To ask what it was like to experience the change from 1999 to 2000?

[2020newstart]

Just that really. I was 10, so don't remember much. But oddly I do remember 9/11 all this talk about the new decade makes me wonder how it was like going from 1999 to 2000? If you're old enough to remember, how was the celebration? It must have been so weird writing the year 2000 on forms when you've been used to writing 19.. since you were born

I was 26. The pressure to do something amazing for NYE was intense. In the end me and my bf drove up to the top of a.hill and watched the fireworks. There wasn't social media thank goodness or I would have felt like a right failure. The next day it was so so quiet. I walked through the city and no one was there. I didnt know for sure if the bug had.hit until I got back to work
It was lovely to be back to normality and realise that all the hype was for nothing.

I was 16 and my family decided to watch the fireworks in London. We ended up getting a bit squished on Waterloo bridge and these young guys helped us out but pulling my younger siblings from the crush, still thankful to them now. We walked away from the crowds and watched the fireworks right outside Buckingham Palace, it was amazing. I sometimes walk past there on my commute. I remember feeling how brill it was being the year 2000, I was only 16 though and a bit naive 😂

Watched the fireworks from Westminster bridge (I think), I was 18. I thought they were amazing! Then it took us nearly 6 hours to get home (can’t remember to where exactly as we were staying with a friends relatives, but somewhere only a few tube stops away), because the place was so heaving it literally took hours to walk to the train. It was actually a bit scary for a while as we were in such a big crowd and had so little space.

Was out, had a great night and was partying until past dawn!

Will never forget it!

It was just another new year although there was a slight nervousness about the millennium bug. I went away with friends and we had a nice time but at midnight the guy I was madly in love with snogged a random girl so I started the new millennium in tears having a cuddle with my best friend who is now my husband 😁

I also remember having to go into work on New Year's Day to test all the computers in my Department! Yes, they thankfully all worked OK - and I made a nice windfall in overtime - I think it was time x3 for the day!!!

I turned 17 just before the Millennium and went to a party called something like Richard Madley’s Y2K Bunker.

I do remember feeling like the nineties as a cultural phase (Britipop, Spice Girls, certain kinds of fashion) had ended in about 1998.

I was in bed with flu thought I was going to die, the actual change from 1999-2000 was pretty anticlimactic tbh

As a child, the millennium seemed like ages away and I was going to be so old when it happened..... I was 25! It was brilliant, I loved watching the coverage from around the world, I went to a house party, then into London and had a fab view of the fireworks, which were amazing (not quite on the scale of what they do these days but back then I'd never seen the like!). Drank a lot of champagne and snogged now DH at midnight. I loved the millennium dome and was also one of the first people on the London Eye when it did open properly (dad worked for BA). I worked in IT at the time and there was a massive Y2K project in the years leading up to it, but our systems all came through unscathed.

It was such an optimistic time in my life, right up until 9/11, when the world changed.

Can't believe people are still going on about the Y2K bug hype when so many people have explained how the bug was avoided.

It was a strange one for me but amazing as well. I'd just found out I was pregnant with my first baby, a bit of a surprise so just getting my head around it. Me and dh went to a friend's party in Greenwich then up to see the fireworks on the common. I seemed to spend half the night telling people I had a dodgy tummy so couldn't drink, everyone else was pretty wasted. But watching the fireworks I had this overwhelming sense of peace and excitement about the future, wondering what life would be like now with this new millennium baby. I was probably a little overdramatic.

I wasn't worried about the bug because my brother worked in IT so I knew all the work that had gone on behind the scenes and felt pretty confident it would all be ok.

• The pressure to do something amazing for NYE was intense
  ^Yes, this

• Prices were super high for all events (£50 / ticket for a pub night anyone?) and there was a lot of uncertainty and people not wanting to commit...

• There was also perhaps more of a feeling for friends and families wanting to be together on this momentous night than there would be on a 'normal' NYE.

None of these things work together very well! I was in my 20s and in the end my parents threw an all-age, all-welcome party at home and I was amazed at even the super-cool clubby friends of mine who, despite all their talk of big nights out, ended up bringing their mums and dads to spend the Millennium night with us!

Of course the actual midnight thing was no different than any other year. It was clear by the time the UK reached midnight than computer systems in other countries had been adequately prepared for the Y2K bug.

The PTA at my DCs school organised a huge party in the school hall so that even those of us who had no babysitters available could celebrate. The children had a great time and being mostly under 11, a lot of them had fallen asleep on coats around the edge of the hall by midnight. I remember it one point thinking back to when I was the dcs age and we were discussing the year 2000 and what changes we might see by then. At some point in that discussion, I realised that by the year 2000, I would be approaching 40 - older than my mum at that point- and feeling horrified. That memory popped into my mind on NYE 1999 and I suddenly felt so old!

As for the Millennium Dome, we took the dcs for a day out a few weeks later and had a wonderful time. I think the press slated it for reasons of their own, everybody I know who actually visited, had a great time.

The predicted y2k computer virus failed to materialise.

Mildly amused by those saying this ^

For one bank alone, the project we ran to identify and fix any issues ran over two years, with a team which varied in size but at its peak employed 3752 people.

We looked for all the places where a value for a year was stored. In some cases, we could expand the field size from two to four digits. In other places, there just was not the size to do this. Then we had to check and often adjust any program which used that date, to display on a screen or statement and in lists and calculations.

For course, if all the fields are labelled 'date' that would be quite easy. Lots of theses programs used current or year or statement for the date field. Sigh. Lots of testing required to make sure that there would be no hiccups when the date appeared to go from '99' to '00' which appears to be a smaller number.

Finally (sic) we monitored during the date changed and breathed a sigh of relief when all went well after all that work ...

only to hear people scoffing that 'after all the fuss nothing had gone wrong'. Sigh

Worth a read for those who thought y2k passed without incident.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/31/millennium-bug-face-fears-y2k-it-systems

I remember it well, I live in Plymouth and there were fireworks and a huge bonfire on the Hoe, we took our young children one of whom fell asleep in his buggy and missed it all. A friend who sadly passed away last year was with us for the evening and dinner the next day where the meal turned out really well and he provided some really excellent wines that we still remember. all in all a great celebration.

Went to a massive rave

About 10 to midnight i walked off to a cashpoint and withdrew all my money in a minor millennium bug panic then went back to the rave with a few hundred quid in my pocket then made it home about 3 days later with no money

Well we all dressed up, had champagne on my balcony and watched Fireworks, checking if the lights and electricity were going to go off...

Was a bit of an anti climax, just like any other New year really.

Aged 14, I was terrified of the Millennium bug and then relieved as I observed other countries hitting midnight before us without incident. I remember New Years Day, Nickelodeon had a full day of children talking about the future called Nickellenium. One always stuck in my head when he said "I'm not afraid of the future, I am the future".

Nickellenium -