A major cultural event happened yesterday: the launch of Disney Plus. Unlike the relatively ignored launch of Apple TV Plus a couple of weeks ago, subscribes rushed to the new streaming site, excited for the new live action Star Wars show, The Mandalorian, and the site’s vast archives of old Disney content. Not everything went so smoothly though. Now that we’re passed the first day, let’s break down what worked, and what didn’t.
Minus: The Site is Super Glitchy – Many users reported yesterday that they were getting an “unable to connect” error message when they tried to log in to the site, prompting the hashtag #DisneyPlusFail. This is unsurprising, as the sheer volume of users trying to log in at the same time overwhelmed the servers, causing the site to crash. Many frustrated subscribers spent a long time waiting on the phone to talk to customer service about the issue. However, it seems that this problem has been largely resolved and users are now able to successfully log on.
Being unable to log in wasn’t the only glitch, however. When clicking on a series or film, many users were brought to an about page for that content, but no episodes or play button would come up. Sometimes this was resolved by simply clicking back a step and clicking back in. Many films and shows were also not coming up in the search bar, despite definitely existing on the site. While these bugs are frustrating, it’s likely that a lot of them will be resolved as user activity levels off. It’s also simply the right of passage for a new product – there will be flaws, but those flaws will be addressed and fixed.
Plus: The Massive Amount of Content Proved to Be a Huge Draw - While we all speculate how many of these new streaming services people are actually going to bother to pay for, it was predicted that the enormous amount of old Disney content would reel in subscribers. These predictions were right. Even while I, myself, have grumbled about there being too many streaming services now, and Disney taking over the world, I have to admit I got giddy when I logged on and saw all this Disney content in one place. People could go watch Disney Channel shows from their childhood, binge all of the Star Wars movies in preparation for Star Wars IV: The Rise of Skywalker, enjoy Disney classics, bask in the collection of Marvel movies. If nothing else, this will be the reason the streamer succeeds.
Minus: Most of the Streamer’s Original Content is Meh – Disney has proudly announced many high profile original series that site will have (many of them Marvel), but most of those are a long way off. For now, except for The Mandalorian, most of Disney Plus’s original content can be skipped. From the live-action Lady and the Tramp to High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (yes, they really named it that), they’re uninteresting and not worth a second glance. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher why Disney would have so little of its promising original content prepared for launch day, but I maintain that even if Disney Plus had absolutely zero original content, people would still flock to it for it vast archives. (You can click here for my colleague Scott Mendelson’s review of the various Disney Plus original series.)
Plus: The Mandalorian is Pretty Well Received – The lack of good original content simply meant that viewers had no choice but to turn all of their attention to the streamer’s big live action Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. About a gruff bounty hunter, and with a Wild West kind of vibe, the series has been receiving pretty positive reviews and social media reactions. While I maintain that the show has some major hurtles to overcome, this is a good start for a series that Disney poured tons of money into.
Glitches and all, this was an astonishing first day for Disney Plus. I can’t remember another streaming site being this much of hit so immediately. It sets a pretty high bar for upcoming streaming services, most notably HBO Max. As time goes on, we’ll have to keep an eye on how many of these technical issues get resolved, and whether the upcoming original series are any more promising than what’s currently available. For now though, the huge amount of old content seems to be the biggest draw, and likely will continue to be. I give the streamer a B+ for its first day.
