Space 220
Space 220 is a table-service restaurant in World Discovery at EPCOT in Walt Disney World, Florida. Attached to the Mission: SPACE pavilion, it presents dining aboard a fictional space station positioned, in its story, 220 miles (354 km) above Earth — the distance reflected in its name. It is operated by the Patina Restaurant Group, a Delaware North company that runs several other restaurants on Walt Disney World property, and it opened on September 20, 2021, shortly before the resort's 50th anniversary celebrations began.
History
The restaurant was announced at the D23 Expo in 2017 as part of a wider programme of changes at EPCOT. Early plans pointed to an opening in late 2019, alongside the transformation then under way around the former Future World. Construction and fitting-out were interrupted in 2020, when work across the resort stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the timetable slipped by roughly two years.
Work resumed after the parks reopened, and Space 220 finally welcomed its first diners on September 20, 2021. For its first week it accepted walk-ins only; advance reservations, which have remained in high demand, began for seatings from September 27. Executive chef Marc Kusche led the kitchen at opening.
Experience
Guests check in on the ground floor of the Mission: SPACE pavilion and receive a boarding pass for the Centauri Space Station. They then enter a simulated space elevator, known in the story as a Stellavator, whose floor and ceiling screens show the pavilion shrinking below and the station drawing closer above during the ascent. The effect is intended to sell a continuous journey from Florida to orbit rather than a simple walk into a dining room.
The main dining room is a tiered space arranged around a band of large viewport windows. Through them, a computer-generated view of Earth slowly turns below, with astronauts, satellites and other spacecraft occasionally passing outside. Daylight and night pass across the view over the course of a meal. A separate lounge area, with its own smaller menu, sits within the same room and does not require the full fixed-price commitment of the main seating.
Food and drink
Space 220 has served lunch and dinner as fixed-price meals since opening, with two courses at lunch and three at dinner for adults and a separate children's price. Course names on early menus followed the setting, with starters grouped as lift-offs and main courses as star courses. Dishes have generally taken familiar American and international forms — steak, chicken, salmon, pasta and salads — given space-related names and presentation, rather than attempting to reproduce imagined astronaut food. Desserts, cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks follow the same naming approach, and menus have changed periodically since 2021.
The lounge menu offers smaller plates and drinks for guests who want the setting without a full meal, subject to availability.
Reception
Coverage of the opening focused less on individual dishes than on the elevator sequence and the viewport view, which reviewers widely treated as among the most elaborate settings created for a Walt Disney World restaurant. The fixed price and the difficulty of securing reservations were the most common points of criticism. Space 220 quickly became one of EPCOT's hardest reservations to obtain.