It’s not very good. There you go, that’s it - my abridged review of the Millennium Dome. Save yourself some time and move on to digesting the remainder of this fine publication. On the other hand you could read on and I’ll do my best to waste as much of your time as the Dome wasted of mine.

I wanted to enjoy it, I really did, but the odds were stacked against it from the beginning. A good start may have been if the promise of a free ticket for Greenwich residents such as myself had actually come to fruition. Initially I was told to expect a 10-week wait; after two weeks I was informed that I would have to reapply with additional documentation. Never one to disappoint my loyal readership, nor my ego for that matter, I took it upon myself to purchase a student ticket. £17.50 after the booking fee thank you very much. Now the last time I went to Alton Towers it only cost me a tenner and the British Museum is free, so the Dome was already facing some stiff competition. It did not get off to a good start: I began the day with breakfast at the imaginatively monickered ‘Millennium Café’, which set the culinary tone of the day by offering virtually no vegetarian fare. Still it did provide some sustenance and I now felt able to tackle the Dome itself.

My first impressions of the Dome were not much of an improvement on breakfast. It has to be the most underwhelming opening to an attraction ever. The dirty translucence of the Dome casts everything in a dull grey luminance that aside from making decent photography tricky (or impossible for a point and click merchant like myself), creates the impression that someone has forgotten to turn on the lights. Now I hadn’t really taken the trouble to familiarise myself with the layout and such, so I began by wandering aimlessly around the outer perimeter. It was empty, very empty. Furthermore every vacant attraction was guarded by Millennium Dome staff clad in rather foreboding yellow and black uniforms that gave the impression of these areas being off limits. Maybe some pastel shades in future?

After ten minutes of meandering I popped back outside to the ‘Skyscape’ cinema, in order to see the Blackadder, ‘only in the Dome’ film. A leviathan of a screen, a sound system that would put any XR3I boy racer to shame, and for what? An episode of Blackadder. Except crap. Really, really crap. I don’t care if Kate Moss made a cameo, it was crap. Sky certainly weaved their magic on this one.

Back in the Dome arena I took my seat for the main attraction, which I was actually quite excited about. It was certainly more fun than Blackadder, with lots of bungee ropes, acrobatics and a fair amount of pyrotechnics, which are always appreciated. The plot is pretty vague though – something about man ruining his naturalistic idyll through rampant industrialisation, then realising his true self again (kind of clashed with the corporate sponsored nature of the Dome in this reporter’s opinion, but more of that later). The individual characters were pretty indiscernible, despite their absurdly literal names provided in the programme guide. The hero is named ‘Skyboy’. Seriously.

So the show was okay, and let me assure you it is quite a technical accomplishment if not necessarily an artistic one. So on to the zones… OK: The Body Zone is the one that everyone queues for. I’m not sure quite what the appeal of an amorphic blob made of disused mousemats is, but I stood in line anyway. I discovered that I have a large pump in the centre of my body called a heart, a central nervous system, and to my surprise nine brains (one of which wears a fez and tells Tommy Cooper jokes). The Mind Zone begins with a huge statue of a semi-naked boy, and finishes with a machine that can illustrate how you may look after ageing thirty years, changing ethnicity or gender. A potentially eye-opening experience, it was of course closed. This theme was continued in The Money Zone that offered perhaps 50% of its machines in working order. This zone told me that money exists, some people have a lot of it, and it is commonly used to purchase goods and services. In contrast, The Faith Zone perhaps had some tremendously important things to say, but was sadly let down by a distinct lack of imagination or creativity in its presentation. Likewise The Self Portrait Zone offered some fairly interesting sculptures that attempted to illustrate the British ‘character’. The majority of the zone was occupied however, by a meaningless collage of ‘British Icons’, apparently decided upon by ‘you the public’. The Living Island Zone featured some quite admirable environmental messages, but was again let down by a huge number of attractions simply not working. The Home Planet Zone from British Airways worked well enough, but was crap. Basically if you’ve been on Star Tours at any Disney theme parks (or any good simulator type ride ever) then you’ll be unimpressed with this. Surprisingly The Work Zone was quite enjoyable, with some pretty cool games to play – including a thirty-foot long giant table football match. I’d like to say right now that I scored the winning goal, and I like to think of it as my protest against the notoriously union-unfriendly sponsors of this zone; Manpower. The corporate mantle is handed on to BT in The Talk Zone, which allows Dome visitors the opportunity to actually live in a BT commercial,or so it would appear. One ‘highlight’ was the opportunity to type a message in to a wall mounted display (oooh! Technology!). Interestingly the couple in front of me who made disparaging comments about BT failed to see their message appear, as was the case with my less than glowing opinion of BT’s commitment to DSL. BT redeemed themselves somewhat with a pretty cool attraction that creates a 3D Avatar of your likeness which you can download from the net. If anyone has a burning desire for a fully scalable and rotatable model of my good self than send me an email and I’ll be happy to oblige. Corporate guff is taken to new levels in The Journey Zone, sponsored by Ford. Look I don’t care if you have the actual models of X-Wings and Tie Fighters from Star Wars; Ford you’re full of shit. If Ford are as committed to the environment as they claim in this zone then why are they manufacturing the Ford Excursion in the US? How is a 7 foot high, twenty foot long SUV going to help reduce pollution? This zone contains so many contradictions and inanities it’s hard to know where to begin. A shame really because it has some quite cool models and things in it. Far less pretentious are The Play Zone and Timekeepers of the Millennium. Strictly for kids, they’re thankfully kept advertising free. Timekeepers involves shooting millions of squidgy balls at everyone in site, for no apparent purpose. The Dali-esque clock hanging above it marks its surrealist triumph in such an ordered and packaged simulacrum of ‘fun’ as the Dome. Or alternatively, it’s just a good laugh. Play would be a lot more fun if there were less school kids, but I’m prejudiced against the little bastards… Shared Ground is pretty pointless, and for some reason when asked who I would cook dinner for, my answer of ‘my Mum’ was met with incredulity by my fellow visitors. Still that’s the answer that will be recorded in a time capsule that will no doubt fascinate the robots who will have taken over the planet when it is opened in 2100. Learning is boring. The zone that is, not the practice of. The Rest Zone was fairly relaxing, but the supposedly ergonomic surface was filthy which made it hard to really relax. The Millennium Jewels just looked like bits of shiny glass to me.

That’s about it really. I didn’t visit the McDonald’s town stage, more because it looked boring than for the fact that I hate them. Needless to say I didn’t eat at said fastfoodery, nor Harry Ramsden’s. I thought I’d try the ‘World Food Court’. According to the Dome there are only three types of food in the world – Chinese, Indian and West Indian (the main staple of which is Thai Prawns apparently). The Chinese counter had none of the vegetarian dishes on its menu; the Indian had only a generic veggie curry. Not much fun, and not cheap. I would also have hoped that the Dome might have led us into the new century by offering free drinks refills, as are expected in most civilised countries. Not so I’m afraid.

Like my day at the Dome, this is beginning to drag so I’ll try and reach a conclusion (something the Dome does not manage). I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I tried to be open minded. At £17.50 a ticket there’s no point in being cynical, but it’s hard when faced with such a mishmash of stillborn ideas. If the Dome is supposed to represent something about the British, or about humanity in general as we enter a new millennium then I missed it. It’s confused, unsure of its identity, muddled and vague, and perhaps that’s not so bad an illustration after all. But on a practical level the dome fails on so many accounts. It is not as much fun as a casino; it is not as educational as a museum. For all its attempts to make me proud of my life, my country and my community, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been ripped off and my time would have been much better spent working on my dissertation. Which reminds me…

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