Interview with David Koenig, Author of More Mouse Tales
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LP: Why did you write a sequel?

DK: Mostly because people wanted it, to be honest. I don't mean that to sound good, bad or indifferent. People were harassing me to write it and some of the people at the [recently completed NFFC] convention would come by and I'd say "you're one of the reasons I wrote this book. Because you'd come by twice a year at these conventions and say "where is it? I need it. I have to have this.'" People wanted to read more Disney secrets, more Disney funny stories, more stuff about Disneyland. I was originally going to do Disney World, but, and maybe it's just because I'm out here, but I don't get the fervor out there that I do out here. Maybe it's because I'm out here that I don't see it. I've done signing out at Disney World and I talked to people that are into Disney, but it's out here that the people, at least to me, are in love with the park, and in greater numbers. Maybe that's just my impression, but I figured, well, I like Disneyland, maybe the general book buying public is not going to care for having another Mouse Tales, but I know there's a core group of people who will enjoy it and now that I've had a couple of years off, now I'm interested in doing it again. Plus people were coming to me with their stories. as opposed to having to look through those directories, it wasn't quit as difficult to find the people.

The other thing that made it interesting as well was when I first started it was just a collection of funny stories, and the first 10, 20, 30, 40 people I interviewed it was turning out to be nothing but funny stories. Like "here's what happened on this guy's last day of work. He jumped in the river" or "I used to play Pluto and the funniest thing happened to me". And as I'm researching it I'm going "ya know I could fill up a whole book with just funny stories. It would be Mouse Tales without the gory stuff." I was content with that but in the back of my mind was "What's the story? Is it going to be the same story as the first Mouse Tales which was here's a place that tries it's hardest to be as perfect as possible. No company, no business, no place that I know of tries harder to be perfect than Disney. But they don't always make it. Here's some times they fell short. And as I'm working on the second one I'm wondering "is this going to be the same sort of book?" I wanted to make sure all the stories were new, but is it just going to be funny stuff or interesting stuff, that kind of thing? Then I started going to Disneyland and talking to some of the old-timers and they were getting, I don't want to use the word disgruntled, as you have [in an earlier email] because I don't like the word disgruntled. To me the word disgruntled is somebody who's old, crotchety, upset. Disgruntled I like to use with the word whine. Disgruntled people whine and I don't like whining. But that doesn't mean you can't have a criticism, you can't critique something. That doesn't make your disgruntled. Some of the people I talked to at Disneyland, honestly about a dozen had worked there since day one. Some had worked since the 70s, 80s and 90s, 20, 30, 40, 45 years. And loved Disneyland more than anything. I couldn't say that they were disgruntled, but they had some real problems with some things that were going on behind the scenes

LP: In More Mouse Tales you name all your sources except six. Was allowing anonymous sources a difficult decision?

DK: Yes and no. In the first book I credit everybody that I know of except one story where the woman wanted to be anonymous for no reason. She worked one summer at Disneyland and told me the story about somebody's prank on their last day putting bubbles in the Jungle Cruise lagoon which is a story confirmed to me by other people, so I know that it happened. Actually it happened more than once. She wanted to be anonymous and I think I did put that story in. But there was no reason for her to be anonymous, so I don't really view that as an anonymous source.

In this book there were six people who came to me and told me things. All came to me and all were current Disneyland employees and either were in Disney management which is a no-no to talk to me without permission, or were Disney security. There are only two people who, in their contract - even supervisors and managers it's not in their contract - security and characters, they have to get permission to talk about their job. Those are the two types of jobs that you are not supposed to talk about it. So there were security guards who obviously didn't want their name in, and then there were two people who are hourly but wanted to move up the ladder, and they were afraid they wouldn't get a promotion if they were associated with an unauthorized book about Disneyland. Everything I got from those people I was able to check out, so to me that made me feel better about it. I didn't want to do anything anonymous, but then again these people did help, especially the security people. I checked everything out, but they said things in such a away that it was hard not to use their quotes. So it was hard, yes, but not that hard.

LP: In the first book you had maps of Disneyland that showed all the show buildings outside the berm. In the new book you have a lot of attraction maps that show the layout of ride. Both of these are very helpful to Disneyland fans who want to learn a little more about how things work.

DK: Oh yeah, cause I was trying to get the things that people liked about the first Mouse Tales into the second one. That is who I'm writing this book for. I'm writing this book for the people who liked the first one. And what kind of things do they like? They liked funny stories, so I had to get some funny stories in there. They liked behind the scenes information and secrets, how do these things work. What don't we know? There's nothing else to say about Club 33 that wasn't in the first book, so I was trying to think what else is there? Some of the secrets about how the attractions run, that was something I was always curious about. When you go into Pirates of the Caribbean, where are you? Where are you in relation to anything else. I have no clue where I am. I was able to talk to some people who knew exactly where the routes went and got a really good artist to pen and ink some of those.

My wife, who likes Disneyland but not quite on as deep a level as I do, she looks at the maps and she's like, "who's going to care about this?" She's the type person who wants to just go to Disneyland to ride on the carousel, go have a fun time. I like to soak up Disneyland, look at things and study how they work. The maps, to me it's like "oh wow, that's really behind that. That's connected to that. Oh my gosh!" That's one of my favorite parts of the book, particularly Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion. You don't realize that they're so close or far away or in a separate building or that kind of thing.