The Arrival of Disney+

Get ready folks. Disney+ is now upon us. I'm definitely obsessed and this will be all I talk about for awhile.

In this post, I will be talking about my experience with Disney+ on launch day, my opinions on the content offered, and what can be improved with the service in the future. Future posts will include my specific reviews of some of the content available on Disney+.

MY EXPERIENCE ON LAUNCH DAY

I was hoping to be able to start streaming Disney+ immediately as soon as it launched (I'm just going to start calling it D+ now. Is that an abbreviation people are using? Oh well, I'm doing it anyway). Depending on the source, the rumored launch time was scheduled for sometime between midnight and 6 AM (PT) on November 12th. I am lucky to have Verizon and was able to sign up for the 1 year free membership with Verizon. I tried to sign up with Verizon in the days leading up to the launch, but it would give me a message saying come back on the 12th. Due to these factors, I wasn't able to experience Disney+ until I came back from work around 6 PM on the 12th.

All day I was keeping up on Twitter for any D+ related news. The most prevalent hashtag of the day was #DisneyPlusFail. I did see various other Disney related hashtags going such as #LizzieMcGuire, #EvenStevens and #BoyMeetsWorld so it was nice to see a lot of people were also having good experiences with D+. In the #DisneyPlusFail hashtag it seemed like most people were having issues accessing the service. Disney did issue an apology saying that the user response was more overwhelming than anticipated. From what I saw while browsing the hashtag, most people were understanding that everything wouldn't be perfect on launch day with some people upset that they paid for the subscription and weren't able to stream everything immediately as promised. My opinion aligns more with the former. Luckily, due to the circumstances named above and because I didn't take off a day from work for this, there were several hours to fix the issues between launch and when I was able to log in.

Once I was able to log in around 6 PM on launch day, most of the issues seemed fixed. The main four shows that I wanted to watch (The Mandalorian, Encore!, The World According to Jeff Goldblum and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) all worked. When I tried to stream Boy Meets World and The Imagineering Story, both of these gave me an error every time I tried to click on them. So some shows were unavailable to stream even 18+ hours after launch. When looking through TV shows alphabetically, I was also unable to scroll past the letter S. One thing that was brought to my attention on Twitter was that Andi Mack only had select episodes available to stream, even though it was "promised" to have all episodes included with the service. As of today, there are still only select episodes available. This ties into a thought I have on Pixar SparkShorts which I will elaborate on further below. The app also doesn't save your progress on any shows. It won't tell you which episodes you've watched. If you exit out of a show halfway through, once you click on that episode again the next day, it will start from where you left off but you have to be able to find it first. It also doesn't seem to save what you've watched on the main page which may affect things like recommending content based on what you watch and enjoy.

DISNEY+ CONTENT

This will need to be split up into an original content and what I'll call "unoriginal content." Not that Disney didn't create it, but this refers to old shows and movies that weren't created specifically for Disney+.

ORIGINAL CONTENT

Leading up to launch day, I was aware of 7 original shows and 2 original movies that would be available on launch. These include five full shows: The Mandalorian, Encore!, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, The Imagineering Story; two shorts: Pixar SparkShorts, Forky Asks a Question; and two movies: Lady and the Tramp and Noelle. These ended up to be most of the original content available. The only three shows I was unaware of being Marvel Hero Project, Pixar in Real Life and Family Sundays. This was a slight disappointment since I assumed there would be more content that I was just unaware of, forgotten about or wasn't announced for whatever reason. Furthermore, I thought these shows would have all episodes released available to binge immediately. On launch day there was only one episode released for all the shows (with the exception of Pixar SparkShorts which had released three episodes on YouTube as marketing for the D+ launch). The run time for all these shows adds up to 274 minutes or roughly four and a half hours. The run time for both movies adds up to 204 minutes or roughly three and a half hours. All of the original series and movies are easily watchable in three days for a Disney fanatic like myself. This was extremely disappointing and it makes the amount of content appear very slim. I understand the appeal of releasing the episodes weekly--more engagement, more time with our eyes glued to the screen, and more money being spent on monthly subscriptions. But at least for launch I think they should have had maybe the first 5 episodes of each show released, or maybe even the full season with the next seasons' episodes released weekly once the original content is added and the original content selection becomes more meaty. I think it was a reasonable assumption to assume that D+ would follow the typical Netflix full season drop that's typical policy these days with streaming services. I guess this was my bad and I should have managed my expectations or done more research. But as someone who follows Disney news pretty closely, I can imagine that a lot other people thought the same thing as me and were also disappointed--people who aren't as in tune with this information, or parents who don't really care about D+ and are only getting the service for their kids.

Now is when I rant about Pixar SparkShorts for a little bit. I watched the first three SparkShorts as they were released on Youtube in February. It was my impression that these were released as a kind of marketing tool for Disney+. "Look at how good these shorts are, if you like these, you'll like Disney+! And if you want to see anymore, you'll have to subscribe!" The current description in the description box of one of these shorts on YouTube says, "More SparkShorts are coming to Disney+ in 2019!" I'm a big fan of Pixar Shorts, and the three SparkShorts that were released on Youtube were so good that this was one of the main factors in my interest and need to subscribe to D+. On launch day only one of these SparkShorts was available. It's honestly better that the episodes are being released this way though because I have no self control and would have watched every single short in 2 hours instead of savoring one being released every week. At least I thought they would be released once a week. I use this app to keep track of what shows I'm watching and what episode I'm currently on. The app will show you the release dates and titles of show episodes. If a show is on a break and you want to know when they'll come back, they'll typically have a pretty accurate number that the show will be back with episode x on x date. When I looked up SparkShorts, I was shocked to see that only two more episodes were planned: Wind to be released somewhere around December 13th and Loop to be released somewhere around January 10th. These aren't official titles and dates, this is just what I found from the app that I use and I'm not sure where they get this information from. But if this is true, I feel cheated in a way. SparkShorts were used as a marketing tactic to get me to subscribe to D+, and upon subscribing I will only get to see three more SparkShorts? This feels very sketchy to me and is verging on false advertising. I'm only mad because I enjoy these so much I want to see more of them! This was a major draw in getting me to subscribe.

