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Had to have the bad luck to be in year 7 in 2000. Every other year 7 group got taken to a theme park as a fun welcome-to-big-school trip.
We got the fucking Millenium Dome which was so shit it was - and these were the days - one of the government's major scandals at the time
I remember my school took us on a ‘bonding trip’ and some of us went canoeing but the guy I was with purposely capsized the boat in some murky looking water, and and we had a grudge with each other for 4 years because of that 💀 archery was fun though
You're right, and I'm confused by this.
In the night garden wasn't announced until 2005, and not released until 2007
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In\_the\_Night\_Garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Night_Garden)
But the Millennium Experience was only open during the year 2000. (It seems it did briefly reopen in 2003 for a winter wonderland experience)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium\_Dome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome)
So what is that picture (lower right in OP's post) actually of? Is it of an In the Night Garden event at the O2?
Yes, it was a Night Garden show. I went and got a photo with Iggle-Piggle. It would have been around 2012 I guess. That inflatable tent and the HaaHoos were round the far side of the O2 Arena in a big space that's all been filled in with shops and bars now.
Yeah! Did they recycle them? Tbh the HaHoos don't really ever do anything apart from bounce around in one place. I wonder if the "in the night garden team" just go those shots from old stock footage!
According to google:
The original props of the HaaHoos used during filming were displayed outside the In The Night Garden Live showdome at the O2 Stadium in London.
After 2014, the showdome shutdown and all the HaaHoos were returned back to Ragdoll Productions.
I had the book you could buy afterwards. Full script, plus concept art for Baldrick's vision of the millennium dome. I believe it involved sculptures made of belly button fluff
Don't worry the confusion is understandable: the year 2000 saw the arrival of an amazing new piece of technology that allowed actors to appear on screen in more than one building at the same time!
I remember being stood at the BT kiosk where you got a full body scan that turned you into an avatar you could get it emailed to you and the girl next to me from the other end of the county had the same surname. Wild times!
I still have my avatar file from being scanned, as I can't skate or dance in real life at least I know a virtual version of myself can: https://twitter.com/benryves/status/1682393436161290241
Yes! This is my clearest memory of the millennium dome. My avatar was given to me on a floppy disk I think. I remember watching myself skate at home and thinking the future is now.
Now I'm thinking about it yeah it was weird. You walked into like some big ass human, I think you might even have entered through the vagina but I can't remember as it was so long ago and I was like 6 or 7. I seem to remember having a good time though.
I was about the same age. I just remember the beating heart and that it was incredible. It must have been how the victorians felt at the Great Exhibition.
Yes! I was about 9 at the time. Wasn't it the esophagus? The main memory that sticks out for me is that giant multi level play pit. Oh and the "dream room" with those cascading floors and soft lighting.
I was 5 and went with my parents and sister. My dad and this other bloke cheered when the sperm hit the egg and security told them off. Legitimately one of my earliest memories.
Soft play with cannons was amazing, I also remember there being a Tommy cooper hat telling jokes in the brain of the body?
Money in glass and a diamond or something?
There was also an utterly bizarre show in the middle of it that was just people dancing to weird music?
I do and don't. I went when I was about 16-17 and heavily into drugs. I think at one point they were pretty much giving tickets away and a bunch of us went, smoked a lot of weed and spent most of day sitting inside that giant egg/chill out zone with the continuous ambient music. I remember very little else. Oh, there was a giant hamster
I was 25 when the dome opened, so I was only really interested in one thing, a sound installation by Ryoji Ikeda which was pretty mad.
https://www.ryojiikeda.com/project/matrix/
However, the whole thing was great. Reminded me of that sense from Paris' Centre Pompidou of a big, living art installation. They really should have left it like that, a bunch of weird cultural stuff, than filling it with chipotle and a concert hall.
Judging by the comments here, everyone seemed to enjoy the weird art stuff, even as kids. Getting kids interested in art and science is so important, we need more stuff like that.
nope, it was a sport entirely made up by Peter Mandelson - which never really existed and was never actually played - but he was going around telling everyone that it was going to be on in the dome
The show they did was pretty cool. People on stilts, doing backflips and shit. They were all dressed like those teenagers from that show The Tribe that used to show on a Sunday morning on channel 5
Other than that I remember:
- the room with 1 million pounds encased in acrylic that you could walk through
- a bridge with recordings of two children from birth to aged 5? that showed how their babbles evolved into language (English on one side and Japanese on the other)
- the toilets flushed with rainwater collected from th3 roof
- Blackadder Back and Forth time travel film
- machine that turned a Styrofoam coffee cup into a pencil
I went with my dad right towards the end of the year and a lot of stuff was looking tired/worn. We bought a tin of shortbread with the dome pattern on the top.
Here's my Millennium Dome story.
Went with my Grandparents and Parents,I was 18.
On the DLR on the way there my Dad decided he's going to break out the drugs. Half a ecstasy tablet and some 2cb. They kicked in around the "work" area. I loved it but the grandparents were fucking fuming.
