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The Millennium Dome London

Interestingly, Gerbeau is actually said to have had quite a positive impact at the Dome, helping it fend off the initial bad press and also driving up ticket sales beyond what they were originally with a successful marketing campaign!
 
Benjsh said:
Always felt the Millennium Dome was the best chance of a major indoor theme park we will likely ever get in the UK. Perfect size for a decent sized indoor park and obviously prime location with it being in London and next to the river.

Where were the London Resort people when we needed them eh?
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That's actually an amazing idea for a Planet Coaster challenge. Have someone re-create the site and structure of the Dome, and then let lots of people all try to build a small park on the site.

If I had time to play Planet Coaster at the moment I'd already be modeling it!
 
I was reading a book over the weekend that referred to the original Dome as being like something "thrown together by an RE teacher who had won the lottery".

I went with Scouts. I don't remember many specifics about it really, but I recall the show being cool.
 
I found this really interesting feature from The Guardian about the Dome, assessing whether it was actually the product itself that was poorly received or the politics surrounding it that made it get widely viewed as a failure: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...e-experience-disaster-inside-story-new-labour

I think the writer of the article does have an interesting point. This synopsis of the Dome’s development and operation suggests that many had a pre-conceived dislike of the Dome as a project before it even opened, which may have given them a strong opinion against it before they even stepped inside.

While I’m not denying that there are clearly some who weren’t overly enamoured with it as a finished product, and it did cost a lot of money, this article says that 90% of the 6 million visitors were said to have had a positive experience there, and children in particular (who were likely oblivious to the politics surrounding it) were said to have really enjoyed themselves there.

Do you guys agree? Do you think that it’s possible that the Dome’s reputation could have been at least partially tainted by the politics surrounding it before it even opened?
 
Following it closely at the time, but being a (no bloody coasters not going!) non visitor, I would say that the nation's general opinion of it being "a bit crap" is spot on.
"Expected revenue from twelve million ticket buyers" became six million visitors in total...and they would not say how many actually paid full price...not many at all.
Flop millennial vanity project costing three quarters of a billion quid.
I know it was "only" lottery money, but that money could have kept all Britain's food banks going for a good few years.
Sold it off for a quid to keep it going...should have been pulled down and the extremely valuable land sold off to the developers that really wanted to get their hands on the land.
 
Yes I think there was a lot of people/politicians that just made the whole project out to be a waste of money which of course meant even before it opened people wanted to hate it.
Much like HS2 and similar at the moment, people talk more about the money than the benefits.

rob666 said:
I know it was "only" lottery money, but that money could have kept all Britain's food banks going for a good few years.
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We didn't really have food banks back then. Their usage has only come about in more recent Tory governments (but thats a topic for a different thread).
 
jon81uk said:
We didn't really have food banks back then. Their usage has only come about in more recent Tory governments (but thats a topic for a different thread).
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OK, correction, could have been spent on supporting the poor, homeless and poorly people in need.

Regarding the other millennium flops, you are still comparing turds.
People are happy to visit "that London", but getting them to visit the fine tourist destinations of Sheffield and Doncaster is a bit tricky.

The dome was a flop, it didn't catch the imagination of the public, only the imagination of a few dozen politicians, who wanted another Festival Of Britain on the south bank.
Simply didn't happen
 
I loved the actual turning of the year...locally it was a million fireworks all at once, rather drunk on posh stuff with my closest friends, amazing time.
Just the dome seemed to be one big ego massage for Blair and Mandelson.
So cool brittania.
Started the new millennium morning with a puzzling question ...
"Why is there a slice of mushroom on my pillow?"
 
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