It doesn’t take much prodding to get Hollywood voice-over artist Scott Rummell to switch into his Marvel movie trailer voice and introduce the world’s largest Disney memorabilia collection he will be parting with this weekend at an auction expected to fetch millions.
“In a world of collectors, one man stands above the rest,” said Rummell, 61, dropping down in timbre from his normal speaking voice. “The Scott Rummell collection. The greatest Disney collection in the world. Rated PG for please go to the auction.”
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Heritage Auctions in Beverly Hills will host the Disneyland Signature Auction: The Rummell Collection on Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22 when Scott and Terry Rummell of Dana Point begin selling off the world’s largest Disneyana collection containing 45,000 pieces of Disney, Disneyland and Walt Disney World memorabilia.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this cacophony of emotions before,” Scott Rummell said during a phone interview. “I’m excited about the idea that all these pieces, which each have a story, will live on and make somebody else happy. I’m sad in some ways because that part of our life is over.”
Scott and Terry Rummell sit inside their ride vehicle from the Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride inside their in Yorba Linda, CA home, on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Rummell’s career as a Hollywood voice-over artist for movie trailers like “Rocketman,” “Interstellar,” “It,” “Dunkirk” and “Shape of Water” as well as a host of Marvel, Disney and Star Wars films helped finance the world’s largest Disneyana collection — which will be sold at auction over the next five years.
Key Disneyland pieces up for auction this weekend include Autopia and Mr. Toad cars, a Skyway gondola and a Rocket Jets ride vehicle as well as Club 33, Enchanted Tiki Room and Pirates of the Caribbean signs along with attraction posters and props.
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The Rummells’ Disneyana collection was housed for decades in the family’s Yorba Linda home, which they sold a year ago when they decided to simplify their life and move into their Dana Point beach house.
The Rummells regularly hosted charity fundraising events in their must-see Yorba Linda house that doubled as a Disneyland museum.
The empty-nesters decided to sell during the COVID-19 pandemic when all the fundraising events held at the Yorba Linda house came to an abrupt halt and the spacious place became too big for the couple.
“It was Terry and I in this big house,” Rummell said. “We made the decision that we could move down to our beach place and just simplify. It just made a ton of sense for us.”
The real estate listing for the Rummells’ Yorba Linda house immediately went viral and was trending on Twitter after the interior photos of the custom home with all the Disney memorabilia got featured on the Zillow Gone Wild social media accounts.
The 4,500-square-foot Yorba Linda house sold in less than a week for $2.24 million in April 2021 — without any of the Disney memorabilia.
If the Rummells’ Yorba Linda suburban home was like a Disney museum, then their Dana Point beach house is like a Disney resort.
The nautically-themed Dana Point beach house — which draws design inspirations from Disney’s Beach and Yacht Club resorts at Walt Disney World — doesn’t have anywhere near as much Disney memorabilia as the Yorba Linda house.
“You wouldn’t walk in and say, ‘Oh, this is a Disney museum,’” Rummell said. “But there are Disney nautical pieces all over.”
The Rummells kept several pieces of Disneyland memorabilia from their collection related to the Columbia Sailing Ship and Mark Twain Riverboat — the two Rivers of America watercraft that Scott Rummell’s grandfather helped build in the 1950s. The nautical collection also includes a Shipyard Inn sign from the Disneyland Hotel restaurant that opened in the 1970s, a Queen Mary print from when Disney owned the Long Beach-moored cruise ship and a sailboat painting from the lobby of Disney’s Yacht Club resort in Florida.
Most of the obviously Disney-related memorabilia in the Dana Point house is contained in Scott Rummell’s at-home voice-over studio and office.
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Rummell estimates 1,500 items from the 45,000-piece collection will be up for auction this weekend — which features many of the ride vehicles, attraction signs and other premiere items once displayed in the Yorba Linda house. The Rummells have a five-year contract with Heritage Auctions to sell the vast majority of the remaining collection in upcoming auctions that will feature bidding lots filled with Disneyland blueprints, ticket books, brochures and matchbooks.
Not everything in the Rummell collection is going up for auction.
“I kept all of my Disney books, my postcard collections and some key items that I just couldn’t part with,” Rummell said.
Rummell hasn’t stopped collecting. He just bought two more Disney pieces at auction this past weekend.
“I’m still a collector at heart,” Rummell said.
Rummell comes from a collecting family.
