Employees form bond with Star Wars park
They fell in love, bonding over Star Wars, when they met at work in Hollywood Studios.
When Disney employees Christopher and Rachael DeGeorge married last month, her father was the officiant dressed in Jedi robes. She held a bouquet of elegant paper flowers in a light-saber base. Engraved inside his wedding ring was the Rebel Alliance insignia.
This week, the DeGeorges stood on the edge of the construction site where Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was being built for another milestone in their fandom.
They were among the 6,000 Disney workers invited to sign a 40-foot long steel beam that plays a pivotal part of the new land’s landscape.
Their autographs will be hidden from public when the land opens in 2019, but that doesn’t steal away from the truth they will have a personal connection 130 feet in the air behind
the Millennium Falcon.
“When I’m walking through the land, I can look up at the highest point of the mountain and say, ‘My name is up there,’” said Kenny Person, a Hollywood Studios general manager.
It is rare, although not unprecedented, for employees to leave their marks like this on Disney expansions.
Disneyland employees autographed a similar beam this summer at the Star Wars land that’s simultaneously being built in California. Employees at Animal Kingdom did the same in Pandora — The World of Avatar.
Many employees drew pictures or transcribed iconic Star Wars quotes on the gray beam with Sharpie markers during lunch breaks or after their shifts.
One woman’s loyal service dog — a Labradoodle named Groot, for the “Guardians of the Galaxy” character — signed it with an ink-stained paw.
“Never tell me the odds,” someone wrote. “#RIPHanSolo.”
In French, a woman wrote “May the Force be with you.”
Another employee drew two dinosaurs reenacting the famous romantic banter between Solo and Princess Leia. “Rawr, I love you,” a brachiosaurus said. “Rawr, I know,” a stegosaurus said in return.
One person, daring to be different, pulled from a Star Trek quote instead. “‘Beam’ me up, Scottie!”
Disney invited the entire crew at Hollywood Studios to sign the beam over three days in a fenced-off, backstage area of the park. Trucks rumbled by and metal clanged as crews built the Star Wars land in the nearby distance.
“I can’t believe they let me do this,” said Brandon Porter, 25, of Orlando, a Star Wars fan since he was a kid, after he signed it Tuesday. “I’ll always know that there’s a part of me that will always be a part of the park.”
Person, the Studios general manager, has waited 29 years for his first beamsigning, even though he helped open Animal Kingdom and the new Fantasyland in the Magic Kingdom.
“I’m just over-the-top excited,” said Person, 47, of Melbourne.
The DeGeorges autographed it, too, as Rachael wrote her new name for the first time since signing her marriage certificate.
She had been an outgoing Californian when she met Christopher DeGeorge, more reserved and from Oklahoma, about three years ago.
They watched the Star Wars movies together when they started dating — “not that we hadn’t seen them 100 times before,” said Christopher DeGeorge, 27.
“But it was different seeing it with someone you were interested in,” said Rachael DeGeorge, 26.
On the beam, their names were next to each other, a story the Winter Garden residents could maybe tell their future child someday at the park.
“It truly is an emotional experience for all the cast members involved,” she said.