For some unknown reason, I decided to get my visit to the Dome over with on Saturday. Here are
my tales of the momentous occasion.

Arriving to the new Jubilee Line extension, we struck the first fault of the day - 'multiple
signal failure'. This delayed our journey quite a bit but we got to see the wonderful new
stations - they're so futuristic - there is a transparent wall with automatic doors between the
tube and station so you can only go off the platform when there's a train there.

Faith

On arrival we spent quite a while arguing with a useless NMEC women to give us the ticket we
were meant to pick up. Eventually we got in and I went straight to the Faith zone. I then went
straight out - I disliked all the 'religious culture' theme of the place - how religion
'enhances' our lives. The central area of the Faith zone is much nice - quite and tranquil
it's a haven compared to the outside noise of the many TVs in the Faith zone.

Halley

I then I embarked on the best part of the Dome - Halley. On entering the room, it was filled
with purple mood lighting like the Faith area and lots of stainless steel devices on the wall.
Yes, it was the toilets - someone bothered to name each toilet 'facility' area. The lighting
really added to the experience. It's definitely the best zone. On the wall was a sign with a
strange proverb about water being rained down and cleaning out toilets.

Skyscape

Next I went to see the screening of 'Blackadder Back and Forth' at Skyscape hosted by (you
guessed it) Sky. After some miserable minutes waiting for it to start with strange
pre-scripted acts involving a woman with a cap labelled 'Sky' and a man with no trousers, the
film began. I really enjoyed it but the feeling wasn't shared by all. Maybe it's due to my
cynicism about time-travel.

The Body

The queue for body lasted about ten times as long as going through the darned thing. The
irritating thing is that the queue did go past fun stuff to do and lots of information
to read but you had to leave the queue to read them, loosing your place and having to barge in
somewhere further back and still receiving nasty looks. You enter the body through a new hole
in the hips where you soon reach the vaginal area. The two foot hairs infested with parasites
look more daunting then usual and you are soon transferred to a room with a strange display of
computer stuff like you would see in James Bond films. The heart is quite impressive - a big
red thumping sac of rubber that puts most people off. Then there's the room with the talking
brains, and of course the reproduction area. Overall it's okay but rather short, especially
when you consider the hour queuing for it.

The Play Zone

The Play Zone was rather good. It was very entertaining and 'hands-on'. The trouble was that
it was so popular that it was difficult to get to do anything, but if you are persistent you
might stand a chance. I decided to just walk through. Most the games are simple and more
'creative' and fun then challenging. Still, as Lord Falkner kept insisting - it's a place to
put your kids so you can go do other stuff.

Home Planet

Home Planet was fun. It took you on a ride exploring the planet through Alien eyes - in fact
you were guided by cartoon aliens! It used feeling senses as well as sight and sound, blowing
to resemble the desired temperature, cold for ice and hot for lava. The lava was too dark to
see though. This zone was definitely one of the better ones.

Living Island

Living Island seemed to be run by Surfers Against Sewage. It's a zone full of 1950s seaside
memorabilia with the constant message of cutting down pollution. It was good except for the
strange arcade at the end where you were given a token with which you were meant to play a game
to reduce pollution. Like many things in the Dome, the machine I put my coin in was not
functioning and that was that.

Self Portrait

Self Portrait was a patriotic monument sponsored by one of those great examples of British
success - Marks and Spencer. It was rather interesting and fun to go through - listing lots of people's reasons of why they like Britain. There was an overly high feeling
of patriotism but that was replaced by sarcasm when Thatcher was given as a reason for
someone's love for Britain - the poor misguided soul...

Work

Work is a very good zone though it could easily be renamed play without anyone noticing and
many more people going to see it. After showing the 'old days' of working on a row of computer
monitors, the zone develops to modern day and future possibilities, ending with a big room. In
this room was large tables. One you had to press the correct combination of numbers to add up
to a given sum. Another was a logic problem and then, there was a Fuseball table. A long
table-football table stretching across the room. It obviously meant to represent teamwork but
this was largely ignored.

Learn

Learn was rather different. First everyone is put in a room resembling a school hall. Then you
were filed into the auditorium. Here you were shown an over-melodramatic story of learning.
Girl late to school. Teacher as if cross but inspires girl instead. Girl inspires others and
then everyone inspired. All this is shown symbolically though trees. At least it ended with
the tree breaking the roof of the school. The audience is then invited into the next room,
which was full of trees and computer screens. There was very little interactivity here,
however.

Money

Money was just strange. Except for explaining the works of economics and showing Trevor
McDonald announcing the hyperinflation of the pound on multiple TV screens, you also got to
play a game. In this game you were given a credit card (with a barcode on) that had £1 million
on it which you had to spend at a machine in one minute by carrying out several purchases.
This was rather easy and I spent £1,090,000. Then came the investment part - you were in 1980
and had £10,000 to invest. I chose to invest in houses and I came out with between £60,000 to
£120,000. I was not told if this was a success though...

The Show

Then came the great 'show'. We exchanged snide comments while waiting for it to start. All
kinds of things were being constructed and suddenly strange people on stilts and rainbow slugs
came in and walked about. The show is meant to have a very specific story line involving
'Skyboy' and 'Sophia' but this did not seem to apply. It ended up a loud acrobatic circus with
irritating 'romantic' singing between the two. I really dislike contemporary drama.

Rest

Rest, well, yes... err... this was a lot like the toilet. Big room with purple light. It had
strange mood-music and everyone sat around on the hard plastic curvy floor. I sat for a couple
of minutes before making my escape. This was not quite what I had expected from the zone...

Mind

The Mind zone was quite good. I did not have much time to spend in this zone but it had some
interesting stuff to do and was going on about some ant colony. There were games where you
could experiment with changing your pigmentation or other aspects of you appearance but
nothing particularly relevant to the zone.

Talk

The Talk zone, sponsored by BT of course (or is that ET?), was rather impressive. It was big
and had lots of stuff and tons of interesting information. I discovered that Thatcher had been
trained to speak in a voice two octaves lower than her original one. There were lots of cool
old devices and futuristic gadgets and limited web access was also given. There was much more
to it but by the time I got there (6pm) the place had closed. Yes! The Dome closes at 6pm!

Overall the Dome was very disappointing. The high lights were Blackadder and the toilets and
certain zones were better than others. This opinion-voting thing that was going on was also
fun except that I don't think I learned anything significant nor was I particularly
entertained. Well, 'one amazing day' over with!

Mr.Cynic

07.02.00. Front Page

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