Joe Rhode is a veteran executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. He was in the division of the Walt Disney Company that designs and builds disney theme parks and resort hotels. He was born in Sacramento, California then spent most of his childhood on O’ahu when Hawaii had just become an island. After living in Hawaii for a couple years, they moved to Southern California and he lived there for half a century. Joe’s whole life he was around the theater and film, his mother was an actress and his father was in the film industry. He remembers painting and drawing when he was very young.
Joe Rhode was born September 10, 1955 and is still alive to this day. He has many stories about his travels and adventures he has been on. Joe is a very exploring and nature loving guy, he enjoys traveling and going outdoors. In his free time he either goes on hikes or he has a blog website that he updates with fun facts about himself. Joe Rhode graduated from Chaminade College Preparatory in California in 1973. He received his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from a college in Los Angeles.
There is something very unique about Joe Rhode, he owns a large collection of earrings for his left ear. All of which are souvenirs and memories of all his travels. This all started when he stuck a 5 year anniversary pin into his ear. This picture shows how Joe’s ear has stretched out as he added more earrings or to him”souvenirs. He started putting the earrings in around 2007-2008 and is still putting them in to this day. Think of when your family goes on vacation and bring you back something or vise versa you go on vacation and bring something back for family and friends. This is similar to what Joe Rhode does, he gets souvenirs for himself to show the places he has traveled. He slowly started stretching out his ear until it’s to the big size it is now. In an interview he was asked if it hurt him because his earlobes hang low down but he responded with “No, I got used to it after the first earring I put in and now it feels normal”
Joe Rhodes technology tool or resource used while he was working at Walt Disney theme parks was quite big. He designed and built the rides and theme park so he used many tools. Mostly, Rhode had workers that worked for him and did the work but He would still help them out. He was known as the “Executive Designer” of Walt Disney’s company. Joe Rhode built all of the Disney World’s Animal Kingdom in the 1970’s. In an interview Joe Rhode says they spent two weeks doing nothing but talking about the word “animal” to try and come up with a good idea for a new theme park event
. Joe said, “We literally scribbled on hundreds of index cards before we boiled it all down to a philosophical proposal.” So coming up with Disney’s Animal Kingdom took a lot of time but in the end it was all worth it. They were scared of how the public would react to a new park and event like this but it turned out to be very positive for them in the end. It brought in more happy customers because everyone was so shocked and curious what the whole idea was around the new Disney Animal Kingdom.
In all, Joe Rhode helped out Disney world’s theme park and just the creation of Disney itself. He helped build and come up with new creative rides and places they could do to make it more enjoyable and fun for customers. By making it more enjoyable it made more people come to the theme park because they had so much fun or they told friends and family to go which drew in business and helped them expand to new locations. There is a Disney world near the cities Orlando and Kissimmee, Florida and a Disneyland in Anaheim, California. These opened in 1955 and are still in business today and they hope on expanding and opening new resorts in other locations all around the world so more people can enjoy the fun and enjoyment.