Disney’s Intergalactic Theme Park Quest to Beat Harry Potter

The first thing you notice when you meet Joe Rohde is his left earlobe—the one that stretches down to his jawline because it’s carrying 12 hoops. He’s collected them in journeys to Africa, South America, and the Himalayas, and it’s gotten to the point where locals now give him unsolicited earrings, either because they like his style or want to test the limits of what Rohde refers to as his National Geographic ear. “It’s happened with Tibetan people on a trail, Thai hill people, Masai warriors,” says Rohde, a veteran executive in Walt Disney Co.’s Imagineering division, which designs theme parks. “They just hand me stuff.” He shrugs.

The hoops jingle when Rohde moves, which he’s doing a lot on this chilly morning in March. He points with both index fingers at a seemingly innocuous manhole cover inside Pandora: The World of Avatar, an attraction scheduled to open on May 27 in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park in Orlando. Rohde bends his knees and practically starts to shimmy as he explains that the manhole cover is no mere sewer lid, but part of an elaborate, immersive illusion. Look closely, he says. The cover is decorated with the logo of Resources Development Administration, the earth-based company that, in James Cameron’s 2009 film, descends on Pandora with a squadron of mercenaries and a scheme to extract unobtainium, a valuable mineral beneath the soil of this lush moon inhabited by the blue-skinned Na’vi race.