Biography | Josh D'Amaro — Galaxy's Edge Opened on His Watch at Disneyland

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is usually credited to Imagineering and to Bob Iger's dedication speech.

The operating president of the resort that month was Josh D'Amaro.

Disney Parks chairman Bob Chapek named him president of the Disneyland Resort on 1 February 2018, effective 5 March.

He took the job as the park prepared its largest single-themed land: a fourteen-acre corner dressed as the planet Batuu, widely reported at about a billion dollars.

On the night of 30 May 2019 Iger dedicated the land in front of the Millennium Falcon with George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Billy Dee Williams.

The gates opened to reserved guests the next morning, 31 May 2019.

Walt Disney World's copy of the land followed on 29 August.

D'Amaro was not the designer of the Falcon or of Rise of the Resistance, which opened later, in January 2020.

His job was to run the resort while that land went from construction fence to ticketed queue.

The public pin is the ship in the Black Spire plaza, at about 33.8149 north, 117.9213 west, not the administration building off Harbor Boulevard.

He left Anaheim later that year for Walt Disney World.

The land stayed.

A visitor who walks under the Falcon is standing in the project that defined his first turn as a resort president.

Photo: Tomás Del Coro, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons