[Baker] Grand openings are always hard for me
because you're giving a huge piece of your heart to the world for the first time.
It's hard to turn it over that first time and to see how the world's gonna react
because you don't know till they come in.
The fans of Star Wars have been building Star Wars for 45 years now.
There's people that live and breathe Star Wars every day,
and this land that we've built
now gives them a place to live their Star Wars story.
I feel we owe them, to give them the best possible experience they can have.
'Cause this is something that, you know,
they've waited their entire lives to see this.
I grew up in a very small town in North Georgia.
We didn't even have a theater. You had to go to the next town to go to a movie,
so if you went to a movie, it was a special event.
I didn't see Star Wars till it had been in the theater for about a year.
I finally got my parents to take me, and it had changed my life.
I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I wanted to be in entertainment.
Funny enough, I was at a party one night,
and there was a prop master from a TV show who showed up at the party
and saw some of the stuff that I had built around my house,
and asked me if I was interested in being a prop fabricator.
Going from film into the real world is building stuff
that's gonna last for the guests to enjoy every day.
When you build it for a film set, it's something that has to last one or two days
and then it gets thrown out.
When we were in England, we would go to aircraft scrapyards and stuff
because we were actually shopping for aircraft parts
to match stuff that was used in the films.
And suddenly, there's a 747 sitting in a cow pasture
that they're tearing the parts off of,
and you would go in and say, "I'll take all 57 miles of cable
and that seat and that seat and that control panel." [chuckles]
I mean, to be able to go 360 around something
and really look at it and study it, "There's that and there's that."
And seeing all these pieces they've seen in the films for years and years.
I mean, there's nothing like seeing the reaction on the guest's face
the very first time that they walk into anything that we've done.
It makes every minute of blood, sweat and tears we put into this worth it.
Um... Sorry. [chuckles] I get choked up. I'm sorry. I'm emotional.
I mean, just in this little shop alone,
um, there's over 63 cages hanging from the ceiling.
And all these cages are made out of different things.
I mean, some of them, actually, are made out of studio lights from film sets.
It's an incredible, beautiful mess.
Part of the fun for us was coming up with these things
that hadn't been seen on camera,
and getting to add to this lore that we've loved our whole lives.
My grandson thinks I'm famous now. [laughs]
He's like, "You're famous." I'm like, "No, I'm not. Not really.
I just make this stuff, you know?" [laughs]
I told my wife the bucket list is checked off now, to work on Star Wars. [chuckles]
I'm getting chills talking about it.