Disney Plus Review

November 20, 2019

Disney + was released November 12 and with it came a lot of controversy. People are divided on whether they should submit to our mouse overlord or not. Some see it as a way to have all of their favorite movies and TV all in one place for easy access, and others see it as just a way for a company to take more of our money in the pursuit of capitalism.

I’m personally split between the two. I'm not the one paying for my account, though, which definitely has some influence. Although $6.99 a month or $70 a year for 500 movies and 7,500 TV shows (according to Cnet.com) is quite reasonable, the service itself is not worth the money. Yet. They just need to work some kinks out that should have already been solved before the release.

I know that any streaming service or game will almost always crash immediately after its release because the servers get overwhelmed. That's normal and not what I'm talking about. There are features of Disney + that make it difficult and sometimes annoying to use. I feel like I've gotten access to a beta tester, and this is DISNEY we’re talking about. I honestly expected better.

It's mostly the little things, like how there is no watch history. That means it's up to you to remember what episode you were on. Sadly, I don’t remember what episode of “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” I was on after I passed out at 2 am. The captions also don't carry over to the next episode, even if you use auto play. The interface itself is hard to navigate. To preview a show, it takes you to a separate page instead of enlarging the show’s box. All of these are features that Netflix and Hulu have. And if Disney is trying to compete with them, they need to make the service more user friendly.

The foundation of Disney + is there though. Finally we have access to (some) Disney content that has been locked up in the vault for years. Scrolling through all of the Disney Originals brought back waves of childhood memories of when life was just so much simpler. It's all in one place too, which is perfect for binge-watching. Before now, if you wanted to have a Marvel, Star Wars, or Disney Princess marathon, you better have all of the DVDs because it was impossible to find them without pirating. On top of all the old stuff, we’re getting new content too. Do you want to listen to Jeff Goldblum talk about shoes? Uh, Yeah, who doesn't?

So, if we can ignore the fact that Disney already owns Hulu and doesn’t need to do this, but they want to exploit us in as many ways as they can, and its working because they literally made like 12 million dollars the first day, Disney + has the potential to be an amazing streaming service.