Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition in Las Vegas

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If you’re a fan of the Titanic and you’re planning a vacation to Las Vegas, you’ll want to make your way to the southern end of the strip and tour Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition.

Located on the second level promenade of the Luxor Hotel, this Las Vegas museum features dozens of real artifacts recovered from the Titanic’s wreckage site, 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The museum’s most famous artifact, the “Big Piece”, is an actual section of the Titanic’s hull, formally located near the center of the ocean liner. It hangs in one of the final rooms of the museum, along with several other displayed pieces.

If you’re not aware, Titanic, formally referred to as the, “Unsinkable Ship”, indeed sunk during its maiden voyage across the Atlantic after striking a rouge iceberg. More than 1500 people lost their lives either during the sinking or by freezing to death in the bitterly cold water.

As a long-time Titanic aficionado, I’ve always wanted to tour this museum and see the artifacts for myself. I did so recently, along with my Dad, and it was a somber, yet epic experience. In this post, I’ll discuss what it costs, where to find it, what to expect during the tour, the museum rules, and more.

Quick Stats

• Location: Inside the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas

• Fee: $27 - $34 per person

• Open: Seven days a week, even on holidays

• Family Friendly: Yes

• Cell Service: Yes

• Restroom: Outside the museum

• Parking: Paid parking at the Luxor

• EV Stations: Yes

• Popularity: Moderate

• Features: Numerous artifacts recovered from the wreckage site

• Pets: Not allowed

• Cameras: Allowed, but a few off-limit areas (explanation below) and no video or live feeds

• My Visit(s): November 2024

Titanic Exhibit Las Vegas Price, Location & Hours

To find the Titanic museum, you’ll need to make your way to the Luxor Hotel, which is the big black pyramid-shaped hotel on the southern end of the strip. Trust me, you can’t miss it. There’s plenty of parking available, though you’ll likely have to pay.

Current parking rates are $18 to $40, dependent on where and when you park. If you’re a Nevada resident, you can get free parking for three hours by showing the attendant your Nevada drivers license. If you’re an MGM Rewards member with a ranking of Pearl or higher, you’ll receive free self-parking. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay.

Once inside the Luxor, take the escalators to the second level promenade. This is where you’ll find the Titanic museum, Bodies exhibition, restaurants, and more. The escalators are located to the right of the giant Egyptian statues and across from the check-in desk.

When you get to the second level, you should have no problem spotting the museum’s entrance. Look to your right and you’ll spot a giant, billboard-like sign with a huge mural of the Titanic indicating the correct spot.

To the right of this sign is where the ticket booth is. If you’ve purchased your tickets online, simply get in the queue and they’ll scan your phone. If not, head to the ticket booth first. Ticket prices to the Titanic Artifact Exhibition are currently:

• $34 - General Admission

• $32 - Seniors (65+)

• $27 - Military (w/ ID)

• $27 - Nevada Residents (w/ ID)

• $26 - Child (4 - 12)

• $0 - Child (0 - 3)

Additionally, you can purchase combo tickets, which include access to the Titanic Artifact Exhibition and Bodies..The Exhibition. The combo tickets are only available at the booth. My Dad and I passed on “Bodies”, but if you’re interested, combo ticket prices are $44 for adults and $38 for children.

Also, you can opt for the recording device for an additional $5. It includes headphones and a narrator who guides you through the museum, explaining things along the way. It’s not a requirement, though, as there’s plenty of signage you can read in the museum.

Titanic Artifact Exhibition Photography Rules

Photo copyright - Titanic Artifact Exhibition, Las Vegas, Nevada

To answer the question on if cameras are allowed in the museum, the answer is “yes”, but with a few caveats. For starters, you are allowed to bring your cell phone and/or DSLR to capture photos of the exhibits. However, there’s no video and/or live streaming allowed.

The only area inside the museum “off-limits” to photos is the replica of the Grand Staircase. I put “off-limits” in quotations because it’s only “off-limits” to your camera. The only way to get a photo of or with the staircase is through their photographer, and you’ll have to pay for it. No, the photographer won’t take your picture with your camera.

Turning to commentary, I never participate in these, as I view them as cash grabs for something that should be included with the money you’ve already spent. Conveniently, they don’t advise you of this until after you’ve purchased your ticket. I declined the employee’s request to take my photo and continued on. If you want your photo here, though, they’ll happily oblige.

