Queues, cash loans and credibility gap - it was an unhappy first month at the Millennium Dome. Four weeks on, BBC News Online's Chris Summers ventures back to see if anything has changed.

Pity the people of Sedgefield and Hartlepool.

If you live in the constituencies of Prime Minister Tony Blair or Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson, a day trip all the way to the Millennium Dome is out of the question.

But those of us living in London and the south east should perhaps show a bit more gratitude to the pair, who together nurtured the Dome when they took it on after the 1997 general election.

In the last month, since it opened on New Year's Eve, politicians and journalists have striven to become champions of a new national pastime, Dome-bashing.

Tales of poor attendances, financial losses, infrastructure failures and ticketing mistakes have been gorged on in the media feeding frenzy.

A few weeks ago Mr Mandelson said large parts of the media were conducting a vendetta and pointed to surveys which showed most paying punters liked the Dome.

Having spent an anonymous day there, on a family visit mixing among ordinary people rather than with cynical fellow hacks, I can see his point.

Admittedly there was a fiasco over tickets and transport on the opening night, which was inexcusable, and there have been other mistakes.

But these teething problems seem to have been ironed out and on the day I visited - a windy, overcast Sunday - there was a healthy crowd.

At £57.50 for a family of two adults and three children under seven, you are unlikely to make a second visit to the Dome, which is unfortunate because, I came away feeling I would know how to do it better next time round.

We arrived at midday - too late, in hindsight - and decided to join the queue for the Body Zone.

Queuing is an integral part of the Dome experience and the British, with their stiff upper lip, are past masters in this delicate art.

A 60-minute wait

The line for the Body Zone was helpfully marked with generally accurate signs predicting a total wait of over an hour.

On the way in there were numerous features - on a medical or biological theme - to keep you entertained, although you left the queue at your peril, as we found when a fractious individual accused us of queue-jumping.

The thing with queuing is that it raises the expectations - on the basis that "if there is a queue there must be something worth waiting for" - and with the Body Zone we found ourselves disappointed.

The displays were loud and light-hearted but the attack on the senses proved too much for many of the children and you came out feeling you had learned little about the body.

The highlight of the visit was the twice-daily Millennium Show, which was held in the Central Arena.

Set to Peter Gabriel's atmospheric music, dozens of dancers and acrobats performed a surreal three-part circus opera. The plot was unclear but the choreography, costumes and special effects were stunning.

After a meal - there were plenty of reasonably priced catering outlets varying from McDonald's and Harry Ramsden's to vegetarian and exotic food cafes - we were back on our feet.

The Mind Zone was, as its name suggested, a calm and cerebral journey which sought to challenge the senses.

The nearby Rest Zone was an aural sauna, where music - apparently "stretched out so it would last a thousand years" - played and hidden lights slowly change.

'Kiss me quick' image

New technology was showcased in the Talk Zone, where your child could get his or her face scanned in side by side with ET or you could catch up with the football results on the internet.

The "kiss me quick" image of The Living Island - based it would seem on Brighton beach - belied a serious message about environmental damage.

But it was delivered with a lightness of touch which was refreshing and the simple pleasures of sitting in a deckchair or strolling on a pretend pebble beach appealed at least as much as the high-tech games available in the nearby Play Zone.

Throughout the day we were impressed by the helpfulness of the staff and the lack of litter.

Overall the Dome appears to have overcome its initial growing pains and would seem to have a bright, but brief, future.

As I left I was reminded of the comments (overheard in a queue) of a woman from Yorkshire who, chatting with her friend about the negative press reports, said: "There's a fair few here and it's only t' beginning o' year. You wait until t' summer."