Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author

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Tagged disney

5 Things to Know About Lookout Cay, Disney’s New Private “Island”

Courtesy Disney Cruise Line

One island isn’t enough. 

That’s the thinking behind Disney’s Lookout Cay, a new, three square mile private beach at the southern tip of Eleuthera, Bahamas. Made exclusively for Disney Cruise Line guests traveling on 3-15 night Atlantic itineraries, Lookout Cay is a $400 million dollar, picture-perfect property in the sun-soaked comforts of the colorful Caribbean. It opened this summer to positive reviews and lots of promise. 

After visiting the island myself this fall aboard Disney Magic, I gotta say: Lookout Cay is more than positive—it’s phenomenal. Not only is it the most stunning Caribbean beach I’ve ever vacationed on (having visited over a dozen), Lookout Cay is essentially Disney’s love letter to Bahamian culture and the endearing people that make the 3,000 island nation what it is today. 

Why should you care? Here are five good reasons.  Continue reading…

How this movie scene changed my life

Courtesy Disney/Pixar

Many years ago, Disney released a Pixar film that had a profound impact on the course of my professional life.

At the time I was a full-time video game critic for several online magazines. I had a knack for raking mediocre games and announcements over the coals. I gained a reputation for publishing smart but scathing copy. Back then, I felt it was my job, if not duty, to critique everything I touched as if the orbit of the Earth depended on it.  Continue reading…

How Disney turned me into a travel writer

Not long ago, I wrote a seemingly simple story that forever changed the amount of adventure I’ve been exposed to ever since.

For years leading up to that moment, my wife pleaded with me to take her and our kids to Disneyland. Although I went there as an eight year old boy with my family, I remember enjoying nearby Huntington Beach better than I did the actual park. So I told myself in the ensuing decades that Disney was a tourist trap and the great outdoors were the place for me.

Turns out, both man-made and natural wonders are for me. I probably wouldn’t have learned that truth, however, if it weren’t for my wife’s sage approach in tricking me to give The Happiest Place on Earth a fair shake. “Blake,” she said. “You could write about your experience—review it, report on how much you hate or love it.”

That’s all I needed to hear. Continue reading…

5 companies that hold a special place in my heart

For one reason or another—both personally and professionally—these companies can do almost no wrong in my eyes:

  1. Dell. I built my first computer as a freshman in high school. Overclocked it, modified it, loved it. Later on, I built several more for family members. And then made-to-order Dell took over the world by the late ’90s. I enthusiastically appreciated their customization, affordability, and no-nonsense style. A decade later, Dell officials hired me as a contract writer for three consecutive years. That engagement largely paid for the downpayment on my first and only house. Although they’ve changed significantly since the ’90s and I now compute on a Macintosh, I still admire them. Continue reading…

Review: Pixar’s Wall-E is booooring.

Wall-E is boring
Pixar’s Wall-E and Stanly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey share a lot in common. Both are set in space, feature little dialog, have robots taking over the world, are immensely artistic, won’t keep a 2 and ½ year-old engaged despite their G rating, and offer a handful of sophisticated moments in filmmaking. But both are really monotonous — an analogy proving that Wall-E is easily Pixar’s worst film to date, for both adults and children alike.

Continue reading…