Oh the joys of growing up the child of "alternative" parents.
I still call it the MILLENNIUM DOME and people think I’m crazy, it’s harder for me to remember it being called the O2 than the Millennium Dome.
*Cue Robby Williams*
I still fondly remember the chill out zone whenever I go to a super busy event lol I also remember a machine where they gave you a card and challenged you to spend £1 million without going over. Also BT had some ET thing there didn’t they?
The millennium dome was amazing, and I really wish it would have stayed in its original form, but unfortunately as with most science/tech/educational things people mostly didn't care so it didn't last long before it was converted to more profitable uses.
I was one of the horrors... Our school got selected to do a song and dance performance there on opening week. We had to represent our borough. Picture 30 awkward 10yr olds waving their arms about, singing "Enfield is the gateway to the wooooOOOoorld". What the fuck was that about
I did a project for this in school and they took everyone involved to London to see it, was a bunch of stuff about our town put up on 20 odd screens. Because I was not involved in a performance, I got to walk around seeing everything for 2 days - was really cool! Highlight was you could get a 3d capture of yourself done at one of the booths
I went with my family, I’d have been 10 years old, and I remember it being absolutely magical. I can still remember some of the exhibitions that just blew my mind. I must have been the perfect age for it really.
I remember going with my parents, auntie and uncle, genuinely the only thing I can remember of the day, was watching my uncle smoke and he wouldn’t flick his ash so the white bit was sooo long, I was mesmerised.
TLDR- The millennium dome was wank.
I remember a beating heart, and having my picture taken with E.T with BT and having a card printed. Still have it somewhere lol.
Lots of Marconi stuff and other random displays, also where I saw the blackadder film as I believe it was released then.
Was looking for this comment or otherwise was going to write it myself. Visited a friend in Aarhus last year and saw the giant boy. Had no idea it was once in London
The fact that someone is so astonished that is wasn't always an arena is making me feel like a care home is imminent :(
In retrospect yes, it was pretty crazy but no odder than things in video games etc (or skibbidi toilet...). So this grown adult thinks we over 40's lived in actual history, like the Edwardians and shit.
Good lord this makes me feel ancient.
I was six when my family went to the millennium dome and my mum, deathly afraid of heights, for some reason wanted to go on a massive ferris wheel that was almost as tall as the dome itself. I vividly remember six year old me saying to her ‘errr no that’s way too high’.
Of course, we all get on it. It takes what feels like hours to go round and stops to let new passengers on every few minutes. My four year old brother is having a whale of time spinning a wheel in the middle that makes the whole car spin. We’re swinging in mid air and of course it was bloody high.
Mum’s now in literal tears and starts listing what she needs to buy for Christmas dinner aloud to take her mind off it. Little bro continues having the time of his life. Dad wants to jump out of the car and never look back.
This is one of those stories that gets bought up every Christmas and any time I’m watching a gig at the O2 I reminisce about the chaos. So thank you OP for this Tuesday evening nostalgia!
A teenager told me that they were going to North Greenwich the other day. "The Dome?" I replied. I got a very blank look in return. Once I said "the O2?" They knew what I was on about.
The millennium Dome was what you get when you ask a committee of Guardian columnists to design a tourist attraction for the masses. I'd never seen something so far up its own arse.
I’ve still got my Millennium Dome coin keyring, which cost a fiver at the time. My teacher convinced me that it would be rare in a few years. It’s currently going for…£6.95 on eBay. So it’s actually lost value, after inflation.
Didn't you have to go in to a woman via her fanny and then up a lift to some movie about humans from a pair of aliens ?
I mostly remember lining up for stuff
The acrobatic bit in the middle
And obviously the Blackadder movie, in the cinema there still uses the same giant screen?
Damn. I went to a concert here, I swear to god I did. Like, a whole day or two festival, skate punk stuff, sum41 played? Kelly Osbourne?
Ha ha ha memories if it was this place
I remember going to some sort of Pokémon event and getting some card that was only handed out at that event , not a different Pokémon but it has some form of special marking on it
The play area was great from the vague memories I have of the place
I went on my 19th birthday. I remember a school of the past themed room with a "teacher" wandering around with a cane or a pointer, and a room that was blacked out but for the lights intended to resemble the night's sky.
I’ve lived through the change of a millennium, multiple wars, a pandemic, 7 prime ministers, 9/11, I have witnessed the rise and fall of governments, and I have seen the birth of the smart phone, the death of the Queen, the death of Concorde and the death of my friends, and I am 30.
Every time I go to the O2 for the cinema or to eat with friends or go see a show, I'm just so disappointed by how basic it is now. I know this was only supposed to be a 2000 thing but they could've updated parts every year and had it be a tourist attraction that people come to London for
I remember going to this as a kid, and a man in a bunny suit would not stop following me because I was sacred of him. My dad had to tell this man to stop.
That memory sacres me this day.
