Happy 15th Anniversary, TLK!

[Mike]

These are all terrific speeches ^.^ I read each one and it's awesome to see how similar we all are <3

[Katelyn23]

Awesome speech, ScaR. ^^ Good for you not letting other's thoughts get to your head. Never let them decide for you what is a good movie and what is a "dumb baby movie." >.>

[KittyKraz13]

I've always been a Lion King fan, ever since I was just a little cubbie As I got older I still loved it AND I understood it even more xD I wasn't a very avid fan though, I only watched it about twice a month and I never made anything to show my support ((things like AMV's, edited pictures, or anything like that.))

It wasn't until I was about to turn 13 that everything changed. My dad got really, really sick. He was taken to the ICU where he was given 24 hours to live. I was scared, depressed, and shaken. What helped ease my pain?? It wasn't my brother, my grandmother, or even my friends. It was watching TLK over and over and OVER again. I literally watched TLK 13 times that day. Mufasa's death helped me drain my tears ((espcially when Simba found him dead)), Nala and Simba together showed me that I wouldn't be alone, the "under the stars" scene helped me remember my dad and all the good times we had, and Timon and Pumbaa threw in a few needed laughs xD By the end of the movie, I learned that I wouldn't be alone, even if my dad did happened to pass. He would always be with me, always be there to guide me, just as Mufasa was for Simba ^^ That doesn't mean I still wasn't sad, because of course I was, I was losing my dad x) But TLK REALLY helped, even better than other peoples soothing words.

Much against the doctors thoughts, my dad pulled through He's now healthy and happy, and I charish everyday with him^^ And now I also watch TLK at least 2-4 times a week, I make AMV's for it, I edited pictures, I write fanfictions, and I belong to the best TLK fansite out there ;D

TLK's likeable charries, story, the songs, the beautiful animation, EVERYTHING helps capture the magic of the movie and brings it together I'm not ashamed to say that without the Lion King, I would be lost. It helped me find myself, and I could never thank it enough

Now, LONG LIVE THE LION KING!! <333

((also everyone else, AWESOME speeches ♥ I can't believe how many avid fans there are ...well, I can, because it's such an awesome movie xD I'm glad to be around all of you^^))

[Mike]

That's an amazing story =) It just goes to show how it can really affect lives and help you with it's message.

[Katelyn23]

Now that was just an amazing, heartfelt story Kitty. ^^ Definitely goes to show how comforting TLK can be in anyone's time of need whenever they are feeling sad or depressed.

[Zeke]

Great speeches everyone. I doubt I can match any of these due to my horrible memory and limited writing abitlity but here we go.

I really don't remember the first time I saw TLK. However I do know that it was a movie that I rented enough to buy it about 20 times so eventually my mom caved in and got it for me. I also had a disney board game of which I would only use the TLK board to play and get upset when someone changed it. I also had the soundtrack on a tape and sang along with it everyday and I got upset when anyone else would sing along with me because it was obviously my music and no one elses' . My love for the movie was somewhat forgotten until the second movie came out but after that, I haven't forgotten it. I just really got back into TLK when I accidentally watched some AMVs and I really got into it. I have to thank TLK for getting me back into drawing because I didn't really draw much before. It has also helped me make a whole bunch of awesome friends.

TLK has not only given me an awesome movie to watch whenever I'm bored but it has also given me morals I can go by in everyday life. One of the main morals this movie has tought me is to not let the past get to me too much. It has also tought me to not completely give up on my problems. These have helped me throughout my life and helped me get over some of my bigger problems.

Well I'll stop now because I can't really think of anything good to say and I'm tired.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TLK!

[Katelyn23]

Zeke, that was an awesome speech, don't sell yourself short. I remember when I owned a TLK tape as well, I used to listen to it so much that my family would tell me to turn it off because it got annoying.

[Buffy]

Ok. I guess I could take it from where it all started. Now, I didn't see TLK before I was a few years old, because if I had seen it in the theatres, I would have been about a month old. Anyway, sometime ago I watched it and loved it. Everything was TLK for me. On my birthday I had TLK plates, cups, paper napkins... Anyway, I was obsessed. Also, everytime I saw a "big" rock, I would climb onto it and my dad would whistle TLK Theme and I would pretend I was Simba climbing Pride Rock. And I would roar when I got on top.