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition in Las Vegas

After they’ve scanned your ticket, they’ll have you go through the obligatory photo opp, where one of their employees takes your photo in front of a giant green screen. At the conclusion of your tour, these photographs will be available to purchase.

Normally, when I do things like this on my own, I decline the photo and move on. However, my Dad was me and he actually had a great idea for photo of the two of us, so we opted to do it. If you don’t want to, simply advise the employee of such.

Additionally, you’ll be given a card that resembles a boarding pass. On the flip side of the pass will be the name and details of a real-life Titanic passenger. Hang on to this because at the end, you’ll discover the fate of that passenger.

The first room you’ll enter is lined with burnt-orange walls and features numerous artifacts from Titanic’s boiler room, as well as information about the doomed ship’s construction and the people who worked on it. You’ll then walk down a short hallway before turning into a re-creation of the third-class level of the ship.

Third-Class Level

Along the hallway, you’ll see signs with details on individual passengers. This will be a common theme throughout the museum that I thought was a great way to honor their memories. Learning how they ended up on the Titanic, some by pure chance, stirred up emotions at times.

At the end of the hallway, there’s a re-creation of a third-class passenger stateroom. It’s small, no bigger than a walk-in closet, and contains four bunk-style beds. It wasn’t uncommon for ships in this era to place complete strangers together in the same room.

Second-Class Level

In the next room, you’ll see recovered artifacts from the second-class level of the Titanic. The stark differences between third-class and second-class quickly becomes apparent just by looking at the dish ware. You won’t see a re-creation of any staterooms here, as they were starkly similar to first-class, which you’ll see up ahead.

One of the featured passengers you’ll learn about is the Laroche family. The Laroche’s initially booked a passage on the steamship France, however, due to that ships’ policy of not allowing children in the dining room, they were transferred to second-class accommodations on the Titanic. While his wife and children survived the sinking, unfortunately, Joseph Laroche did not.

After the second-class room, you’ll enter a white-walled hallway with a quote from the shipbuilder on the wall. At the end of this hallway through the exit on the right, you’ll come up on the museum’s replica of the grand staircase.

As mentioned above, there are no photos or video allowed here, unless their employee does it. There are also two or three artifacts on display in this room but unless you’re wanting to take the photo, bypass the queue and head straight into the first-class room.

First-Class Level

In the first-class room, opulence is the name of the game. In the re-created first-class stateroom, you’ll immediately notice the size difference from its third-class counterpart. I didn’t measure, but it appears as though you could fit three or four third-class staterooms in just one first-class room.

One of the featured artifacts in this room is a gold-plated chandelier that once hung from the ceiling of the first-class men’s Smoking Room. Additionally, there’s a wall-sized display case showcasing many of the first-class dish ware and eating utensils recovered.

Beyond the first-class room, you’ll step out onto a re-creation of the outdoor promenade, complete with a view similar to what passengers would’ve seen that fateful night. Looking out beyond the guardrail, all passengers would’ve seen is pure darkness in the middle of the Atlantic.

After the promenade, you’ll enter a darkened, chilly room, meant to mimic the sound and feel of a windy evening on the ocean. On the wall to your immediate right are a few signs with the timestamped words of several iceberg warnings sent to the Titanic the day it sunk.

April 14, 1912 - The Fateful Day

Up to this point, you’ve been shown examples of the various levels of Titanic’s accommodations and amenities. No matter the class, the first four days of the ship’s maiden voyage had been nothing short of spectacular for her passengers. Marking what should’ve been a happy memory for all.

However, the evening of that fourth (and final) day would warp feelings of happiness and excitement into those of horror and panic. Shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912, Titanic struck an iceberg, forever changing the course of its brief history.

The next series of rooms are dedicated to the events between the collision and the ship’s eventual sinking. Despite Titanic’s false reputation as unsinkable, it took less than three hours from the time it struck the iceberg to smash into the ocean floor.

In one of the rooms, the main attraction is an example of an iceberg made of actual ice, maintained at a temperature similar to the stinging cold of the water passengers experienced when they jumped in to escape, or worse yet, unexpectedly fell into.

