These days every major studio has its own streaming service. There are also services dedicated to different genres of film or indie films, or just about any other specialty you could probably go looking for. However, since most of these services cost money one has to make decisions about which ones they want and which ones they want to let go.
Price is certainly a determining factor for a lot of people. This makes the new Disney Plus offer of $1.99 a month for three months, likely very attractive to a lot of people. But for me, Disney Plus is a great value at just about any price. It is by far my favorite of the various streaming services. It’s the one that I always look at first when trying to decide what I want to watch. Here’s why I won't be getting rid of my Disney Plus subscription anytime soon.
It’s Got The Best Menu System
First off, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of a streaming service, the user interface. Every streaming service has thousands of available titles and being able to find what you're looking for, or even just be aware of what a given streaming service has available, has always been a challenge, but Disney Plus makes it about as easy as it can be.
Whereas a streamer like Netflix has to divide up content by genre, like “science fiction movies” or “Western TV shows” Disney first starts out with its five brand pillars, Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, and Nat Geo. Whether you’re searching for something specific or just looking around this helps you focus your search so much better than more general topics that could lead you anywhere.
Even when I know what it is I want to watch, when using a TV remote, it’s usually faster to select the Marvel tab and then scroll through to find the MCU movie I want than it would be to enter a few letters in the search menu. And if you do go to the search menu, the first thing you’ll see is a bunch of different Collections, which divide up the titles into pretty specific groups, like a single Marvel character or all content related to Disney Princesses, which also makes navigating to what you need easy.
A Wide Variety Of Disney Plus Originals
One of the big ways that any streaming service attempts to woo subscribers is through original content, the stuff that can’t be found anywhere else. And Disney Plus has two of the biggest reasons to subscribe by virtue of the fact that it makes original series for both Marvel and Star Wars and to be sure, I love most of those shows, like the creative and unique WandaVision to the brand-new Ahsoka, as much as anybody, but there’s a lot more to enjoy.
As a lover of Disney’s theme parks, I have rewatched The Imagineering Story and episodes of Behind the Attraction multiple times. American Born Chinese was something very different for me that I may not have given a chance if it had appeared on a different streaming service. The documentary Howard, about the life of Howard Ashman, is something every Disney fan should watch.
Lots Of Classic Content, Not Just The New Stuff
Brand new original series are great, but The Walt Disney Company is 100 years old as of 2023, and that means they’ve been making cartoons, movies, and television for a really long time. I have been the first to argue in the past that I wish Disney Plus had even more of its classic content on the service, but the fact is it still has a lot more than a lot of other streaming platforms that seem to forget movies were made before 1975.
On September 5 Disney Plus added Trolly Troubles, a remastered version of the first official Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon, 96 years after its original release, making it the oldest piece of Disney content on Disney Plus. Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, has been there since day one of course. Alongside them, you can watch old episodes of the original Mickey Mouse Club and a few episodes of the Disneyland series and its follow-up, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, featuring appearances by Walt himself.
While we all have a tendency to focus our attention on modern movies and TV, the older stuff has a charm all of its own. And looking back at some of Disney's old stuff gives you a fresh appreciation for the new. It allows you to really follow the history of Disney as a studio. It's as much an education in filmmaking as any of the equally impressive documentaries on Disney Plus.
Disney Plus Is The Best Comfort Viewing
Between the old and the new, there is plenty of stuff on Disney Plus you probably haven’t seen, but let’s face it, what makes Disney Plus special is having access to all the stuff you haven’t just seen, but you know by heart. If you’re old enough to read this, chances are there is at least one Disney movie that you’ve grown up with or one of three Star Wars trilogies that particularly resonates with you. And it’s all there for you to watch, whenever you like.
Sometimes you don’t want to watch something new. Sometimes you want to curl up on the couch with some popcorn and watch that movie you’ve seen 100 times already. Maybe that movie is The Princess Bride, The Princess Diaries, or The Princess and the Frog, but either way, Disney Plus is where you go to find it. It has everything we all grew up with, a lot of which our kids will now grow up with and it will become comfort viewing for them as well.
Disney Plus doesn’t have “everything.” Even under the Disney banner, there’s a lot that will hopefully still be added one day, but the existing library has some of the absolute best TV and movies, from the major franchises that everybody is talking about, to the smaller, forgotten projects, and everything in between.
