Disney+, the company’s much anticipated streaming service finally launched on Nov. 12. After a few days of use and looking over the service in general, here’s my impression.
The layout is what you would expect from a regular streaming service like Netflix or Hulu, segmenting its various content by different headings like films, shows and documentaries, while also throwing in creative categories such as “Nostalgic Movies,” “Disney Channel Favorites,” and “Best Friends.” Although the headings are a quick and easy way to find something you may be in the mood for, I would recommend browsing through the movies and shows in the “All A-Z” search filter. It gives you a fantastic view of all that Disney+ has to offer, while still being able to find a specific title by its initial letter.
Also like Netflix, Disney+ gives you the option to allow other people to create separate profiles under one account. Except here, you can have up to seven profiles all for the same price as one.
Now comes the content present on the service itself, which I think is easily the biggest selling point. Unlike other recent streaming services like DC Universe or Appletv+, Disney+ has an enormous array of original and existing content that should appeal to almost everyone.
With the Disney brand by itself, users can view around most of their classic and modern animated movies including “Aladdin,” “The Lion King,” and “Frozen,” as well as many of their live-action films over the decades such as “Mary Poppins,” “Remember The Titans,” and the entire “Pirates of the Caribbean” series.
The service also has a handful of movies released by Disney under its different film distribution companies, as well as its recently owned brand of 20th Century Fox. This is why you’ll see films on the service like “Avatar,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” and the cinematic masterpiece that is “Kazaam” starring Shaquille O’Neal. Along with that, several different shows and original movies from Disney Channel are also present, which should lead to many hours of binge-watching.
But that’s far from when it stops in terms of content, as the Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic brands that are owned by Disney are featured prominently. Almost every Pixar feature film is showcased here, along with many of their short movies. With Marvel, nearly every film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is present, ranging from “Iron Man” to “Avengers: Endgame.” Disney+ also features several classic animated Marvel shows, including the popular “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” animated series from the 1990s.
With the “Star Wars” brand, episodes I-VII are here, along with the popular animated series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars: Rebels.”
National Geographic also has a fair share of documentaries for those interested.
Along with its massive amount of existing content, Disney+ has its fair share of original content, ranging from films and television shows produced exclusively for the service.
I’ve only seen one episode of the Star Wars television series, “The Mandalorian,” which already looks to be a promising show. Based on word-of-mouth and review scores on IMDB, other original Disney+ content including “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” “High School Musical: The Musical – The Series,” and the live-action remake of “Lady and the Tramp,” look to be well-received material that viewers should be interested in checking out. And there’s set to be more promising original content coming soon, such as the upcoming MCU-connected shows including “The Falcon and Winter Soldier” and “WandaVision,” and also future Star Wars shows such as an Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor.
Where Disney+ falters a bit is with technical difficulties. Several news reports have been released about how the service had a disastrous launch day, where several users reported many cases of hard crashes. Personally, during my streaming experiences, I’ve experienced this only a handful of times, so those initial reports aren’t lying.
But the biggest flaws I have with the service are more in terms of layout. For example, there’s no “Continue Watching” submenu for whenever you exit out of a movie or show that you’re watching, so you would have to end up searching for whatever you were viewing and click back on it to continue watching.
Also, when examining different movies via the A-Z search, you’ll notice that there are several films that won’t be present on the service itself until much later. For example, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” won’t be on Disney+ until Dec. 26, while “Avengers: Infinity War” will eventually be added on June 25 next year. Disney previously made streaming deals with other services like Netflix. These titles can be added once their deals expire. Hopefully these issues can be fixed relatively soon, which should make the streaming experience more pleasant.
Based on my first impressions, Disney+ looks to be a promising streaming service and much better than other recent unnecessary services like Appletv+ and DC Universe. The biggest strength Disney+ has is its overabundance of great content, which should appeal to just about anybody. Obviously, several problems should be fixed, but I don’t feel they are enough to detract from my general experience.
Overall, I would highly recommend it.