The Iceberg Cometh: A Titanic Museum’s Iceberg Wall Just Toppled in Tennessee

In what can only be assumed was an act of vengeance after more than a century of bad Titanic-related publicity, an iceberg—more specifically, a human-made iceberg wall—at Tennessee’s Titanic Museum has just come tumbling down.

As WBNS-TV reports, the museum, located in Pigeon Forge (where Dollywood is), opened in 2010 as a second, slightly larger iteration of the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri. The Pigeon Forge site boasts a half-scale replica of the luxury liner and offers visitors the opportunity to experience what life was like for its passengers in 1912.

You can glide down its grand staircase with poise befitting Rose DeWitt Bukater—who, as a reminder, is a fictional character created for the film—explore the differences between first and third class, do your best to balance on a steeply inclined deck, and even dip your hand into below-freezing water to get a feel for how survivors felt in icy seas as they awaited rescue. Each visitor is also handed a boarding pass with a real passenger or crew member’s name on it, and they find out their fate at the end of the self-guided tour. The frigid iceberg wall, which you’re allowed to touch, gives everyone the chance to get up close and personal with the Titanic’s greatest enemy (if we’re not counting corporate greed and hubris).

It’s an immersive outing on a normal day, but things became a little too realistic on Monday, August 2, when the iceberg wall came crashing down, sending three visitors to the hospital with as-yet-unknown injuries. “Needless to say, we never would have expected an incident like this to occur as the safety of our guests and crew members are always top of mind,” museum owners Mary Kellogg Joslyn and John Joslyn wrote in a Facebook post.

They shut down the museum for the night, but another Facebook post the following morning confirmed that it had already reopened—though it’s unclear whether the iceberg wall has been resurrected.