Hello, my name is Mike Allard, I try to live life; every single day, as though it was my last. I make each day count. My kids are my main focus in life right now. I can't believe how fast life goes by. I believe the simplest pleasures in life are the most rewarding, and looking at the world through the eyes of a child is the best way to see it.
I live in a small suburb north of Seattle. I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life. I like to visit other places, but this will always be home.
Wow, time has just sailed by so fast the last 19 years. I remember the first time I looked into my wife eyes and knew I was in love, "real love". We spent a great deal of time together before we got married and had our first child, I can still remember how incredible the nineties where, eight years later we had our second child. Life is amazing. I'm so thankful for all I have!!
"If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself." ~ C.S. Lewis
The reason behind this page here is real simple, I love Disneyland, I have walked through the entrance gate dozens of times over the years, and everytime is a very unique experience all it's own. Everytime we go there, we all have the best time, and we laugh and enjoy the park so much. I love just being there, the rides are a blast; of course, but simply the atmosphere there is incredible. The music playing, the children laughing, the horse drawn trolley, the toot of the horn on the street car, the whistle of the train and the river boat. When we grow up we get all too consumed with the pressure of life's challenges, we need to take a break from this environment, Walt Disney knew this well, a work-a-holic by nature, he knew how to take a break. He wanted to provide a place for everyone to take a break from life's challenges, a place where we could return to our childhood simplicity and playful innocence. A place to call our home away from home! A place where a family can play and laugh and enjoy one another all day long. Visiting Disneyland is the closest we may ever get to the "fountain of youth".
Yes, it truly is the "Happiest Place on Earth". I also love all the Disney films, particularly the animated ones, and, in addition, the films such as the classic Mary Poppins, The Love Bug and Snowball Express, Flubber, etc.
My favorite all-time Disney film is Pinocchio, it just has that great warm feeling about it, especially the opening sequences.
Mickey Mouse has not always been my favorite cartoon character, no, growing up; Bugs Bunny was my favorite, he still has the most wits of any cartoon character, but Mickey Mouse made a big impression upon me when I first saw Mickey's Christmas Carol, (still my favorite Mickey Mouse film) and then so after I learned how he was an alter ego for Walt Disney, since then he has become my favorite cartoon character.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia is a brilliant piece of work. Visits to Disneyland over the years has made me evan a bigger Mickey Mouse fan, and of course, discovering all Disney's creations had started because of him.
Prayer In My Life:
By Walt Disney
Every person has his own ideas of the act of praying for God's guidance, tolerance and mercy to fulfill his duties and responsibilities. My own concept of prayer is not a plea for special favors, nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God.
Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action. This religious concern for the form and content of our films goes back 40 years to the rugged financial period in Kansas City when I was struggling to establish a film company and produce animated fairy tales. Thus, whatever success I have had in bringing clean, informative entertainment to people of all ages, I attribute in great part to my Congregational upbringing and lifelong habit of prayer.
To me, today at age 61, all prayer by the humble or highly placed has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled times, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard in fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we all embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.
Walt's quotes specifically about Mickey Mouse "I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse."
-"When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity."
- "He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner."
"Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end."
And then the following are some of my favorite all-time quotes from the man who dreamt it up.
"Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought - sometimes it isn't much, either."
"We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together."
"I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse." ~Walt Disney
"I was doing Sorcerer's Apprentice with Mickey Mouse and I happened to have dinner on night with Leopold Stokowski. And Stokowski said, 'Oh, I'd love to conduct that for you.' ... Well, that led to not only doing this one little short subject but it got us involved to where I did all of Fantasia and before I knew it I ended up spending four hundred and some thousand dollars getting music with Stokowski. But we were in then and it was the point of no return. We went ahead and made it." ~Walt Disney