An Interview with Imagineer Tim Delaney,

An Interview with Imagineer Tim Delaney
Page 5 of 5

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The Orange Stinger and Jumpin' Jellyfish. Burger Invasion is also visible between the two
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TD (continued):I love it when people properly speculate and are concerned. I think it’s great on the Internet. I think they have every right in the world to do that. I don’t think they have a right to make up things that are untrue. But I love taking people on tours here. Not so much now because it’s easy now but six months ago taking people on tours and they’re going, wait a minute, wait a minute, there’s something wrong here. "Oh what’s that?" This looks kind of good. It’s going to get better too.

Then on this side of Paradise Pier you’ve got not the Boardwalk but what I call Paradise Beach and the Jellyfish and the Orange Stinger. As I mentioned, the Boardwalk area where the coaster is, it’s mostly nostalgic but there’s another side too to the beach area. There is another side to the beach environment. And there are other subjects such as there’s the surfing context and then there’s kind of a, and we’re going to explore this more in the future. There’s a bit of a car culture going on with the Dino Jack's Sunglass Shack, kind of a California Crazy architecture experience that with the giant Burger Invasion. In California there’s a period of time in the 20s and 30s where California Crazy was a big thing. Los Angeles in particular was a car culture and a bunch of people kept saying "gee, how do we get people’s attention" so they used to build these big things - Randy’s Donuts and Boulevard Cafe and all those things, so we want to kind of capture that too. So that’s where that spirit is. Then we put it right in the middle of Mulholland Madness which being a wild mouse ride is kind of like a car ride, but it’s also the slowest most terrifying roller coaster you can go on. I mean I’ll go on the coaster a hundred times before I go on that. It’s scary. I feel like it’s going to fall off the track.

LP: One thing I found interesting is there are very few Disney characters in this park but there happens to be King Triton’s Carousel.

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The Little Mermaid's King Triton keeps watch over his Carousel
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TD: That is a little inconsistent. There’s also a little bit of inconsistency, although I’m thrilled by it because I did it myself, with the mouse ears right there where the coaster goes through and that wasn’t meant to be Mickey in terms of a Disneyland Mickey. It’s meant to be Mickey as a symbol of Disney. I knew there were going to be a million photographs taken of this coaster and one of the first sketches I ever did I had that loop and we had the loop right through the mouse ears. I had a presentation with Mike Eisner. He looked at it and said "yeah!" and so we just did it.

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The California Screamin' Mickey loop
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Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the entire TV special [the DCA special that aired February 4th on ABC], but I saw the other night there were some beautiful shots for the loop going through right in front of the mouse ears with the light changing and all that. It’s an instant icon. I kind of design stuff from a marketing approach. That’s why you see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Sun, mouse ears, sun face and all that stuff because I know that’s what people want to see and it’s fun. You can make things anonymous but I actually design everything as a photo shot. So you can stand in front of something, "oh, I was there."

LP: My favorite little detail, so far anyway, in Paradise Pier is the water fountain that looks like a beach shower. Do you have a favorite one?

TD: My favorite place in Paradise Pier is just the launch area for the coaster because it’s shared by so many people and also the wave. The wave machine that we have over there. We have 90 feet of wave machine kind of working its thing over there. Just keep that on. I like that. Keep it on. Actually there’s another area. I like that part near the Maliboomer where people walk through there because you got the coaster going around and the ride going up and people are laughing.

I like the whole place.

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California Screamin' speeds by during its launch
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Related Links


-- Posted March 15, 2001

-- Interview by Doobie Moseley
-- Pictures by John Frost and Doobie Moseley

 

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