Oftentimes, you just have to go right to the source. When /Film got in touch with Mark Chase, he was more than happy to share his recollections of that trip and how, all these years later, his family finally ended up revisiting that mysterious case of George Lucas (or an impeccable George Lucas lookalike) hanging out on the edge of that photo. Although he doesn’t remember specifics of that exact day, Mark explained what prompted him to look back and share this story with the world:
“My mom was moving some old family photos from one place into another, more secure place and was sharing some of them via our group chat. Once she posted the Lucas (?) photo it got the gears turning. None of us had really thought about or spoken about the picture in at least a decade. We first discovered the doppelgänger around 2014, to the best of our collective memory. We’re more online now than we were back then, so only now did it occur to any of us to take to Google to try to find some evidence to confirm or debunk the photo. After finding the article from wdwmagic.com, it was kind of a bombshell.”
That aforementioned article is truly the smoking gun that confirms Lucas was, in fact, in town at the exact same time as the Chase family — and even doing some “Star Wars” marketing, at that. You may have seen the photos at that link before. They are, quite frankly, pretty incredible.
The fact that Lucas was enjoying his own week-long vacation at Disney World explains the different shirts Lucas is wearing (likely taken on separate days), though amateur internet sleuths also pointed out the distinctively similar-looking sneakers seen in the “Star Wars” photoshoot and in the photo with Mark’s family. The plot thickens, indeed!