Are you an Imaginerd? Yeh? Okay. You’re going to want to drop what you’re doing and listen up! Joe Rohde’s new series on the design of Disney’s Animal Kingdom may be the best thing to come out of 2020, no joke.

Wait… what? Do you have no idea of Joe Rohde is? And you call yourself a Disney fan! Okay, allow us to explain; Joe Rohde is the mad genius of Disney Imagineering. He is the brilliant brain behind Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, Expedition Everest, Pandora – The World of Avatar, Aulani, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and much more! His most noteworthy attribute is his dedication to each and every detail. His passion for thorough storytelling throughout the parks is palpable. In addition, Rohde is an adventurer and world traveller, often using his cultural studies to inform his work for Disney. No one is Walt Disney… but, Joe

Legendary Imagineer Joe Rohde has graciously provided fans with a masterclass on the design and ideas behind Disney’s Animal Kingdom with a new video series created by his family: “The Rohdes, Less Traveled.” Part one offers an exciting look at the inspiration behind the park’s many windows.

From Rohde’s post on Disney Parks Blog:

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 called “The Rohdes, Less Traveled”…