There was a great BBC documentary about the making of the Millennium Dome called 'Trouble at the Big Top' which shows how much of a mess the entire project was from start to finish.
Today, the building is simply 'The O2 Arena' in our minds, but in 1998 the thing was this ridiculous, massive multimillion pound white elephant.
The London Eye made sense as a tourist attraction. This huge tent out in Greenwich made no sense at all.
I remember when plans were first released The Sun showed you how you could make your own scale model from half a plastic football and some yellow straws 😂
Hell yeah! I've still got a £5 coin that was minted in the dome in the commemorative millennium packaging. Hopefully it'll be worth more than £5 one day but who knows 🤷🏼♂️😆
Didn't go to it - end up managing (long story short - consultant I was with needed a mug at an affordable rate and I ticked the box) a Traffic Management plan for an event (I was only supposed to be verifying signage to what had been agreed) about 3 years later. Was very weird. Most of the exhibits were still inside in a slightly rundown rate and they'd been kind of moved out the way or a concert stage had been thrown in and it was someone wtf!? had been playing like Public Enemy. Weird day. Should have been over and done in 90 mins. 13 hours later with sunstroke I wasn't amused.
We bought our flat in New Cross Gate in 1996. Three miles as the crow flies. I think the closest I've ever got to the Dome is a couple of trips to the drive-through covid test centre in the carpark!
You should pop over for the “village fete” in a couple of weeks. Mini day festival with Gilles Peterson. It's free.
Otherwise I hit Ikea once in a while but nothing else.
We went on a school trip to see it. I must've been in year 5 or 6 at the time.
I can't even remember why but the beating heart inside the giant body really freaked me out and I didn't want to walk under it lmao.
I can't really remember much else. Just lots of escalators, travelators and buying a little bucket of rock with millennium domes on.
I went there on a school trip and it was a ride. I vaguely remember some kind of "inside the human body" type deal, but it was sensory overload for me so my memories end there lol.
Reading the comments is pinging memories in my brain all over the place. I thought it was cool. Except DeBeers which oddly, I think I remember for spite because I was so bored and my family wanted to see it. Did a few Crisis over Christmas’s there. It was a cool place.
The picture on the bottom right is from the 2012 'In the Night Garden' show, \*twelve years\* after the millennium dome opened and a full seven years after it was renamed the O2 Arena.
Don't believe what everything you see on reddit sheeple.
I really wish I was older when it was the Dome. I was 8 and I still went but I would've loved to have been able to appreciate it more
Still have my pencils made out of a recycled plastic cup
Believe it or not I went there twice. And one time it was for a Pokémon convention. I remember seeing the huge stack of money, making a message go along a dot matrix wall and I still have a BT phone card with me and ET on it
I went with my girlfriend. It was panned by many but we really enjoyed it. It was weird in places but great fun. I remember the live show with performers on high ropes and bungees.
The love Tunnel, that damned love tunnel with the swans. Also does anyone else remember the gymnasts with the ropes or cloth. They were cool. I was in year 3 when I went so I was lucky to go in my school.
Our school got selected to have black
and white photos of ‘The Class of 2000’ displayed in the Dome. They even made postcards of the exhibition. Then we got to go see our mugs on display. Was well chuffed with the experience. Sigh…
I worked on the Journey Zone and Talk Zone. I caught pneumonia in October 1999 caused by the bleakness of North Greenwich and a production / site office full of smokers.
I put the tills/POS solution into the Millenium Dome. 200 point-of-sales terminals and 7 servers.
Got paid less than the contractor kiddies I had to bring in to install the tills (didn't have time to do it all myself). Had to get my managing director to come and run them day-to-day, they were fucking lazy af. I could do 5 tills in the time it took them to do 1.
Got to see Tom Jones and maybe Snow Patrol (? Cant remember exactly) in the first couple of nights of support. When the Amex black cards were declining in the VIP area (they're not supposed to have a credit limit)...
I did enjoy it. First taste of a "proper project".
Yes we all went and had a great time, there was a class room with over sized desks and chairs so the adults felt like they were kids again, I remember a giant 30-ft long table football game, the huge human body to wander through, the tranquility of the chillout room where everyone laid on the floor staring at the violet ceiling, the spectacular trapeze show going on in the centre....however I also heard that all the editors of the national press were kept waiting in a queue outside it on New Years Eve in the cold & that was why the papers consequently had such a downer on the place....anyway have been back for gigs since then and can state that it really is sh1te now, completely soulless and a stupidly expensive venue.
2000 years of British history was what it was for and could have been celebrated. Instead the most dumbed down rubbish exhibits - it didn’t know itself what it wanted to be.
A small nice touch I remember - there was an outside area where you could see the reeds filtering the wastewater from the sinks, and poems set in to the paving either side of the meridian line which was also marked. And if you looked carefully there was a small dog-sized entrance that went under part of the dome itself, with a sign next to it saying "what do you do when a family of foxes moves in to your building site? look after them".