Unlike the other exhibits, you’re allowed to touch it. In fact, they encourage you to do so in order to get an idea of what passengers went through. It was so cold, I could only keep my hand pressed against it momentarily. Knowing the water that night was even colder than that really put things into perspective.

You’ll then walk down a dark hallway, illuminated by several display cases, each showcasing a single artifact. At the end of that hallway, you’ll enter another room. This one features several more artifacts, such as a few dozen au gratin dishes.

These dishes were discovered stacked neatly together in the sand, much like they appeared in the case. This happened when the cabinet they were stored in remained intact after hitting the ocean floor, but rotted away over the years, leaving the dishes almost perfectly in place.

Another featured display in the same room is a scale-sized model of the bow (front) half of Titanic as it appears on the ocean floor. During the sinking, Titanic was going down by the bow but before going near vertical, the stern (back) split, leaving the two halves only loosely connected.

After the split, the stern crashed back into the water, before being lifted again by the still sinking bow. This time, the ship went completely vertical. The bow, now completely submerged, broke free of the stern and began its descent. The stern would bob around momentarily before it too sunk.

This left the Titanic with two wreck sites 2,000 feet (600 meters) apart, roughly 12,500 feet (or nearly 2.5 miles) beneath the surface. At some point, a sizable chunk of the ship’s hull would break off and eventually, would go on to become the largest piece of the Titanic ever recovered.

The Big Piece

First discovered in 1994, nine years after Titanic’s wreck site was first discovered, the Big Piece was brought to the surface in 1998 after several failed attempts, with the intention of making it the centerpiece for a planned exhibition.

The piece, formally located around the mid-point of Titanic’s starboard side hull, weighs fifteen tons and is twenty-six feet, six inches across and twelve feet, six inches high. The extensiveness of the rivet work is on full display, showing a mere fraction of the three million rivets used to build the Titanic.

The portholes on the Big Piece came from C deck and were part of cabins C-79 and C-81, both of which were suites (presumably second class). Both of these suites were unoccupied but the neighboring suite, C-83, was occupied by Henry B. Harris, a famous New York theatre producer. He did not survive the sinking.

To date, the Big Piece is the largest artifact ever recovered from Titanic’s wreck site. Given the quickly deteriorating state of the ship, it’ll likely remain as such. Due to strong currents and rust-eating bacteria, it is estimated that the Titanic will completely collapse by 2030.

Titanic’s Death Toll

In the final exhibit room will be a giant wall-sized display. On this display will be the names of every Titanic passenger and crew member, separated by class and whether or not they survived. As you can see in the photo above, Titanic’s crew suffered the greatest loss with 701 perishing. Interestingly, they also had the most survivors at 209.

Of the passengers, third-class suffered the greatest loss at 529, with only 181 surviving. In stark contrast, the overwhelming majority of the Titanic’s first-class passengers survived, with about 200 surviving and 125 perishing, most of those being men. This was largely due to the “women and children first” rule of the time.

Remember the “boarding pass” you’re given at the start of your tour with a passenger’s name on it? Here is where you’ll scan the back of it to discover the fate of your passenger. Mine was a man named Johannes Joseph Van de Velde, a native of Belgium.

Not much is known about him, but we do know he did not survive. We only know this because a survivor named Theodor De Mulder visited Johannes’ family and relayed to them the final days he spent with him.

While the exact number varies, it is believed that over 1,500 passengers and crew lost their lives in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. Many, including the ship’s captain, went down with the ship, but the vast majority was due to drowning or freezing to death in the icy Atlantic waters.

Perhaps the largest contribution to the high death toll was an insufficient amount of life boats. Titanic had only twenty, capable of holding only 1,178 of the 2,240 passengers and crew, if filled to capacity (and none of them were).

Of the 1500 victims, most were third-class passengers and/or men, as well as crew. As mentioned above, Captain Smith was thought to have given the order of “women and children” first.

It is now believed that first officers mistook this as, “no men until all women and children are off the ship”. Consequently, the lifeboats were lowered with plenty of room available, some at just half capacity.

Additionally, many third-class passengers were largely prevented access to top deck, where the lifeboats were located, to allow the wealthier passengers to board them first. This delay meant that many in third-class were doomed from the start. May they all rest in peace.

PSALM 23:3-4