality experience today, so you now get to go through it without all the Inception-like feelings of confusion with me. Also, if you ever plan to go on this fun excursion, there will be spoilers and more details than I would normally give for an experience everyone can have for themselves. If you don’t want spoilers like that, maybe skip over this post. 🙂 For all others, welcome!

For context, my mom and I went to the Titanic exhibit at Union Station in Kansas City. As one of the signs said near the end of the exhibit, “We are all passengers on the Titanic.” And we both have had a fascination with the ship for most of our lives, so going together was a no-brainer.

We also got the virtual reality experience, which of course promised to be “immersive.” I mentioned to my mom that we’ll have to see how it goes because sometimes those things can get to my head and that’s why I usually avoid them. But I knew I’d have a good time one way or the other.

Well… that’s where we start our story.

After standing in line for some time waiting for our turn to go through the experience, we were discussing this exhibit compared to the last one we went to at Union Station.

“I think I liked the other one better,” my mom says.
I didn’t disagree with her, but I pointed out that they both hit different parts of the heartstrings and we should withhold making any more claims until we go through the VR.

As our turn comes up, we’re shown how to use the headsets with another couple and the other couple is sent off first. I’m starting to get nervous because I’m not really sure what to expect, except of course, to be completely thrown off kilter because my mind and my body will be telling me two different things.

One of the things the gentleman who showed us how to use the headsets mentioned was, “You’ll probably see other heads floating. Don’t panic, those are other real people. It sounds weird, but it’s so you don’t run into them. And also you’ll see hands. Those are also real.”

What? I thought, but laughed because it sounded super creepy. (Spoiler alert: it kind of was, but at least the heads also had shoulders, so it wasn’t as weird as I originally thought)

As soon as I was sent off with a headset firmly attached to my head, I was immediately in a submarine. Not a great first impression because Erica was never a fan of tight enclosed spaces under tons of water. But I walked through the hallway as the voice in my head(set) told me to do and was also told to “step onto the submersible to experience the chance of a lifetime!”

… after the last famous Titanic submersible incident?… the door closed in my face and I had to “walk through” the wall to move forward with the experience.

Spoiler alert #2: I didn’t die in a squishy death, but DID get to see a 3D version of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean.

Mostly. It was at this point that I started to experience some dizziness and had to take deep breaths. The “platform” we were on was moving quite rapidly and I had to remind myself I was firmly standing in a room with a wooden floor at least 1,000 feet above sea level.

Suddenly I hear a worker outside of my headset proclaim, “You’ll see a door to your left appear when you’re through with this part of the experience. Please take it to go to the next section.”

My mom managed to stay within talking distance the entire time, so I repeated the instructions to her since she hadn’t heard them.

It was at this point while we were looking at the “wreck” of the Titanic that the voice in my head(set) said something like, “Can you imagine what this would have been like when it set sail?” And then we were instantly transported to a sunny scene where there were other fake people (and real heads) walking around talking about how glorious the Titanic was and how excited they were to get to America.

Except… Erica got distracted because there was a “postcard” within “reach” and I grabbed it to read it… and I don’t know what you know about VR headsets, but reading was not an easy thing to do with this particular “game”. It was very Inception-like. So I was distracted trying to read the postcard… and then a door appeared to our left.

As soon as I got to the door, I did not want to walk through. It was the sunken Titanic, but we had to walk through a hallway as if it was a foreshadowing of what was to come (or had already been… again, very Inception).

As before… I braved up and walked through. It took me to the “before” with the grand staircase and people talking as if it was a normal day. Also, I was somehow still “holding” the postcard. I shook my hand and it disappeared. And then I walked around the grand staircase area to really get a good look at it…

And then everything went sideways.

Nearly literally. And suddenly I was flying through corridors and in and out of flooding rooms and around crashing plates and out of the nearly vertical Titanic as it was sinking and up one of the decks…

“I need to sit down,” I declared and suddenly heard, “That’s a great idea, Erica.” I look back to see my mom right behind me. When I had first seen her, she was a man with a top hat, so when I saw a woman with a cute hat, I had thought she was someone else.

She said she had seen me go down and knew it was me because “that’s something you would do.”

Once I was sitting and my mind stopped panicking, I looked around and saw we were in the bridge just after it sunk and as it was still going down.

“You can tilt the goggles off to help with the vertigo,” a different worker than before says.
”Then we’ll miss it,” my mom says.
”I’m okay,” I tell the guy. “I just know if I get dizzy to sit down.” My mom of course, agrees.
”That’s smart!”

And then he leaves us alone for about 12 more seconds before a door with “Exit” appears above it and he tells us to walk toward it and take the goggles off.

After that, nothing felt real. Except that I needed water and to sit down for a while. We did go through the gift shop and I got a “Tiny-tanic” as a souvenir.

I drank nearly an entire bottle of water my mom had in her vehicle and ate a 12-inch Philly cheesesteak sandwich and fries from Charley’s like I hadn’t eaten in days.

My biggest takeaways:

– Don’t do VR dehydrated and hungry
– Don’t do VR if you have issues with motion sickness
– If you think of that experience like being an extra in Inception, it’s 10x cooler
– A submersible in VR will not kill you
– It’s okay to sit down if you experience motion sickness while doing VR
– You can exit the experience at any time by removing the headset
– There is a LOT bombarding your mind when you go virtual like that

Overall… it was fun and in my experience, it made the exhibit way more fun!… But now I can’t sleep because every time I close my eyes, I am back in Virtual Reality, “seeing” something I saw but didn’t see.

I think I should stick with “old” technology from now on.