“I think Ariana is right. It’s a masterpiece,” Joe Rohde exclusively tells EW at D23 in an interview for his new book, “Floating Mountains.”

Ex-Disney Imagineer reacts to Ariana Grande’s Tower of Terror defense, addresses rumor Disney World’s ride could change

“I think Ariana is right. It’s a masterpiece,” Joe Rohde exclusively tells EW at D23 in an interview for his new book, “Floating Mountains.”

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August 18, 2026 8:04 p.m. ET

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Ariana Grande; Disney World’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride; Joe Rohde. Credit:

Emma McIntyre/WireImage; Michaela Begsteiger/imageBROKER/Shutterstock; The Walt Disney Company via Getty

- Legendary Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde reacts to Ariana Grande’s viral Twilight Zone Tower of Terror defense, in which she called the ride a “masterpiece” and implored Disney World to never change it.

- Rohde spearheaded designing Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park, and also worked on Disneyland’s Tower of Terror revamp into a *Guardians of the Galaxy* ride in 2017.

- “I think Ariana is right. It’s a masterpiece,” Rohde exclusively tells **, and addresses rumors that Disney World’s ride could change, too.

Another theme park icon has joined Ariana Grande’s coalition of Tower of Terror supporters, after the pop superstar voiced a now-viral, impassioned defense urging Disney World to keep the “masterpiece” attraction unchanged from the *Twilight Zone*-inspired theme it has carried since opening in 1994.

In an exclusive interview with * *at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, legendary former Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde — who spearheaded the company’s transformation of the Disneyland Resort’s Tower of Terror into a *Guardians of the Galaxy* ride in 2017 — says he agrees with Grande’s sentiment about the ride, and reveals whether or not he heard company leadership express interest in revamping the Orlando ride’s theme during his tenure with Disney.

“No, and I’ll tell you why. The Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT! challenge was very specific to the Disneyland Resort, in that it had to do with timing and a very particular attendance thing we were trying to manage,” Rohde, who was inducted last year as a Disney Legend, tells EW when asked if he’d ever heard internal correspondence indicating that executives wanted Florida’s Tower of Terror to get the same Marvel-drenched treatment.

Rohde writes about that transformation in a chapter of his new book, *Floating Mountains: The Art of Imagining the Impossible* (out Sept. 8), where he says he was given tight time constraints and a limited budget to rework the Disney California Adventure park’s Tower of Terror ride (which first opened in 2005).

Still, he stresses that, though he still consults on some projects at Disney World, he knows “nothing about what anyone is going to do” now, but confirms that he’d never heard of any plans to revamp Orlando’s version before he retired from his longtime post at Disney Imagineering in 2021.

“I think Ariana is right. It is a masterpiece,” says Rohde, who also fronted Disney World’s design efforts for its Animal Kingdom theme park and its beloved Expedition Everest roller coaster. “It’s a classic. It is a beautiful, excellent example of Imagineering.”

On a 2024 episode of Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ *Las Culturistas* podcast, Grande expressed “real desperation” urging Disney to “protect and preserve what is the Tower of Terror,” and read an open letter she drafted to the company.

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“Perhaps this message comes prematurely, but I would be remiss if I did not reach out with a potential matter of grave concern. In the wake of the most recent alterations that have befallen your historic park in California — yes, I’m referring to the calamitous loss/makeover of the Tower of Terror ride here — I humbly implore you to not follow suit,” she read. “Please allow the iconic and tremendous Tower of Terror to stand tall, permanently in the name of historical preservation, spooky honor, and good, old-fashioned fun. I hope that you’ll consider this humble plea from a passionate fan.”

Rohde tells EW the “Florida Tower of Terror is a masterpiece of design, of ride technology, of storytelling” and calls it “the epitome of Towers of Terror. A spectacular integration. Very clever, very surprising, and very richly detailed form of storytelling. To me, that is truly a classic.”

Enough so that the ride has been replicated, revamped, and reworked at various Disney parks around the world since first opening at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida, with other iterations currently operating in Paris and Tokyo, with another version (with a *Spider-Man* theme) on the way to Hong Kong in the near future.

Ariana Grande and Disney World’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride.

Universal Pictures; Yaroslav Sabitov/Shutterstock

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Rohde’s EW interview comes amid a busy weekend for the Disney parks, where several updates were revealed Saturday regarding projects in gestation at various resorts around the world.

The company revealed more plans for its highly anticipated Villains Land area heading to Magic Kingdom, including ride details for a planned Maleficent roller coaster and a Magic Mirror dark ride. Disney also unveiled the name for its Indiana Jones ride heading to Animal Kingdom, with Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent set to be a revamp of the park’s recently closed Dinosaur ride when it reopens. Harrison Ford will also return as Indiana Jones in the new ride, with his face and body serving as the in-ride model for Jones as he appears to guests in the attraction.

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Source: “EW Disney”