People are horrified at what the O2 Arena used to look like as the Millennium Dome | indy100

Storm Eunice tears huge hole through roof of London's O2 Arena

Euronews Culture / VideoElephant

It’s better known these days as the O2 Arena, boasting countless restaurants and attractions as well as the iconic music venue which has hosted concerts and comedy gigs alike, but it first started out as the Millennium Dome – and resurfaced images are terrifying social media users who didn’t experience the venue’s early incarnation when it opened in December 1999.

Open for a whole year until 31 December 2000, the project with an estimated cost (pre-opening) of £758 million looked to celebrate the new millennium – with 14 zones inside themed around topics such as ‘work’, ‘play’, ‘rest’ and ‘self-portrait’ - and bring in 12 million visitors.

This didn’t happen.

Instead, a November 2000 report from the National Audit Office (NAO) noted that by September of that year, the New Millennium Experience Company was “planning on the basis of 4.5 million paying customers, six million in total”.

Sir John Bourn, former auditor general of the NAO, said at the time: “The New Millennium Experience Company has experienced severe financial difficulties this year and has required considerable additional lottery funding.

"The main cause of these difficulties is the failure to achieve the visitor numbers and income required. The targets were highly ambitious and inherently risky leading to a significant degree of financial exposure on the project.

“In addition, the task of managing the project has been complicated by the complex organisational arrangements put in place from the outset, and by the failure to establish sufficiently robust financial management."

Ouch.

The Millennium Dome became known as the O2 Arena in 2005, but this week Twitter has made us cast our minds back to what occupied the space during the aforementioned exhibition:

Just finding out what used to be inside the O2 Arena before it was an arena and I\u2019m losing my mind what
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@and_rew_thom I was there the night it opened. It was nuts \ud83d\ude33
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@harrisonjbrock \ud83d\ude2d\ud83d\ude2d flopped so bad they closed it after a year, then briefly opened the saddest winter-wonderland ever before O2 bought it 5 years later. I am aghast
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@and_rew_thom Getting Glasgow Willy Wonka vibes \ud83d\ude02
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How are people just finding out about the Millenium Dome. It was iconic
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Never thought I'd be into that generational divide shit but this is ridiculous. How dare you make me feel this old, kid. Get off my lawn.
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The absolute joy at watching a new generation discover what horrors used to be inside the millennium dome \ud83e\udd73
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people discovering the Millennium Dome and what it housed makes me feel ancient
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Visibly ageing at the news there are people who aren't aware of the existence of the Millennium Dome.
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glasgow willy wonka experience coded
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The Millenium Dome somehow inventing the "fuck it, let's just get AI to draw something" aesthetic decades early
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The realisation that I\u2019m fast approaching middle age - there\u2019s adults amongst us that had no idea the O2 Arena began life as the Millennium Dome \ud83d\ude2d\ud83d\ude2d\ud83d\ude2d
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@and_rew_thom I was 5 years old in the year 2000 and the brain room left quite an impression on me as a child. I still call it the millennium dome ngl.
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Sorry for making you feel old.

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