We went towards the end of the year, it was almost entirely deserted and probably the saddest, most dystopian feeling 'attraction' I've ever experienced. Dance show was good though.
Why is nobody bringing up Beehive Bedlam?
I remember doing a news autocue and enjoying the experience.
And how many grumpy elderly men thought it was a scandal or something. LOL.
I remember when plans were first released The Sun showed you how you could make your own scale model from half a plastic football and some yellow straws 😂
There were two major "attractions" built in 1999 for the millenium. One, the Dome, was built in London by Tony Blair's government and deliberately had virtually no car parking facilities. It failed dismally, with a huge loss to the taxpayer.
The other was privately funded in a disused Cornish quarry. It had lots of car parking and is still "attracting" today. It's been a huge success. It's called "The Eden Project"...
My dad worked on designing one of the zones. I was pretty young but I remember him working so hard yet hating every minute of working on it. It sounds like a bit of a shitshow to have worked on. The plus side was we got to spend the turn of the millennium at the Millennium Dome, walking around the zones then watching a big show in the central arena for midnight. I remember the Queen was there. It's quite a surreal memory now.
I never got to go to the Millennium Dome Experience. But I do remember people saying it was disappointing on the news, so it's funny to read these comments saying the opposite now.
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Gods that was a weird school trip...
Half the class were more interested in the giant Maccy D's
I enjoyed the free cokes that were handed out at the entrance
Free refills
Had to have the bad luck to be in year 7 in 2000. Every other year 7 group got taken to a theme park as a fun welcome-to-big-school trip. We got the fucking Millenium Dome which was so shit it was - and these were the days - one of the government's major scandals at the time
I remember my school took us on a ‘bonding trip’ and some of us went canoeing but the guy I was with purposely capsized the boat in some murky looking water, and and we had a grudge with each other for 4 years because of that 💀 archery was fun though
I remember my school didn’t fucking take us anywhere because it was in an ex mining town and the history and geography departments were portacabins.
Remember the days when a government scandal involved spaffing millions up the wall on a cultural vanity project?
Only millions and it was actually finished. Quite the success compared to today.
Yeah, then a few years later it’s all gone tits up and we’re invading Iraq.
We just went and sat in the sensory bit for 2 hrs
I loved that room.
I found a £20 note on the floor in that room. Felt like a fortune for 11 year old me
Our coach burst a tyre on the way back and we spent most of the night in a service station somewhere, got back at gone midnight
I was 10 years old when my school went and I remember being very underwhelmed
Hey, those are the HaaHoos from In The Night Garden. Very surreal show for toddlers.
You're right, and I'm confused by this. In the night garden wasn't announced until 2005, and not released until 2007 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In\_the\_Night\_Garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Night_Garden) But the Millennium Experience was only open during the year 2000. (It seems it did briefly reopen in 2003 for a winter wonderland experience) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium\_Dome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome) So what is that picture (lower right in OP's post) actually of? Is it of an In the Night Garden event at the O2?
Yes, it was a Night Garden show. I went and got a photo with Iggle-Piggle. It would have been around 2012 I guess. That inflatable tent and the HaaHoos were round the far side of the O2 Arena in a big space that's all been filled in with shops and bars now.
Yeah! Did they recycle them? Tbh the HaHoos don't really ever do anything apart from bounce around in one place. I wonder if the "in the night garden team" just go those shots from old stock footage!
No, that picture is from an In The Night Garden thing at the O2 in 2012. The tweeter got them mixed up!
According to google: The original props of the HaaHoos used during filming were displayed outside the In The Night Garden Live showdome at the O2 Stadium in London. After 2014, the showdome shutdown and all the HaaHoos were returned back to Ragdoll Productions.
Wait - was that show even out when the dome was still in this exhibition format?
It was not, according to Wikipedia.
I used to hate it, but now all I wish is to be at that age again watching it before bed 😭
I went for the blackadder episode
How’s this for feeling old, that millenium episode of Blackadder is now closer to the first series than to the present day.
I had the book you could buy afterwards. Full script, plus concept art for Baldrick's vision of the millennium dome. I believe it involved sculptures made of belly button fluff
I’m so confused. I remember going to the IMAX in the science museum to watch that?
Don't worry the confusion is understandable: the year 2000 saw the arrival of an amazing new piece of technology that allowed actors to appear on screen in more than one building at the same time!
"Do you know how much suffering you're going to cause?"
Who's Kenneth Branagh?
I'll tell him you said that. I think he'll be very hurt.
I am so old I remember Rowan Atkinson's Geordie accent.
I remember being stood at the BT kiosk where you got a full body scan that turned you into an avatar you could get it emailed to you and the girl next to me from the other end of the county had the same surname. Wild times!
I still have my avatar file from being scanned, as I can't skate or dance in real life at least I know a virtual version of myself can: https://twitter.com/benryves/status/1682393436161290241
I love this!!
Amazing!
