Free entry to the Titanic exhibit with right name

Special offer valid on 102nd anniversary of sinking

Kristie Miller and her daughter, Madelyn Miller, 12, third from left, and Peighton Hennings, 5, tour the Titanic artifact exhibit at the Imagination Station in Toledo. More than 18,000 people have visited since the exhibit opened in February.

Imagination Station has a special offer for anyone who has a name connection to the most famous shipwreck in modern history.

Visitors for the “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” at Imagination Station on Tuesday — the 102nd anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean — will receive free admission if they have the same name of any of the 2,228 passengers or crew members.

Paul Morin, spokesman for the downtown Toledo science center, said variations on spelling of the names will be accepted and need not be identical to the passengers or crew.

Imagination Station will verify names with a valid driver’s license or government identification. The offer is only good on the anniversary date.

Names of the passengers and crew can be found at imaginationstationtoledo.org.

Tuesday also will mark the halfway point for the exhibit, which will run through June 15.

The winding, 6,500-square-foot exhibit includes personal belongings of Titanic passengers, re-created rooms from the ship, and posters that explain the history surrounding the Titanic and its sinking. Actors play the roles of prominent passengers. There are more than 150 authentic artifacts from the ship that were collected from the depths of the ocean.

The exhibit starts with the ship’s construction, and ends with a wall listing the names of all those aboard who died or survived. Each attendee gets a card with the name and personal history of a Titanic passenger.

Mr. Morin said more than 18,000 people have passed through the ticket gate since the exhibit opened on Feb. 15, and attendance is on a pace to surpass the “Bodies Revealed” exhibit that ran from May through December, 2011.

“Titanic’s attendance so far is more than 40 percent higher than the attendance for ‘Bodies Revealed’ was when we compared the first 54 days of each exhibition,” Mr. Morin said.

The Titanic exhibit has a special connection for Earl Tobert, whose great uncle, Phillip Wiseman, was among the passengers who died.

Mr. Tobert of Monroe said that as a young boy his grandmother told him stories about Mr. Wiseman, a business owner who boarded the ship in third class to return to Quebec, Canada.

Mr. Tobert, 60, said he plans to visit the exhibit in Toledo on Tuesday. He said exhibits that he has visited in the past stir up questions and emotions about his relative and other passengers.

“There is still so much that is left unanswered about him,” he said. “Why was he is in third class. You also wonder what they went through and how come very little is known about him.”

The exhibit, sponsored locally by BP PLC, The Blade, and WTVG-TV, Channel 13, was previously featured in Detroit, Cleveland, and Columbus.

Admission to “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” is $6.50 for Imagination Station members. For nonmembers, admission to the museum and the exhibit is $19.50 for ages 13 to 64, $17.50 for adults 65 and older, $15.50 for children ages 3 to 12, and free for children 2 and younger.

Imagination Station is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. However, the science center and exhibit will be closed Sunday for Easter, but will open on April 21.