Imagineer joins team at Virgin

Space company hires retired Disney employee as ‘experience architect’

LAS CRUCES — Another Disney veteran has joined the Virgin Galactic team, following the arrival of former Disney executive Michael Colglazier as Virgin’s CEO last summer.

On Monday, the space flight company announced it had brought on retired Disney imagineer Joe Rohde as a strategic adviser to serve as an “experience architect” who would “stimulate curiosity, guide the imagination, and anchor the Virgin Galactic customer experience with purposefulness and meaning.”

Neither the news release nor an on-camera interview produced by the company shed further detail on Rohde’s role or areas of focus.

“I have worked for a long time in projects that involve this sort of transformational power of adventure,” Rohde said in a provided video while seated in front of the main hangar at New Mexico’s Spaceport America. “To go somewhere you have never been, to do something you’ve never done, see something you’ve never seen, changes you. Well, this is one of the most profound things that can happen to you: To go beyond the reaches of the Earth into space and to look back down at it.”

Virgin Galactic is aiming to launch its third crewed space flight, and its first from New Mexico’s spaceport, as part of its final testing phase sometime in February with the goal of flying its first commercial passengers on a suborbital flight in 2021.

In November, Rohde announced his retirement from Disney, after 40 years as an imagineer responsible for the concept and design of theme parks such as Disney’s Animal Kingdom, attractions and resorts, via his personal Instagram page.