BY JAMIE CATTANACH
It ’ s easily one of the most intense experiences you ’ ll have at Walt Disney World and , as many riders will attest , maybe the most intense experience you ’ ll have in your entire life .
Mission : SPACE offers the opportunity to get a taste of what it ’ s like to participate in the miracle of a human space flight to Mars — and thanks to recent renovations in 2017 , guests can now orbit the Earth in a milder , but no less spectacular , experience .
Let ’ s blast off into the details of this one-of-a-kind attraction !
FROM A STORIED PAST ... Its 2003 opening date makes Mission : SPACE almost two decades old , but it did have a beloved predecessor , Horizons . Considered something of a sequel to the Carousel of Progress , Horizons opened in 1983 and gave riders an immersive look at the past , present , and visions of the future . ( Think robotic haircuts and innovative new agricultural practices involving hovercraft .)
Much like Mission : SPACE , Horizons involved choice . Back then , riders chose from three possible endings , winding up living in a space , desert , or even underwater biome . Today , guests choose between the more intense Orange Mission or the tamer Green
Mission — more on that in just a ( par ) sec .
Many guests were heartbroken to see Horizons go . But Mission : SPACE pays homage to its ancestor , with a Horizons logo visible at the center of the gravity wheel in the queue and on the front of the checkout counter in the gift shop on the way out .
… TO AN EXHILARATING FUTURE Although only a few years elapsed between Horizon ’ s closure and the opening of Mission : SPACE , the planning and Imagineering spanned decades . A Space Pavilion had been proposed for EPCOT all the way back in the 1970s , and the decision to replace Horizons with a space-themed attraction was made almost 10 years before that attraction came to life .
Speaking of bringing it to life , Disney collaborated with NASA advisors for five years to keep the experience as lifelike as possible . Many of the attraction ’ s details keep up with evolving aerospace technology , including the timeline of the Orange Mission ’ s Mars journey and the construction of the super-hightech X-2 Deep Space Shuttle that riders are training to operate . The visuals depicted in the simulation — high-quality renderings of the Martian landscape and lunar surface — are based off of imagery taken by several real-life spacecraft .
ABOVE & NEXT PAGE : Are you ready for a mission to space ? PHOTO BY JUDD HELMS