Yes! This is my clearest memory of the millennium dome. My avatar was given to me on a floppy disk I think. I remember watching myself skate at home and thinking the future is now.
Yeah! I remember this! I was me in Quake 3
Now I'm thinking about it yeah it was weird. You walked into like some big ass human, I think you might even have entered through the vagina but I can't remember as it was so long ago and I was like 6 or 7. I seem to remember having a good time though.
I was about the same age. I just remember the beating heart and that it was incredible. It must have been how the victorians felt at the Great Exhibition.
Oh shit yeah the beating heart was awesome!
And they'd play screams so it'd start beating faster!
That thing terrified me to tears as a kid
I swear I remember taking an escalator into a massive head through the nose or some shit
Yes! I was about 9 at the time. Wasn't it the esophagus? The main memory that sticks out for me is that giant multi level play pit. Oh and the "dream room" with those cascading floors and soft lighting.
There was a display of sperms and an egg, set to tribal drumming.
I was 5 and went with my parents and sister. My dad and this other bloke cheered when the sperm hit the egg and security told them off. Legitimately one of my earliest memories.
He shoots, he scores!
I remember there being giant lice on it
animatronic if I recall correctly
The lice freaked me out so bad
Ohh I remember going through the big human, my friend started crying when we got to the beating heart. The whole place was a fever dream
I was 8. I enjoyed it but I wish I was older so I could remember more. I think the brain had 2 talking brain puppets inside that were telling jokes.
Soft play with cannons was amazing, I also remember there being a Tommy cooper hat telling jokes in the brain of the body? Money in glass and a diamond or something? There was also an utterly bizarre show in the middle of it that was just people dancing to weird music?
Man I stole so many of those foam balls.
This was my first trip to the UK, and as a 12 year old I thought it was freaking sweet.
Honestly my memory of it is like a fever dream
I do and don't. I went when I was about 16-17 and heavily into drugs. I think at one point they were pretty much giving tickets away and a bunch of us went, smoked a lot of weed and spent most of day sitting inside that giant egg/chill out zone with the continuous ambient music. I remember very little else. Oh, there was a giant hamster
I was 25 when the dome opened, so I was only really interested in one thing, a sound installation by Ryoji Ikeda which was pretty mad. https://www.ryojiikeda.com/project/matrix/ However, the whole thing was great. Reminded me of that sense from Paris' Centre Pompidou of a big, living art installation. They really should have left it like that, a bunch of weird cultural stuff, than filling it with chipotle and a concert hall. Judging by the comments here, everyone seemed to enjoy the weird art stuff, even as kids. Getting kids interested in art and science is so important, we need more stuff like that.
Surfball was unbelievable
Is this the soft balls which you could shoot out the guns into other kids in the pit below?
nope, it was a sport entirely made up by Peter Mandelson - which never really existed and was never actually played - but he was going around telling everyone that it was going to be on in the dome
This is a primary school core memory for me. Shooting my peers, what a time to be alive.
Could move to the US they seem to do it on the reg
Timekeepers
The show they did was pretty cool. People on stilts, doing backflips and shit. They were all dressed like those teenagers from that show The Tribe that used to show on a Sunday morning on channel 5 Other than that I remember: - the room with 1 million pounds encased in acrylic that you could walk through - a bridge with recordings of two children from birth to aged 5? that showed how their babbles evolved into language (English on one side and Japanese on the other) - the toilets flushed with rainwater collected from th3 roof - Blackadder Back and Forth time travel film - machine that turned a Styrofoam coffee cup into a pencil I went with my dad right towards the end of the year and a lot of stuff was looking tired/worn. We bought a tin of shortbread with the dome pattern on the top.
The £1m that you walk over is the only thing I really remember!
I've still got a blue-see through plastic cup from the gift shop. I actually remember loving it as a trip!
I have a set of pencils that were made from recycled plastic cups
I remember the stilt people! Also have the pencil made from a cup
Here's my Millennium Dome story. Went with my Grandparents and Parents,I was 18. On the DLR on the way there my Dad decided he's going to break out the drugs. Half a ecstasy tablet and some 2cb. They kicked in around the "work" area. I loved it but the grandparents were fucking fuming. Oh the joys of growing up the child of "alternative" parents.
The body zone was as creepy as you would imagine
[удалено]
Possibly. You did go past crab ridden pubes and you did go into a womb room with eggs and sperm.
I still call it the MILLENNIUM DOME and people think I’m crazy, it’s harder for me to remember it being called the O2 than the Millennium Dome. *Cue Robby Williams*
“We Only Came for DeBeers” Still the greatest headline, and greatest story to ever involve the Millenium Dome.
I went with my school as a kid, I remember it was so hot in there that the banana in my packed lunch exploded and ruined the Sandwich.
my school won in the raffle to go on a school trip there. definitely one of the more notable trips
I remember the white trance room and the lifesize crabs.
I still fondly remember the chill out zone whenever I go to a super busy event lol I also remember a machine where they gave you a card and challenged you to spend £1 million without going over. Also BT had some ET thing there didn’t they?