Anyway, I lost the interest in TLK until my niece arrived. She was obsessed with TLK as well. She would watch it again and again and again. And I became interested again. I still didn't do anything about my love for TLK except for collecting some figures, and hanging up a poster and a photo. But sadly, I lost interest again. And I almost forgot about it when I became a teenager because my mom removed all my TLK stuff...

But then! I joined YouTube! Haha! And I was back in the game. But I wasn't completely obsessed until I came across a few AMV's (I forget who made them). And I became more of a fan. Not too long ago I started joining TLK communities, like TLKPF and MLK. And now I am very obsessed with TLK and lions have become one of my favourite animals (the others are dogs, wolves, meerkats and tigers).

Anyway, about what TLK means to me... I would say, it means alot. It's kinda hard to describe, but I believe TLK has some important messages, and the fact that it's enjoyable to watch makes it all better!

Oh well, I don't know what more to say except... HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY TO THE LION KING!

[Panda-chan]

My turn ^^ Be prepared for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong read.

MY STORY
The Lion King has had a great influence on me my entire life, although I never knew it. My parents told me that it was the first movie I ever watched. Even though I was only 2 years old, strangely, I actually remember watching it. I remember sitting in the living room surrounded by my toys and every once in a while I would glance up at the screen to see how the movie was progressing. I didn't understand anything, but I remember loving it anyway. I know I used to really admire Mufasa, but sadly pretty much everything else about that memory is vague. Back then he was my favorite character, and although this position was later taken by up Simba, he has always remained one of my favorite characters in all of the films.
My next memory is a little clearer. I was 6 years old, and it was the first time I'd seen Simba's Pride. I was at a friend's house. I remember liking the sequel a little, but not as much as the first movie. My favorite character was Kiara. I used to think she was very pretty. ^^
In my early childhood, my friend and I would reenact our favorite scenes from the first film, or what we could remember from it anyway. Our favorite part was the one in which Nala yells for Simba to help her when she's sliding down the bones toward the hyenas in the Elephant Graveyard. I remember I was always Simba and had to save my friend who was Nala by dragging her up the sofa (kind of hurt my arms lol). Once when we were at her house and we were playing that in their living room, her older brother who was playing videogames got so fed-up with us that he grabbed us both and pushed us off the couch. That wasn’t a very happy ending for us cubs. Anyway… >.>
I don't know how I survived the next 4 years without having anything to do with TLK at all, but somehow, I did. Even though I hadn't watched it for more than 8 years, I still loved The Lion King a lot. If someone had asked me what my favorite Disney movie was, I would probably have said The Lion King. Still, not having watched the movie ever since I was a toddler, I didn't really understand why people liked it so much, and so, never properly got to experience it for the true magic that it is. All that changed one day in fifth grade...
It was the day of school before winter break. I was sitting in the auditorium with all the other fifth graders because the choir was going to sing some Christmas carols before everyone went home. There were lots of nice songs and many people sang along, but near the end, the choir announced that they were going to sing us a special surprise. It was the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" from The Lion King. From the moment they started singing, I was captivated. It seemed like something in me that had been locked inside of me had finally opened up. It was the most beautiful song I had ever heard in my entire life. It sounded like something out of a dream. Everyone else was obviously loving it too because they were cheering like mad. Some were actually standing up and singing. Soon everyone was standing up, including me. Being shorter than most kids my age, I had to stand on my toes to just get a glimpse of the tops of the choirs' heads. But I could still hear their wonderful music, and that was all I needed. When the song ended, everyone went wild. I just stood there with my heart thudding, amazed.
On the way home everybody on the bus sang the song again. I didn't join in. I was quietly staring out the window, the music still reverberating inside my head. I made a mental note to find that song again on the internet as soon as I got home. Twenty minutes later, I was busy searching "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on Google and immediately got millions of hits. I clicked one of the first ones - a YouTube video. When I was done listening to it, I decided I might as well listen to some other TLK songs as well. They all sounded amazing. I particularly liked "The Circle of Life" and "I Just Can't Wait To Be King". CoL brought tears to my eyes the first time I watched it (later my Mom asked me if I'd had a bad day at school) and IJCWTBK was so catchy I was pretty much clicking my fingers together in my sleep.
