Joe Rohde – Page 2 – A Walk With The Mouse

Joe Rohde Marks Final Day as a Disney Imagineer

Posted on January 5, 2021January 5, 2021 by Mathew Corn Animal Kingdom, Disney Parks

Via wdwnt.com

After four decades of creating memorable Disney Parks experiences, Joe Rohde, one of the most prolific Imagineers is marking his last day at Disney. But on his way out, he left the company a gift.

Joe Rohde shared this picture on his Instagram account, sharing a toast with his family to commemorate the day. He also expressed his ambitions for his life after Disney in the post:

“Well. This is it. I will be just Joe Rohde, creative guy, after today. I still plan to work some, but in new areas and new mediums, and I’d also like to just paint. I heard that the postponed Explorers Club expedition to Nunavut, way up north, is back on, so I can prepare for next August when that will happen. Since November when I announced my retirement from Imagineering, I’ve received lots of very nice congratulations and testimonials from people for whom my work has made a difference. That is gratifying and I’m very thankful to all. People have also warned me about feeling bored by retirement… but I truly have so many deferred projects that I know I cannot complete them all in any rational amount of time I may have. Books. Paintings. Sculptures. Plays. Chores. Expeditions, and time to spend with my wife Melody, whom I met when we were still in school and who has been with me through all of this huge adventure…and with my boys, now grown young men starting their own careers. As much as I have enjoyed my work, and the joy it has brought to so many…my family has always been my first and greatest love. Last night we all got together (only one lives off the Rohde campus right now) we raised our glasses and toasted. .. “Here’s to forty years.”

Meanwhile, Imagineer Zach Riddley shared the gift on his own Instagram account. To cap off his career, Rohde donated his pair of work boots, which he wore on every project he worked on, to The Walt Disney Archives. Riddley also mused on Rohde’s impact, sharing:

“Joe Rohde is many things – painter, historian, conservationist, Imagineer, mentor and – most meaningfully – a friend. And that friendship goes to my first days at Imagineering. I met Joe like so many – in the midst of a project. He and his team were working on the design that would become Expedition Everest. My first meeting with Joe he pulled out a clay model he was sculpting to show the team how the rock work of the mountain would be positioned, leading and teaching while his hands moved the clay around the wireframe of the mountain, balancing craft and budget in each movement. In that moment it was clear to me what made Joe such a special Imagineer – leading a creative effort with both sides of his brain at once.

In the years since I have shared many meetings and personal conversations with Joe. He always made time to connect and discuss our work and our world – and I left every one of those conversations with a greater appreciation for what our work brings to the world. And greater respect for what it means to lead teams by example.

Joe always followed his projects to the field. He led from concept to opening day, and fun fact that I learned just recently – Joe wore the same work boots for ALL of his projects, he’d just resole them when needed. That’s what you see in the pictures here – with names of each completed project scribbled on the side, capturing history in the making.

Joe has donated these boots – that touched the ground during some of our most iconic endeavors – to the Walt Disney Archives. They will preserve these boots for future generations of Disney Imagineers, fans and historians.

Thank you Joe for teaching us how to be better stewards of this world and how to create experiences that entertain, educate and inspire. No one can fill your boots, but we are ready to continue the legacy of curiosity and courage that defines your designs and teams.

I can’t wait to see what you do next my friend.”

Thanks to a close up, we can see some of the projects written on the boots, including EPCOT’s Norway Pavilion, Pleasure Island, Disney’s Animal Kingdom and related projects Asia, Chester & Hester’s Dino-Rama, Expedition Everest and Pandora: The World of Avatar, as well as Aulani, Disney’s resort in Hawaii.

The Rohdes, Less Traveled: Inside the Design and Inspiration of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park

Posted on August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 by Mathew Corn Animal Kingdom, Disney Parks

Join Joe Rohde and family on their tour around Disney’s Animal Kingdom; posted on DisneyParksBlog

“Our family has been at home together since March, and life can get repetitive at times. So, to pass away the hours and give ourselves something to do as a family, we decided to create a five-part video series about design at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park.

In our family of four we have multiple writers, a director and cameraman, a producer…and a talking head (me). Plus a house full of (as the saying goes, ‘one man’s junk is another man’s treasure!’) that we’ve dragged back from all over the world during the last 40 years. The challenge is to work with what we have, therefore limited only to the photographs and video clips that I have on my own laptop and snapshots that I found in a box in my studio, plus settings we’ve improvised in our house and yard. Since we are not going anywhere, it’s new #DisneyMagicMoments called “The Rohdes, Less Traveled”…”

Imagineer Joe Rohde Discusses Complex Nature of Fixing Expedition Everest’s Yeti at Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Mathew Corn Animal Kingdom, Disney Parks

It’s been a repeated request from Disney Parks fans for years: “Fix the Yeti.” But fixing Expedition Everest’s star Audio-Animatronic resident isn’t easy, as legendary Imagineer Joe Rohde recently discussed on Twitter.

Spinning off from a discussion about the Disney’s Animal Kingdom attraction’s circular layout resulting from the need to economize space, a fan asked if this space-saving need is the reason the Yeti was placed in the middle of the mountain, making it extremely difficult to repair.

Rohde responded, mentioning that maintenance was involved in the design of the attraction and that their work was considered to be a “model collaborative process.” He then explained that the Yeti has created an “unexpected and unforeseen set of issues…with no easy or timely solutions as of yet.”

When the attraction opened in 2006, the Yeti was the most advanced Audio-Animatronic ever created. And with new technology, new issues are bound to follow, as Rohde discussed: “Innovation is like physical exploration of unknown spaces. There is stuff out there you didn’t know, and you only encounter it by exploration. But then… there it is.”