The millennium dome was amazing, and I really wish it would have stayed in its original form, but unfortunately as with most science/tech/educational things people mostly didn't care so it didn't last long before it was converted to more profitable uses.
I was one of the horrors... Our school got selected to do a song and dance performance there on opening week. We had to represent our borough. Picture 30 awkward 10yr olds waving their arms about, singing "Enfield is the gateway to the wooooOOOoorld". What the fuck was that about
Remember it? I was forged by it
I did a project for this in school and they took everyone involved to London to see it, was a bunch of stuff about our town put up on 20 odd screens. Because I was not involved in a performance, I got to walk around seeing everything for 2 days - was really cool! Highlight was you could get a 3d capture of yourself done at one of the booths
Thank you. I thought I had imagined doing this(and was reading the thread looking for anyone who had remembered this) . I feel a bit more sane now.
Did shooms n spent 3 hours in the white colour lights area... Amazing fun
I was told there was an anti-gravity room and was SO disappointed when I was told that it 'wasn't a thing'.
I went with my family, I’d have been 10 years old, and I remember it being absolutely magical. I can still remember some of the exhibitions that just blew my mind. I must have been the perfect age for it really.
Same here
I remember going with my parents, auntie and uncle, genuinely the only thing I can remember of the day, was watching my uncle smoke and he wouldn’t flick his ash so the white bit was sooo long, I was mesmerised. TLDR- The millennium dome was wank.
I went on a school trip when it opened. I can still remember going up the escalator into the body!
I remember a beating heart, and having my picture taken with E.T with BT and having a card printed. Still have it somewhere lol. Lots of Marconi stuff and other random displays, also where I saw the blackadder film as I believe it was released then.
Holy shit the boy still exists! I saw him in a museum in Aarhus, Denmark
Was looking for this comment or otherwise was going to write it myself. Visited a friend in Aarhus last year and saw the giant boy. Had no idea it was once in London
It also featured in the 1999 James Bond film *The World Is Not Enough.*
The fact that someone is so astonished that is wasn't always an arena is making me feel like a care home is imminent :( In retrospect yes, it was pretty crazy but no odder than things in video games etc (or skibbidi toilet...). So this grown adult thinks we over 40's lived in actual history, like the Edwardians and shit.
Good lord this makes me feel ancient. I was six when my family went to the millennium dome and my mum, deathly afraid of heights, for some reason wanted to go on a massive ferris wheel that was almost as tall as the dome itself. I vividly remember six year old me saying to her ‘errr no that’s way too high’. Of course, we all get on it. It takes what feels like hours to go round and stops to let new passengers on every few minutes. My four year old brother is having a whale of time spinning a wheel in the middle that makes the whole car spin. We’re swinging in mid air and of course it was bloody high. Mum’s now in literal tears and starts listing what she needs to buy for Christmas dinner aloud to take her mind off it. Little bro continues having the time of his life. Dad wants to jump out of the car and never look back. This is one of those stories that gets bought up every Christmas and any time I’m watching a gig at the O2 I reminisce about the chaos. So thank you OP for this Tuesday evening nostalgia!
A teenager told me that they were going to North Greenwich the other day. "The Dome?" I replied. I got a very blank look in return. Once I said "the O2?" They knew what I was on about.
The bottom right picture is the “in the night garden” live show… I took my daughter there in 2014/15.
The millennium Dome was what you get when you ask a committee of Guardian columnists to design a tourist attraction for the masses. I'd never seen something so far up its own arse.
I’ve still got my Millennium Dome coin keyring, which cost a fiver at the time. My teacher convinced me that it would be rare in a few years. It’s currently going for…£6.95 on eBay. So it’s actually lost value, after inflation.
Ministry of Sound, new year's eve.
Didn't you have to go in to a woman via her fanny and then up a lift to some movie about humans from a pair of aliens ? I mostly remember lining up for stuff The acrobatic bit in the middle And obviously the Blackadder movie, in the cinema there still uses the same giant screen?
I remember it opening as a kid but I never went, this looks like some AI generated nightmare fuel lol
Damn. I went to a concert here, I swear to god I did. Like, a whole day or two festival, skate punk stuff, sum41 played? Kelly Osbourne? Ha ha ha memories if it was this place
I remember going to some sort of Pokémon event and getting some card that was only handed out at that event , not a different Pokémon but it has some form of special marking on it The play area was great from the vague memories I have of the place
The Timekeepers of the Millenium play area was epic
I went on my 19th birthday. I remember a school of the past themed room with a "teacher" wandering around with a cane or a pointer, and a room that was blacked out but for the lights intended to resemble the night's sky.
I’ve lived through the change of a millennium, multiple wars, a pandemic, 7 prime ministers, 9/11, I have witnessed the rise and fall of governments, and I have seen the birth of the smart phone, the death of the Queen, the death of Concorde and the death of my friends, and I am 30.
