Interview with David Koenig, Author of More Mouse Tales
Page 4 of 5

LP: The first Mouse Tales was almost pure fun. In this one you seem more unhappy with the state of Disneyland.

DK: Again, when I first started it was all silly stores. even less serious then the first Mouse Tales. The first Mouse Tales does have some criticism of the park, management and stuff like that. Back five years ago Disneyland wasn't perfect either and I did talk a little bit how things were a little more pressured since Eisner came on. A little more pressure on the bottom line. And I talked about the strike and the effects of the strike and how things weren't as much of a a family any more. And I talked about the serious accidents and such like that, so there was a serious side to the first Mouse Tales. The second became a little more pointed because some of the things that went on in Disneyland were there fault. There were things that they did on purpose.

I don't mean to attack Disneyland. In the first the finger being pointed was always at some knucklehead guest doing something he shouldn't be doing. In the new book a lot of the things that went wrong they purposely did. Things like what they're still going, opening rides late and closing them early. They made that decision. That wasn't some knuckleheaded guest who said "hey why don't you open the Autopia at 11 or 12 in the morning? Why don't you close the Jungle Cruise when the sun goes down?" I hate that, that's not fair. Especially good rides that people want to ride. You want to keep Country Bear closed until 11 that's one thing. It's down in the corner and it's going to be half empty all day anyway. But things that people actually want to ride on, we're getting ripped off as guests, that's what we're going there for.

LP: In the book you discuss in detail what occurred a couple of years ago with the Jungle Cruise that ultimately lead to some firings, one in particular that was very public. You also spend time on Disneyland security and their former policy of taking advantage of a California law that allowed them to collecting up to $500 from some shoplifters before, and sometimes instead of having them arrested. Can you talk about those?

DK: Jerry Hirsch [a writer for the Orange County Register], in his More Mouse Tales book review, he gives it a good review but towards the end he always makes a couple of criticisms. He had two criticisms, I don't even know if they can be called criticisms, but he mentions how some of this in my book had already been discussed in the Orange County Register - the Columbia death, the Jungle Cruise firing and especially the security fiasco. Obviously, you know why I covered the Columbia but the other two things were stories that I was researching before the Register ever came along. The Jungle Cruise thing I had heard of three months before the Register ever heard about it. The firings first started in the middle of the summer, they didn't run their articles until the fall.

Regarding the security, I was researching lawsuits so I was aware these things were happening. People were including what had happened with the $500 civil demand in their lawsuits which were filed months and months before the Register ever broke the story. A lawyer who got the Register on to that, he represented some of the plaintiffs that were suing, he's good with publicity so he called everybody. He got on TV, on Extra. He initially had HardCopy working on it. He's the one who got them to start on a story that never happened. He was on KFI and several other radio stations. He started the Register originally writing the story so this is all stuff I was researching before they did it.

So I covered it because it had something to do with the main story which is Disneyland becoming more business like and also because the Register only published some of the story, a lot of the story in the case of security and very little of the story in the case of the Jungle Cruise. The Jungle Cruise story, they had one article and one editorial cartoon and that's all they ever said about the whole Jungle Cruise thing. It never went deeper than that first story I always thought that was a crime. There was a fascinating, interesting story that, to me, was one of my favorite parts of the book. Not so much for what happened to the Jungle Cruise, because it would be great to go back, but just how it happened. The culture of the ride and the mini-rebellion. It was like a little miniature soap opera played out against the backdrop of my favorite part of Disneyland, the Jungle Cruise, and people were very passionate about that on all sides.

LP: The other major situation you cover in the book is the what happened in the maintenance department with the hiring of T. Irby a little while ago. Can you talk a about that?

DK: They screwed up a lot of things up. They fired or forced to resign or retire some of Disneyland's best workers. The company has 12,000 people working for it. You can't make a chart of those that are your most dedicated, most experienced, most able workers, but if you could do that, a lot of the people he let go would be on the very top. Especially if you're just talking about maintenance. It's like he chopped off the top of the tree. The people they got rid of, it's insane. If you care about Disneyland being a success, it makes no sense what they did. and to me, that stuff makes me angry. And some of these people I knew. I wasn't so unhappy that these very nice people lost a job. That was part of it but I try not to let my personal feelings filter into it. So I tried to present it as here's just the facts, here's the story of what happened. You make your determination. Was this good that they got rid of these people who were making a lot of money? These people who were drawing high salaries and high benefits and the ticker on their retirement benefits kept clicking up every day? Was it good that they got rid of these people, or was that a bad decision? Because the people who replaced them didn't know what in the heck they were doing. I think that deserved a whole book.

Again, not to insult Disneyland, not to make people feel bad or be critical of them, but just to say "here's what they did." And the best thing they could do would be to get some of those people back. The knowledge they lost getting rid of dozens and dozens of these devoted people who would work 24 hours straight and not question it. They would stay not because someone told them to stay, but because they really wanted this ride to open the next day and it wasn't going to open unless they continued to work on it around the clock.