The Yeti broke just months after the attraction opened, and has operated in “B-mode” ever since. But Rohde’s words suggest that no matter how long it takes, Disney continues to work on a solution as complex as the problem itself.

3rd Anniversary of Pandora – The World Of Avatar

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Mathew Corn Animal Kingdom, Disney Parks

It’s hard to believe Pandora – The World of Avatar opened at Disney’s Animal Kingdom three years ago! The two attractions in this land, Avatar Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey, are absolutely amazing to say the least. On top of that, the land itself comes to life with a different experience both during the day and at night. Two key people involved in making the Pandora so successful, Joe Rohde and Jon Landau, share a video to celebrate the 3rd years since it’s grand opening. Check out the details and video below from DisneyParksBlog:

To tell that tale, we brought together two of the lead creative partners responsible for developing the land: Joe Rohde, portfolio creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, and Jon Landau, producer of “Avatar” and its sequels. These two visionaries assembled a team of thousands to turn a wondrous cinematic digital world into a complete physical environment that inspires and thrills.

Pandora – The World of Avatar is a wonder of our world and has truly ushered in a new era of immersive storytelling at Walt Disney World Resort.

As you listen to Joe and Jon, you’ll learn how Pandora – The World of Avatar meshes with Disney’s Animal Kingdom. You’ll hear them discuss the similarities between developing a themed environment and a major motion picture. And you’ll gain an understanding of how the stories of the film, the land and the park complement one another.

Imagineer Joe Rohde & Dinoland U.S.A – Part 5

Posted on April 26, 2020 by Mathew Corn Animal Kingdom, Disney Parks

Imagineer Joe Rohde has been taking Disney fans on an online digital tour of Animal Kingdom through his Instagram, providing deep backstory on its ethos and culture. He’s discussed the Tree of Life, Africa, Asia, and Expedition Everest, but now we’re heading to the American southwest to Diggs County and DinoLand, U.S.A.!

Joe starts out be giving us some context for the accuracy of the dinos you see in the land…

“A lot of our Disney’s Animal Kingdom research took us to far away foreign countries… But it also took us to some of the great paleontological sites in North America. Paleontologists like Phil Currie and Bob Bakker were kind enough to instruct us.
We are very liberal about the dinosaurs that you encounter in this land, both in geography and chronology, though they are Cretaceous era creatures….if you see something that looks like a fossil of a Prehistoric creature, it is either a real fossil of a prehistoric creature or a replica of a real fossil. (The Carnotaurus in the queue line for the ride is a composite. The real Carnotaurus is smaller.) The interesting thing about dinosaurs is that they are created by our imagination as a result of research and speculation….Because of this, there is always debate about their true nature. That debate is embedded in the land in the context of many of the graphics.
Dinoland has a lot of humor and because of that I think we can relax some of the seriousness of some of the other themes and get away with some hijinx.”

Joe continues in another post about all the dinos you can find in the land…

“There is of course the Brachiosaurus at the Gateway. Triceratops in the queue. The famous and controversial Sue tyrannosaur fossil. A Parasaurolophus in the Boneyard. A Pteranodon, a Styracosaurus, another Tyrannosaur skull, an Allosaurus skull and a Hadrosaur skull and Phobosuchus skull in Restaurantosaurus. The Brachiosaurus is substantially modified… Other than that, these are the same casts you’re going to see in a museum.”

Now, let’s take a time-rover drive through the exciting attraction “Dinosaur!”

“Dinosaur” in Dinoland at Disney’s Animal Kingdom is one of our few IP-based attractions. At the time, the film had groundbreaking CGI effects. Originally there was a Styracosaurus out front for no better reason than it’s my favorite dinosaur…and the attraction was called Countdown to Extinction. We renamed it when the film came out, but the link to the film was already there. It may not be obvious, but such decisions have to be made years in advance. You don’t get a figure that looks like a character in a movie unless you start way before you open.
The Carnotaurus in the ride is substantially bigger and wider than a real Carnotaurus would be. This is because we had to fit a whole bunch of machinery inside of it. So we invented a new species, Carnotaurus robustus. A real Carnotaurus is a pretty weird looking animal to start with… With really really stubby short arms. Our Carnotaurus kind of reaches out towards you with his little hands… But I’m not sure a real one could even do that.
Many plastic toy Carnotauruses seem to be based on our interpretation which is odd because it’s so specifically distorted for our own attraction reasons. Many toy Carnos are red…why?!? That’s a weird color for a big predator. We chose it for narrative and scenic reasons. They are often thicker and toad-faced like ours. Their arms reach out. Go check. Just do image search on Carnotaurus toy. Then look up Carnotaurus sastrei, the scientific specimen. Sometimes a popular image just takes over. Shows you the power of art.”

Lastly, Joe discusses some real folk art that you can find only at Dinoland!

“When we were building Disney’s Animal Kingdom The House of Blues was being built at what was then an expansion of Downtown Disney. They had employed a prominent folk artist, Gregory Warmack, who went by Mr. Imagination. We enlisted him to create an actual work of American folk art in front of Chester and Hester’s Dinosaur Treasures. He came out to our site and created the concrete dinosaur in this photo.
His other work has been shown or exists today in places like the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the American Visionary Art Museum in Maryland, The Smithsonian, The Dallas Museum of Art. I believe that the work he created for us is not actually included in his curriculum vitae. It should be. So I hope some art historian is looking.
He has since passed away, but I think it’s kind of interesting that our tribute to the unsung folk arts of America includes an actual work of unsung Folk art.”

Make sure to check out Joe’s Instagram for his own pictures and many more adventurous stories.