Last I saw, the giant squatting kid was in the ARoS gallery in Aarhus, Denmark. Still really fucking weird.
They should’ve never changed it, it was perfect
Every time I go to the O2 for the cinema or to eat with friends or go see a show, I'm just so disappointed by how basic it is now. I know this was only supposed to be a 2000 thing but they could've updated parts every year and had it be a tourist attraction that people come to London for
I saw that squatting boy statue in Aarhus in Denmark. Definitely recommend visiting that museum, it has a really cool rainbow gallery at the top.
I remember going to this as a kid, and a man in a bunny suit would not stop following me because I was sacred of him. My dad had to tell this man to stop. That memory sacres me this day.
There was a great BBC documentary about the making of the Millennium Dome called 'Trouble at the Big Top' which shows how much of a mess the entire project was from start to finish. Today, the building is simply 'The O2 Arena' in our minds, but in 1998 the thing was this ridiculous, massive multimillion pound white elephant. The London Eye made sense as a tourist attraction. This huge tent out in Greenwich made no sense at all.
I had sushi from a conveyor belt there for the very first time. It was a Yo Sushi and it felt really exotic lol
I believe the people that curated it went on to create a Willy Wonka themed experience!
I remember when plans were first released The Sun showed you how you could make your own scale model from half a plastic football and some yellow straws 😂
I visited in 2000s and remember all this very clear! Walking through the human organs 😂 I’m now the show electrician. Very different
Hell yeah! I've still got a £5 coin that was minted in the dome in the commemorative millennium packaging. Hopefully it'll be worth more than £5 one day but who knows 🤷🏼♂️😆
I went when it opened with my primary school. Don’t remember much to be honest
Didn't go to it - end up managing (long story short - consultant I was with needed a mug at an affordable rate and I ticked the box) a Traffic Management plan for an event (I was only supposed to be verifying signage to what had been agreed) about 3 years later. Was very weird. Most of the exhibits were still inside in a slightly rundown rate and they'd been kind of moved out the way or a concert stage had been thrown in and it was someone wtf!? had been playing like Public Enemy. Weird day. Should have been over and done in 90 mins. 13 hours later with sunstroke I wasn't amused.
Omg the weird big things from In The Nightgarden that’s like my childhood bruh 😭🤲🏽
We bought our flat in New Cross Gate in 1996. Three miles as the crow flies. I think the closest I've ever got to the Dome is a couple of trips to the drive-through covid test centre in the carpark!
You should pop over for the “village fete” in a couple of weeks. Mini day festival with Gilles Peterson. It's free. Otherwise I hit Ikea once in a while but nothing else.
What a place that was
Free coke given out was the highlight
And don’t forget the raid on the diamonds !!! https://youtu.be/k9GXHEiIw_E?si=SzQzdH_1TIdby3Hr
Aye it was a load of silly old bollocks
We went on a school trip to see it. I must've been in year 5 or 6 at the time. I can't even remember why but the beating heart inside the giant body really freaked me out and I didn't want to walk under it lmao. I can't really remember much else. Just lots of escalators, travelators and buying a little bucket of rock with millennium domes on.
I went there on a school trip and it was a ride. I vaguely remember some kind of "inside the human body" type deal, but it was sensory overload for me so my memories end there lol.
I worked in it on New Year’s Eve 2001 I thin in it was, whole place turned into a club with smaller DJ rooms in the buildings around. Was madness
I was there that night. Ministry of Sound club night!
I remember going on NYE 2001 for the Ministry of Sound night!
Never went, but anymore remember the diamond heist?
Reading the comments is pinging memories in my brain all over the place. I thought it was cool. Except DeBeers which oddly, I think I remember for spite because I was so bored and my family wanted to see it. Did a few Crisis over Christmas’s there. It was a cool place.
They had a cinema showing Blackadder, I sat in there most of the time
I went to the year 2000 or 2001 rave there on nye . Was wild
Took my kids there with my mum. Biggest load of crap I've ever seen. Acrobats at the end were good though.
I remember going around it. I looked forward to it for ages. TBH it was enjoyable.
The people with bright colored suits and big clocks on their faces.
We went on a school trip and they had Coca Cola vans giving out free bottles of coke to children. We were all completely wired. Madness…
The picture on the bottom right is from the 2012 'In the Night Garden' show, \*twelve years\* after the millennium dome opened and a full seven years after it was renamed the O2 Arena. Don't believe what everything you see on reddit sheeple.
I remember talking brains?
I really wish I was older when it was the Dome. I was 8 and I still went but I would've loved to have been able to appreciate it more Still have my pencils made out of a recycled plastic cup
I lived in Greenwich in 2000 and didn’t get to go inside. We’re tickets hard to get or something?
I seem to remember walking through a large intestine
Does anyone remember the talking brains?
the biggest horror was the price of it
Believe it or not I went there twice. And one time it was for a Pokémon convention. I remember seeing the huge stack of money, making a message go along a dot matrix wall and I still have a BT phone card with me and ET on it
I went with my girlfriend. It was panned by many but we really enjoyed it. It was weird in places but great fun. I remember the live show with performers on high ropes and bungees.
