Joe Rohde is officially a Disney Legend.
©Disney
As part of the D23 Ultimate Fan Event in August of 2024, Disney inducted its latest class of Legends. Among Hollywood heavyweights like Harrison Ford, Jamie Lee Curtis, James L. Brooks, and composer John Williams, Disney Imagineering icon Joe Rohde officially took his rightful place amongst the Disney pantheon.
Joe Rohde’s Disney career lasted from 1980 through January of 2021, and saw the designer spearhead countless Disney projects including Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, Pandora: The World of Avatar, the Aulani resort in Hawaii, and arguably most importantly of all: Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park from its conception. However, to a generation of Disney fans, there’s something else very recognizable about Rohde.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rohde was a mainstay on countless Travel Channel documentaries discussing Disney, where viewers became aquatinted with his unique earrings, to the point that they became his most recognizable feature to many. Rohde somewhat comically spoke about this phenomenon and the origin of his wearing the accessory at D23.
What’s with the earring?
Disney Imagineer and soon-to-be Disney Legend Joe Rohde gave us the scoop on his most recognizable feature! #D23 pic.twitter.com/UJFYWScmJB
— Disney Food Blog (@DisneyFoodBlog) August 11, 2024
“The earring is a celebrity and I am the friend of the celebrity. I travel with the earring and people see the earring and they’re ere like ‘Oh, that’s that famous guy. Who’s this person with him?’ I started in 1987, cause I was going to go on a business trip to Japan and I had one of those little tiny posts from the 1980s, and my boss from the model shop had said ‘You know, you kinda don’t look like a Disney employee’ cause of the long hair and etc. ‘so maybe you shouldn’t wear any Disney ID while you’re in Japan?’ And I thought ‘That’s not fair, I’ve been working for this company for 7 years’ so I took my Disney 5-Year Pin, which is a lapel pin, and I stuck it through that little tiny hole in my ear, which made the hole bigger and started a cascade of other decisions. Basically, when I go someplace I’ve never been before, a country, I look for a hoop-shaped earring — usually ethnic or tribal or something but nowadays anything — and it goes in my ear. Now of course, I have a bowl of them at home. This (gestures to ear) is the travel pack.”
The iconic earring
The day after the Disney Legends ceremony, Rohde took to his Instagram account to speak more seriously about the honoring, captioning a collection of videos from the event with the following:
“First of all, as much as it’s an honor to become a Disney Legend, it’s a huge honor to be introduced by Jane Goodall!!! She has been an inspiration to me since I was a kid! I kept my promise to be brief, but there is so much to say. We each have something to contribute to the betterment of the world. If Janes’s introduction means anything it is that you should not assume that you cannot contribute. After all, I am a theme park designer, of all things. Thank you to everyone who made this career possible, But mostly thank you to all those nice people and their happy applause for a shy bookish kid from a scruffy neighborhood. (For all the folks in Hawaii, I did wear my leihulu.)”
©Disney
Back to Joe’s famous earring: it’s so well-known that he even immortalized it in cement along with the traditional handprints in concrete left by Disney Legends.
©Disney
Joe Rohde is one of the most important Imagineers in the history of the Walt Disney Company, and it’s very fitting that he — and his iconic earring — have been officially enshrined as a Disney Legend. Stay tuned to DFB for further Disney tidbits.
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So happy that they FINALLY honored him and his work as a Disney Legend!!!
Joe really is a super talented man and I am glad he has been recognized. I think Disney can use his special magic right now.
I’d LOVE to meet him! Every time we go to Disney World I always look for him. But honestly, I’d love to meet any Imagineer, but he’s one of the greatest. You can’t miss him! I’d also love to meet Bob Gurr.