An Interview with Imagineer Tim Delaney
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Tim Delaney was one of the first Imagineers to join the Disney's California Adventure project in 1995. Delaney joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 1976 where his first assignment was designing the Starcade at Disneyland. He's since worked on The Living Seas at Epcot and Discoveryland at Disneyland Paris including Space Mountain: From the Earth to the Moon. LaughingPlace.com interviewed Delaney during the DCA media events a couple of days before DCA's grand opening.

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LaughingPlace.com: What was your specific role in the development of Disney's California Adventure?

Tim Delaney: My specific job was I was the designer in charge of the design group for the entrance complex here at Disney's California Adventure, as well as for Paradise Pier. Two very exciting, very exciting projects.

 
A coaster launch at Paradise Pier
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LP: Regarding Paradise Pier - two people I've interviewed already have made a point of saying how Disney's California Adventure is about now. It’s not about fantasy. It’s not about history. It’s about right now. That doesn't seem to quite apply to Paradise Pier. Can you talk about that?

TD: The thing is the way we designed Paradise Pier was not necessarily historically. We didn’t take any buildings and directly lift them. We actually took bits and pieces of them. We actually designed it nostalgically, something meant to really create the dream quality of what a seaside amusement park was meant to be. In California we had a huge history of these seaside amusement parks. Their heyday was from 1905 to 1929 just prior to the depression. They were very elegant places, had very exotic architecture, wonders of the mechanical age. They were just really wonderful places.

King Triton's Carousel pays homage to the old sea side parks

After that they began - after the depression, after World War II - they began to deteriorate and eventually most of them ended in fires. We only had three left, Belmont Park, Santa Monica and Santa Cruz. Santa Monica and Belmont Park are really just a shadow of what they were originally. So what we wanted to do was bring these places back. Bring it back to the nostalgic quality and the emotions and the feelings that they had. So in a way it is really meant to be; I guess timeless would be a better word rather than historical. It’s really touching on emotions about places like that. Paradise Pier is a very energetic place once you step into it. The more people you get the more sound. We get all the rides running tomorrow. Disney had a couple running today and you’ll see that there’s something so fundamental and intrinsically entertaining about it that again, that quality remains timeless with everybody.

LP: A specific question, before I forget. I know that during it’s testing the Sun Wheel had a lot of different light patterns going on. Since the park began soft openings it seems the patterns have gone away.

 
The Sun Wheel
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A: No, no, you should see them on tonight. We’ve gone through some interesting challenges with the lighting on this. It rains and they're like "oh..." It will have the full compliment of all its lighting. There is about a 20 minute cycle on the lighting and it’ll be spectacular. It better be spectacular or I’ll kill someone on that too.