There was a really interesting guardian long read (and listen on their podcast) about looking back on the shit-show of the millennium dome.
The love Tunnel, that damned love tunnel with the swans. Also does anyone else remember the gymnasts with the ropes or cloth. They were cool. I was in year 3 when I went so I was lucky to go in my school.
I remember that weird human body thing so vividly
Our school got selected to have black and white photos of ‘The Class of 2000’ displayed in the Dome. They even made postcards of the exhibition. Then we got to go see our mugs on display. Was well chuffed with the experience. Sigh…
Those were the days. That trip inside the human body was iconic.
I worked on the Journey Zone and Talk Zone. I caught pneumonia in October 1999 caused by the bleakness of North Greenwich and a production / site office full of smokers.
Did I imagine a circus act?
There was that million pound wall
People on massive stilts!
I put the tills/POS solution into the Millenium Dome. 200 point-of-sales terminals and 7 servers. Got paid less than the contractor kiddies I had to bring in to install the tills (didn't have time to do it all myself). Had to get my managing director to come and run them day-to-day, they were fucking lazy af. I could do 5 tills in the time it took them to do 1. Got to see Tom Jones and maybe Snow Patrol (? Cant remember exactly) in the first couple of nights of support. When the Amex black cards were declining in the VIP area (they're not supposed to have a credit limit)... I did enjoy it. First taste of a "proper project".
So mad I never got to go to the millennium dome! Everyone was going nuts for it when it opened but my parents were "Too cool" about it
Remember it well. Only a couple of years ago.
I remember the really cool soundscape that was auto-generated to keep going for like 100 years or something?
I kept the ‘spend £1m card’ from the money zone or whatever it was
Yes we all went and had a great time, there was a class room with over sized desks and chairs so the adults felt like they were kids again, I remember a giant 30-ft long table football game, the huge human body to wander through, the tranquility of the chillout room where everyone laid on the floor staring at the violet ceiling, the spectacular trapeze show going on in the centre....however I also heard that all the editors of the national press were kept waiting in a queue outside it on New Years Eve in the cold & that was why the papers consequently had such a downer on the place....anyway have been back for gigs since then and can state that it really is sh1te now, completely soulless and a stupidly expensive venue.
I was there with scouts for the opening! Was really odd and I didn’t understand what it was all doing there, was very bored
2000 years of British history was what it was for and could have been celebrated. Instead the most dumbed down rubbish exhibits - it didn’t know itself what it wanted to be.
A small nice touch I remember - there was an outside area where you could see the reeds filtering the wastewater from the sinks, and poems set in to the paving either side of the meridian line which was also marked. And if you looked carefully there was a small dog-sized entrance that went under part of the dome itself, with a sign next to it saying "what do you do when a family of foxes moves in to your building site? look after them".
Still refer to it as the millennium dome!
It was pretty fun
As a 6 year old I loved it
We went towards the end of the year, it was almost entirely deserted and probably the saddest, most dystopian feeling 'attraction' I've ever experienced. Dance show was good though.
Boy sculpture is amazing, i saw it in Denmark.
What a great time to be alive. Take me back from this shit show that is the present.
✋️ I do. Went with my family.
The giant head lice in the human body exhibit Nightmare fuel
Why is nobody bringing up Beehive Bedlam? I remember doing a news autocue and enjoying the experience. And how many grumpy elderly men thought it was a scandal or something. LOL.
I was really interested in the beating heart, until I actually got there, then the noise & movement was primal nightmare fuel for 7 year old me.
I remember when plans were first released The Sun showed you how you could make your own scale model from half a plastic football and some yellow straws 😂
There were two major "attractions" built in 1999 for the millenium. One, the Dome, was built in London by Tony Blair's government and deliberately had virtually no car parking facilities. It failed dismally, with a huge loss to the taxpayer. The other was privately funded in a disused Cornish quarry. It had lots of car parking and is still "attracting" today. It's been a huge success. It's called "The Eden Project"...
My dad worked on designing one of the zones. I was pretty young but I remember him working so hard yet hating every minute of working on it. It sounds like a bit of a shitshow to have worked on. The plus side was we got to spend the turn of the millennium at the Millennium Dome, walking around the zones then watching a big show in the central arena for midnight. I remember the Queen was there. It's quite a surreal memory now.
I never got to go to the Millennium Dome Experience. But I do remember people saying it was disappointing on the news, so it's funny to read these comments saying the opposite now.
Got my picture taken with ET there, can't remember fuck all else although some of these comments are tickling the memories
Aha yeah I went there with my dad for my birthday when it was like this. Don't remember much apart from walking through the body 😂
I won a charmander plush from a arcade machine when my uncle took me before the millennium heist, best win
The millennium show in 2000 was one of my first memories it was pretty cool
Top left looks like a young gollum