"UNORIGINAL" CONTENT

I think there is kind of an big problem (at least for me) with the concept of this streaming platform. Its main draw is that it has a giant catalog of old movies and shows. Of course it's great to be able to have access to all the animated classics and access to all of the Disney Channel Original Movies that were impossible to find anywhere before D+ existed, but the problem for me is I don't know where and how to start. I'd say on Netflix I prefer to watch new movies and shows. And it's not necessarily "new" movies and shows, I just mean content that is new to me. The good thing about watching current running shows is that I have something to talk with other people about, online or in real life because everyone is watching the same thing (think Game of Thrones). The problem with D+'s catalog of old animated classics, old DCOMs and old Disney Channel shows, is that we've all seen them all already. I may have missed some episodes (since this was back in the day when we just had to watch whatever rerun was on TV) and I didn't watch them sequentially, but do I really need to rewatch the whole series again? Of course it will be fun to rewatch a couple of episodes of Lizzie McGuire, but could I really sit through rewatching 2 seasons of it (and before you ask- Yes! I am excited for the reboot. I will definitely be watching that). That however is a different situation than rewatching an old show that I probably saw most of and I may not have the same enjoyment towards as an adult). I just don't know where to start off with this old content. I don't have any particular favorites that I want to jump into, I love them all! I prefer to watch movies or TV shows that I haven't seen before. I'm not trashing what anyone else chooses to do with their time, but for me I start to feel guilty if I rewatch something too many times. I start feeling like I should be expanding my knowledge by watching something else, not to mention some of the magic may start to die once you watch something so many times. What am I going to get out of watching The Little Mermaid again for the tenth time? Yes, I will enjoy it! Yes, I will sing along to all the songs! And of course this moment of happiness is justification enough for me to watch whatever I want, but I also find value in limiting rewatches in order to watch as many different movies as possible. Since I love all of the DCOMs, TV series and animated classics I don't know where I would even begin starting to rewatch them since I don't have particular favorite.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the classic Disney live action movies that are offered. For the first time, these old movies are stream-able. I feel like no one else cares about this, but this is what I am most excited about for D+ out of all of the "unoriginal" content. As a kid I was obsessed with these movies because they would have the VHS tapes available for rent at Hollywood Video. I'm talking about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Swiss Family Robinson, The Love Bug, and my two personal favorites: the 1961 version of The Parent Trap and the 1977 version of Freaky Friday. These titles were previously impossible to find anywhere and it's so special to me that I'm now able to watch all of these titles and more from this era that I have never watched before. There are even episodes from the 1950's Mickey Mouse Club, which I'm very excited to watch!

THINGS THAT CAN BE IMPROVED

There are a few things that I'd like to see improved upon, mostly in the area of content. I'm excited for more original content to be added for one. Another thing I'd like to see added is as I mentioned above, we have episodes from the 1950's Mickey Mouse Club. What about episodes from the 1990's Mickey Mouse Club starring legendary icons Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguiliera and Ryan Gosling?? I was also hoping to see more content such as Wonderful World of Color. All of those old shows where Walt would discuss projects in the parks and behind the scenes looks at upcoming movies. I also would like to see musicals from the 1990's-2000s era of Wonderful World of Disney including Cinderella (the one with Brandy and Whitney Houston), Annie (the one with Kristen Chenoweth and Kathy Bates), Geppetto (the one with Drew Carey and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) and The Music Man (the one with Matthew Broderick and Kristen Chenoweth). There's not much information that I can find on why these musicals were made, for what channel/program, what other musicals may exist as part of this program. These are just ones that I'm familiar with and I love. I'd love to have access to all the musicals that were made as part of this program.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Disney+ has a lot of content that will keep me satisfied for bit. Will it keep my satisfied in the long run? Time will tell. I'm looking forward to seeing the full seasons of the 4 core shows that are on the platform now. I'm looking forward to upcoming original content including the original Marvel shows. If you're on the fence about subscribing to Disney+ or if you can only subscribe to one streaming service, I'm not sure if it should be this one for now. There's not enough variety in what is offered and there is a very limited number of original content available for now. However, this could easily change soon in the future as more content is added. But if you're a Disney fanatic like me or if you have kids that like Disney I'd say it may be worth it! Definitely give it a try and see what it's all about!

One huge plus to me is that from what I can tell Disney+ is now the leader in classic (which I'd classify as anything pre-1980) movies and musicals on streaming platforms. This is of high importance to me and on the other three main streaming platform competitors--Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime--there is a severely limited selection of classics and musicals. So if you like classics and (Disney) musicals, this may be another reason to subscribe to Disney+.

Signing off. Show and movie reviews to come soon. Let me know your thoughts about Disney+ down below!