The next day was winter break so I got up early and turned on my computer, desperate for more songs. I listened to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" once again, and then I listened to "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" and "Hakuna Matata". I remember thinking CYFTLT was way too short, and that Hakuna Matata was a little bit of a disappointment. I hated the change in young Simba's voice; I'd also noticed his voice change in IJCWTBK, but over there it'd sounded good. I hadn't known about "Be Prepared" at this time, so I never listened to it.
After listening to all the songs I knew of, my thirst for TLK was still not quenched. My budding TLK-addictiveness was starting to kick in. I needed more. Eventually I grew obsessed with young Simba and would Google him just to look at images of him. Since my printer was broken at that time, I used to frequently stay after school in the library just so I could print out images of Simba, naïvely thinking that there were very few images of him when there were in fact, millions. Once or twice the librarian caught me. She was confused, but told me not to waste the library’s computer ink like that. I was really disappointed, but I knew she was right. I kept the small stack of Simba images in my room after that and would sometimes take them out to look at them more closely. I still have those images, which now total more than a hundred, and occasionally refer to them when drawing fan art.
After that small letdown, it finally occurred to me that although I was now deeply in love with TLK, I'd never even bothered watching the movie since my love for it first started. Sometimes, when I had nothing else to do, I would stay after school in the library and watch bits of it on YouTube. I had to mute it though, so no one would hear it, so you can imagine how awful that must have been. Still, because of that, I became even more obsessed with TLK, and some of my old memories of the first time I ever watched it were starting to come back.
By now, I was a serious TLK-o-holic. I just couldn't get enough of The Lion King. Surprised that I didn't have the DVD lying around somewhere, I begged my parents to go buy both the movies for me. They did, and I watched them to my heart's delight. Meanwhile, I started downloading TLK games desktops and buying TLK merchandise like crazy. It was only when my parents refused to buy me any more things that I finally snapped out of it. Instead, I began searching online for Lion King sites other than the official ones. As you can imagine, the first one I discovered was lionking.org. I thought it was a pretty neat site, but when I visited the fan art gallery, my jaw literally dropped. The fan art there was beyond good. It was INCREDIBLE! I couldn't believe my eyes. How could anyone have drawn such masterpieces? It looked exactly like Disney had drawn them! So for the next few months, I practiced drawing TLK characters, especially Simba. I would refer to my stack of Simba images constantly, especially the clipart ones, but no matter how hard and long I worked on them, they refused to look like anything other than a pile of garbage. But I was still determined to draw them right, so in the many months I painstakingly practiced drawing Lion King characters, my drawings improved from looking like crap to looking like actual art. Later I found out that some artists "cheated" and used Photoshop, so I convinced my parents to buy it for me as well.
As I said earlier, I used to look online for more Lion King sites a lot, and that's how I discovered "The Top Fifty Lion King Sites". Delighted, I visited each one in turn and signed the guestbooks there (if any), praising the owners for their amazing sites. To my disappointment and disbelief however, not a single one of them replied. I was heartbroken. Why had these people abandoned such wonderful sites? Had they not liked them? Had they decided they were too old to love TLK? I suddenly began to wonder if there were any active TLK sites left, besides lionking.org. I immediately decided to find out. It wasn't until the next month that I found out that there were active TLK sites out there. That was when I discovered MyLionKing.
I was busy browsing through some of my favorite sites in the "Top Fifty Lion King Sites". One of them, mylionking.com, was a personal favorite of mine, and I used to visit it quite often. I mostly went there to listen to the music or look at the pictures. I hadn't known that the site owner, Moka, was still updating the site at the time. Imagine my shock and amazement when I found out!