“I was collecting from the time I was a little kid, whether it was political buttons or stamps,” Rummell said. “I love to collect stuff. That’s just my personality. I think it’s a gene I got from my folks. I loved watching my folks collect together.”
The love of Disney and Disneyland runs strong in the Rummell family.
“I never looked at the collection as a business venture,” Rummell said. “I always was just collecting purely what Terry and I liked or what I thought the kids might really enjoy.”
Scott Rummell works from his home studio in Yorba Linda in 2010. Rod Veal, The Orange County Register
Scott Rummell started by searching for Disney memorabilia at garage sales. When the couple bought their first house, they dedicated a room to the Disney collection. Then they moved to Yorba Linda and the Disneyana took over the bonus room which quickly grew too small for the Rummells’ ever-expanding collection. Once the memorabilia spread throughout the house, the couple decided to remodel the home around the Disney collection. They brought in construction crews that had done work at Disneyland to incorporate the collection into the architecture of the house.
“We really turned that house into the second happiest place on earth,” Rummell said.
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As a Hollywood voice-over artist, Rummell uses his Disneyana surroundings to set the mood while recording in his home studio. The Disney aficionado also has a collection of voices in his repertoire — including many Disney character voices and Disneyland attraction narrations that can help him frame his vocal delivery.
“I have a catalog of different voices and lead-in lines to get me into character,” Rummell said. “I don’t have to look at the catalog any more because it’s all in my head.”
But every once in a while Rummell will search for inspiration in his vast Disney record collection of early Disneyland theme park announcements and attraction narrations.
“If I was doing a horror film, I would think of Paul Frees’ voice. He drops down and says, ‘There are no windows and no doors,’” Rummell said. “I was the voice of Ralphs for 16 years. ‘This week at Ralphs red delicious apples 69 cents.’ I would call that my Disney happy voice. It’s the same voice that I did when I said, ‘It’s a very Merry Christmas at Disneyland.’”
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Like many Southern California kids, Rummell grew up going to Disneyland and fell in love with the Anaheim theme park at a young age. Like any 5-year-old, the Placentia kid loved driving Autopia cars and flying Rocket Jets, but he was truly fascinated by Dinseyland’s famed voice-over artists. He’d stop dead in his tracks on Main Street U.S.A. to listen to public address announcements by Jack Wagner — Disneyland’s official announcer from the early 1970s until 1993. While other kids clung tightly to their parents in the Haunted Mansion, the impressionable young Rummell studied the voice-over narration of Ghost Host Paul Frees and tried to memorize all the lines in the haunted house attraction.
After a decade of work as voice-over artist, Rummell landed his dream gig in the mid-1990s as the replacement for Wagner — stepping into the role of official Disneyland announcer.
“I would do the fireworks announcements and I was the first voice of ‘Fantasmic,’” Rummell said. “I would do whatever parade was happening. It was always, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls in just five minutes.’ Then on a daily basis, I had to announce whatever high school marching band was going down Main Street that day.”
The Rummells hope to use the proceeds from the Disneyana auction to finance trips around the world to visit Disney theme parks in France, Japan and China with their family.
The Rummells have three children and two grandkids — Lincoln and Lilly. Both of the grandchildren’s names have Disneyland connections. The Rummells’ oldest son met his wife while working at Disneyland. The young couple often worked together in front of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln — where young Lincoln gets his name. Lilly is named for Walt Disney’s wife Lillian – and the namesake of the Lilly Belle parlor car on the Disneyland Railroad.
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New additions to the Rummells’ Disney collection have slowed in recent years as the Yorba Linda house filled with memorabilia and the kids started their own careers and families.
“I never thought that any of this stuff would be one of my best investments, but it’s going to be,” Rummell said. “I’m excited because potentially it will be a really good auction financially. Anybody that didn’t say that would be crazy.”
The last big auction of Disneyana brought in $7 million — and Rummell has said he’d be happy with half of that. But the way the Rummell no-reserve auction is set up leaves the door wide open — with every item starting at zero with no opening bid. Some items could sell for $1, but others could go for six figures.
At a recent high-profile Disneyana auction, a Skyway gondola just like the Rummell’s sold for $621,000 and an original Autopia attraction poster went for $287,000.
“I have no idea what to expect,” Rummell said. “If Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both want my rocket jet, anything could happen. I’ve been around auctions enough to know that something can start at $1,000 and end up at $250,000.”