I was beginning to wonder just how much of my Millennium Dome memories were real. December 31 2024 marks 25 years since the opening of The O2’s predecessor built for indoor entertainment on a scale unlike anything like it.
London’s giant white tent out east in North Greenwich has well and truly cemented itself as part of the capital’s skyline, not least thanks to its feature to the tune of the DUM, DUM, DUM on every Eastenders.
Between the ages of five and six, I visited the Dome twice. Believe it or not I remember more than the buzz of boarding the South Western Railway rattler into the capital. Visiting felt like top of every family’s to-do list in the year 2000 and clearly as I trek down memory lane for it, for good reason too.
What I do remember, however, is being mesmerised by the human body attraction, from the massive pounding heart to struggling to keep myself from sliding through the meditative and silent clinically white brain.
That and walking endlessly, oh and the mascots. I couldn’t describe them but there were definitely mascots.
For whatever reason I’d never bothered to Google the Millennium Dome to see where my memory ends and figment of imagination begins. Thankfully the below snaps prove although hazy, I’m not far off.
Some two decades later walk on its roof, shop, bowl, throw darts and watch countless incredible arena shows but the Millennium Dome era just ‘hit different’.