It happened on May 15th. By now, I was 11 years old. I was on the home page of the site, scrolling down, when a large image caught my eye. It was a Cinco de Mayo picture, and right above it were the words "Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone!!' But more importantly, it was written May 5th, 2008. That meant that the site owner had written that 10 days ago, which meant he hadn't forgotten about his site! I was so happy I practically screamed with joy. All this time, I'd been so sad about how such a good site could go to waste, but as it turned out, it hadn't! I quickly went to the forums and immediately signed up, becoming only the second person after Moka to do so. In time, the site became more active and more people started joining. Happy to say, I'm still an active member here, and I've made lots of friends here as well. Thanks guys .
After that small discovery, I resumed my search for active TLK sites with higher hopes. Finding out the MLK was still active proved that not all the TLK sites were dead. Perhaps there were more that I hadn't yet discovered.
The next active site I found was Melanie's, owner of http://www.simbaholic.webs.com. I'm not exactly sure how this happened. I just remember stumbling on it one day and liking it a lot. It was kid-friendly and seemed like a lot of hard work had been put into it. After going through her site, I found the Guestbook and signed it, saying how much I loved her site. I scrolled down to take a look at the other signatures. Again, I was surprised to see that they had been written quite recently. This site was obviously very popular. Then, I saw Melanie's signature. Once again, I was overjoyed at finding out that the site owner hadn't abandoned her site after all. When I reached the end of the page, I saw a tiny link at the bottom that said "Want your own free site? Try Freewebs.com". This had never occurred to me. Why browse through sites when you can create one of your own? Besides, it was free!
After consulting with my parents, I immediately clicked it and filled out the required information. When it asked me for my site URL, I thought a moment. I wanted a really good Lion King site, better than all the others. It had to be the ultimate Lion King site. I typed that in. Somehow, I didn't like it. I needed the title to be more about my love for TLK, not about how much TLK stuff it contained. Eventually I settled on Lion King Obsession, a name resembling that of another site I'd visited. I remember briefly hesitating and considered calling it Lion King Addiction instead so people wouldn't think I was copying, but I decided not to because it sounded dumb. Besides, lots of other sites had similar names and no one thought that was plagiarism. I now realize that this was wrong, but by then I was already building my site and it was too late.
Site building was easy because Freewebs, as well as being completely free, allowed you to build websites without any knowledge of HTML at all. I made fast friends with Melanie and through her site, I was able to connect with other active Freewebs sites. It was through the most active one of them, LionPaws, that I made all the friends I currently have including Serra20, thelionpride556, Nalafan101, and many, many others. I still own Lion King Obsession, and it's already really popular. Click here to visit it, and please sign the Guestbook!
You're probably wondering if I forgot to mention The Lion King 1½. I didn't. In fact, I only found out about it a few months ago while I was visiting Lion King Source. I was so surprised I nearly fell off of my chair. According to the site, the 'midquel' had been out since February 2004, when I was 7, and I hadn't even known about it then! I was embarrassed, so I asked my parents to buy it for me as well. I watched it 5 days later, and I instantly loved it. That movie never failed to crack me up.
So that's the story of how I came to love The Lion King. Even now, a few people at school still hum the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" every once in a while, but it's not as popular anymore. But when we do, kids in the older or younger grades make weird faces at us, but we just shake our heads and smile secretly at each other. I have the feeling us sixth graders are going to remember that day we were all singing in the auditorium in fifth grade for a long, long time. I know I will.
That day transformed me. It made me who I am today. If that day had never happened, I would never have loved The Lion King as I do now. My life would have been so much more different. Since then, I haven't told anyone about my obsession but my family and my two best friends at school. They thought it was a little strange at first, but they accepted it as being a part of who I am. That movie changed me forever. So today, on this fabulous movie’s 15th birthday, I would like to say a big thank-you and congratulations. This movie has affected my life and the lives of many others in ways we can’t possibly imagine. I owe Disney so much.

HAPPY 15th BIRTHDAY TLK!

[Katelyn23]

Wow Buffy and Amanda.. Those are some really remarkable stories. ^^ It's great to know we have other big TLK fans such as ourselves so we don't feel alone.