At 7:00 at night, on October 31st, the UNI-dome was inflated into the Cedar Falls skyline for the first time. It took four big fans an hour and a half to inflate the UNI-Dome on that October night. The dome went from 18 feet from the floor to 124 feet into the sky. However, the dome didn't stay in the Cedar Falls sky for long, because little more than a week later the dome deflated for the first time. The new UNI-Dome failed to pass its first test from Mother Nature. The dome started to deflate when the electricity in western Cedar Falls went out during a thunderstorm. After the roof of the dome collapsed there were a lot of high winds. These high winds caused severe damage to the deflated roof. The high winds, at times, exceeded forty miles per hour and ruined six or more panels of fabric on the roof. The holes that ripped in the roof caused thousands of gallons of water to drain into the dome. Dow Corning, manufacture of the roof, estimated the damage to the deflated and torn roof to be in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 35,000 dollars. Due the high winds that continued after the roof was deflated. There was talk the construction crew might have to take the roof off and wait to repair it and put it back on during the spring. The winds finally calmed down, so the construction crew decided they didn't have to wait until spring to fix the dome and on November 29th the dome was fixed and re-inflated.

    On June 30th 1977, the UNI Dome deflated for the second time in twenty months. Robert Stansbury, UNI's vice president, gives his account of the deflation.  "When the electrical power in western Cedar Falls went out for six minutes during the thunderstorm at 6:00 a.m.; emergency generators started up automatically, but the fans that force air into the structure and keep the roof inflated did not work."³⁸ Due to the collapse and the heavy rains, a lot of water built up in the middle of the roof and made the already little holes into a 40 foot by 120 foot hole, which caused a lot of water to gush into the stadium and onto the basketball courts that were laid on the dome floor. Repairmen worked night and day to repair the huge hole in the dome roof and on July 1st it was inflated back up, 28 hours after it had been deflated due to the failure of the emergency backup system.

    After the dome deflated for the second time, many people were very skeptical about the university's choice of building a domed type coliseum. The university had to reassure the public that these events wouldn't occur on a regular basis in the future. The architect of the dome, Dr. David Geiger said, "the public has to understand that it is no catastrophe if the roof, on occasion, deflates."⁴¹ The first twenty months produced a lot of excitement for the dome, but it also raised a lot of doubt in the minds of many people, because the people weren't sure if the university made a wise choice when they decided to build the UNI-Dome.