Belfast titanic experience, discovery tour, timing and layout?

There’s a hotel directly across from the Titanic Experience that has a nice dining room. You can get something light or a full meal there.

I recommend allowing as much time as possible for the museum. You’ll need an absolute minimum of 2 hours—I know we spent more than 3 hours there. It’s a large museum and there is so much fascinating history to read about, walk through, and experience.

I’m not sure what the Discovery Tour is?

I was at the Titanic Museum last week, it was really interesting, but I don't know about the Discovery Tour, we just walked around. Lot of info. Lot of info about the Flax industry. We were there a bit under 2 hours, I think. There is a very ornate "Titanic Hotel" across the street, that would be worth walking through just to see the beautiful furnishings and some Titanic things. The did have a large bar, I don't know about dining.

Thanks both for the replies.
The discovery tour is listed on the Titanic website https://www.titanicbelfast.com/experiences/the-discovery-tour/
It's described as an outdoor guided tour with 'roaming headsets'. One of our group was told it's good to see the outside area as well, but maybe we don't need to actually book that tour but can just walk around? Did anyone else explore the outdoor areas? If we can just walk around on our own, maybe we don't need the tour?
Here's the full description of the tour that cost 15gbp/person:
On our Discovery Tour you’ll hear why and how the ship was built, what happened in its final hours and the tragic personal stories that are forever intertwined in the legend. You’ll learn about the hidden symbolism in our iconic building and find out fact and fable as you walk in the footsteps of the designers and shipbuilders who brought the dream to life, right here, back then.

sanomh, I think it sounds like the Museum covers most of the topics of the Discovery Tour, although it's more reading and looking at large photographs and things. Outside, you can see the building details (it's covered in titanium plates), and the gigantic cranes. Seems like the tour would give more info about the building and cranes, and the dock area. In our case, we were on a Rick Steves tour and learned a lot of things from our tour guide. Including a joke:

Question: What do native Belfast folks say about the Titanic?
Answer: It was fine when it left here.

Hopefully someone here will have taken the Discovery Tour...

We rented an apartment during our Belfast visit. It was just a few blocks away from the Titanic museum. We did not take a tour but just walked through the museum. The holographic representation of the sinking is powerful. We spent several hours at the museum. We ate lunch and breakfast in the apartment, but had dinner at the Titanic hotel, which was the White Star Line headquarters. It is beautiful inside, but the restaurant was overpriced and the food was not very good; my husband's comment about his steak was that it might have been edible if he had a knife to cut it. There are a number of restaurants in the area, but if there is a performance at the nearby auditorium they will be very crowded.

The joke I heard was this one (which I think you can get on a tshirt): “Titanic. Built by Irishmen. Driven by an Englishman.” I also tend to think the Discovery tour is unnecessary as the Experience is quite thorough. There isn’t much to see outside with one important exception: don’t miss the Nomadic, the only genuine White Star line ship still in existence. It’s a tender ship that ferried passengers to and from liners like Titanic, so obviously much smaller, but very interesting. It’s in drydock very near the museum building. We had some fast food from a cafe for lunch. There were a number of places like that near the museum.

I had lunch at the cafeteria at the Titanic Experience and surprisingly, it was delicious! It was rather difficult to find an open seat, but the food itself was wonderful. I had Irish Stew (or it may have been called Lamb Stew, don't remember the exact name on the menu) and it was so, so good. I just looked at my photos and I had a chocolate brownie for dessert and it was worth getting as well. I don't recall what my friend ate, but I remember that she enjoyed her meal as well.

We did the Discovery Tour and it was fantastic! We ended up rushing a bit through the last few sections of the museum, so it's better to book later and finish up early than need to rush. I'd go for 1pm and if you have time for a bite, great.

Enjoy your time in Belfast! We found it to be an intriguing city.

PQ

Thanks all for the great info. I'mparticularly happy to hear the favorable review of the food onsite, since they get pretty terrible reviews on google maps. But really, we wouldn't be looking for gourmet, just something to keep us going through the afternoon.
@Planningqueen, did you find that the discovery tour gave you different information than the museum itself? We're now thinking of moving our start time up to 9:10am, which should give us more than enough time to get through all of the galleries at the museum. Our ticket would still include the SS Nomadic, and I assume we can go onboard that any time on the same day, since there's no timed entry for that one.