Mars 2112

Mars 2112 opened in November 1998 at 1633 Broadway at 51st Street, on a sunken courtyard in front of Paramount Plaza deep in the Times Square theater district. The mastermind was Paschal M. Phelan, an Irish businessman who had worked in the European beef industry before pivoting to spectacle dining. At 33,000 square feet, it was the largest Mars- and space-travel-themed restaurant anywhere at the time it opened. The entrance was pure theater: guests didn't walk in, they boarded one of two 30-seat motion-simulator shuttles — together worth about $1.5 million — that pitched and shook like you were launching to another planet. Once 'landed,' you stumbled into the Crystal Crater, a three-story dining chamber designed as an underground Martian landscape, complete with industrial walkways suspended over glowing fake lava. Costumed Martians, each with their own name and invented backstory, worked the floor in character, and the Crater Bar handled the grown-ups.

A second location opened at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois on October 3, 2000, but it lasted barely a year, closing in November 2001. The original in Times Square survived longer but proved fragile. It filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and again in late 2007, struggling as the novelty faded. Somehow it persisted as a birthday-party and tourist-attraction stalwart, clinging to life on birthday reservations and the occasional group outing. It finally closed in January 2012, and its Martian fittings were auctioned off.