Hello Wayne, Mike
I enjoy your discussions very much. As well as those from Jeff. All four of us do seem to approach this idea of a Titanic Replica realistically. In another thread I explained to Jeff what I would do in terms of a stand alone attraction (forgot where I put it, but you should be able to find it easily) based on a museum/hotel. As Wayne said above...this would be the only way that you could ever achieve something on a bolt to bolt level detailing. Moreover, you wouldn't have to be burdened with the cost of building and operating a ship. So this is definately a more viable option.
Mike, yes you are right...on an Edwardian or White Star Line themed ship, more then likely the bulk of the rooms would be more modeled after first class with quite a few 2nd class rooms. There would be third class rooms for those that want to embrace the experience and really want to rough it out, but I could only see a handful of them as the market would be small on this count. But in one aspect that is a good thing, because you will need the space for other ammenities as we both mentioned above. But the bottom line is that the ship would have to appeal to a great number of people. This would determine it's size. It would undoubtably be much larger than the Titanic. So having a larger market and a larger vessel will definatly bring the cost of sailing on her down considerably. Something like this just recently happened. It is the Queen Mary 2. When Carnival bought Cunard, they realized right off the bat that the QE2 was too small to continue to operate at a profit and such the costs of operation required a high ticket price even for the less luxurious accomodations. Where as on the QM2 the prices of the lower accomodations are much more affordable. Thus this appeals to a larger market and thus can sustain the ship's operation while the company can still turn a profit. So the same principle would have to apply to an Edwardian Era or White Star Line themed ship. Exterior wise the ship could retain a classic look and retain the four funnels, but outside of that, it would be very different from the Titanic indeed.
This would be a tremendous undertaking and I seriously doubt a private venture would be able to pull it off. It is possible, but doubtful. The money needed to pull it off is astronomical. The marketing studies alone would cost a fortune. I could only see a large cruise ship company, such as Carnival pull something like this off, mainly because they already know the costs of operating a ship. But even still the market has to be there and I am sure research has been done on it already due to the high interest in Titanic. As Mike pointed out though...if the market was present...there would have been a ship already floating around out there.
For me I would go the museum/hotel route. More accuracy can be maintained, you don't need as large a market and costs of operation are much much lower. The downside? Well, you are not out at sea and you don't go anywhere. But the upsides outweigh this and a project like this is much more feasible.
Thanx guys for the great conversation.
Geo
