An Interview Tim O'Day
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Animator Andres Deja with Tim O'Day at the
Walt Disney Art Classics Mini Convention

LP: OK, let’s shift gears completely.

O'Day: Yes, it’s my real hair.

LP: [laughs] You probably meet people all the time. People come up to you and say “hi” to you that know you from the discussions. You’re becoming one of the recognized figures of Disney, kind of a Disney celebrity.

O'Day: I don’t see myself even remotely in that vein. Just a lucky guy that gets to ask a lot of questions. Actually what I really like, I remember this from the Christmas Collectibles Convention they had here at Disneyland, people recognized me because I’ve done the presentations but what I found really interesting, people will talk to me and express their opinions and I get to hear all kinds of different feedback whether it is good, bad or indifferent. That to me is very interesting because I can take that information in whatever role I happen to be in at the time and kind of use that. I’m not feeding anybody a line when I say give me feedback. It doesn’t fall on deaf ears. A lot of feedback that we got from the first Art Classics Convention was implemented in the second one.

I know a lot of feedback Disneyland gets from their events they try to implement in the next one. I guess if there is an advantage to being a “Disney celebrity” if that is indeed what I am it is that people do talk to me and express their opinions, their likes and dislikes, and in this new role for me with the auctions online I can express that to the people I work with so that the guests / collectors hopefully get to see what they want, whether its an event or merchandise or whatever. That’s fun. I certainly don’t think of myself as a Disney celebrity. I’ve never been asked for my autograph, but once or twice in my life people ask me for my wallet which is an entirely different story.

LP: Another of your projects was writing the text and captions for Disney’s 45th anniversary souvenir books. How did that come to be?

O'Day: I think it stemmed out of the fact that I did the media book for Disneyland for so long. The souvenir book, the hard back version of the souvenir book was very much, a labor of love. It takes a great deal of work to do a book of any kind. When I look at this little souvenir book - I just finished reading John Canemaker’s book called Paper Dreams which is all about the inspirational art, the inspirational artist. I can’t even imagine working on a book like that. It’s a mammoth tome if you will. But the souvenir book was very much a labor of love because the story of Disneyland, even though it has been told many, many times, it’s a fascinating story. It really is. The fact that it almost didn’t happen and because it happened look at everything that followed suit. Without a Disneyland there would never have been a Disney World or Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disneyland, it’s really quite remarkable. To think Disneyland has now been around 45 years going on 50 and it keeps on changing and evolving. It’s always becoming more in one way or the other. It’s really quite fascinating. To think of all the emotional attachments people have as we talked before. People have emotional contacts to it for various reasons, your reasons are different than mine and everybody takes Disneyland very personal. They consider it their own. I remember several years ago, I think it was for the 25th anniversary, they did an advertising campaign here called family reunion for the 25th anniversary and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate marketing campaign because that’s very much what Disneyland feels like when you come back, a family reunion.

The book was a challenge because of the deadlines of being ready for the 45th and things like that so we weren’t able to do it exactly the way we wanted to, but I think the text conveyed that Disneyland is special and unique period. “There’ll never be another Disneyland” as the quote goes, and there won’t be. There will never be another Walt Disney World or Disneyland Paris.

I remember when I was working for Imagineering and we were doing an interview for a major publication, I can’t remember which one it was, and someone asked one of the Imagineers, which of the Disney theme parks was their favorite. I heard them say it’s kind of hard to say. It would be like picking which one of your children is your favorite. I think that’s very true. They all have their own unique personalities. Disneyland has a depth to it, not to say that Disney World and the other parks don’t. They all have their different characteristics but for me personally there is a depth here that I find very fascinating and there are innovations here that were started here, the Peoplemover and the Monorail and almost to a person everybody has a Disneyland story. You can ask anybody and they have a story about Disneyland because they all take it personally and they all think it’s theirs and it’s all unique and it’s all new to them and that is what I was trying to get across in the book. I hope I succeeded. We tried to keep it as up to date as possible. That was the toughest part was trying to include Christmas in New Orleans and It’s a Small World and still make the deadline.