Disney+ is here: All the news, shows, movies, launch issues and more

Finally. The most aniticpated streaming service is here. Home to not just Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the Pixar franchise, but TV networks like FX and storied series like The Simpsons. Oh, and all the Disney movies and TV shows you could ever want to watch.

Welcome to Disney+.

This is the future of video for Disney. Anything and everything that falls under the Disney umbrella — and make no mistake, it is a huge umbrella — will go through the Disney+ app, on whatever platform you wish to watch it on. If that sounds impossibly big, well, you’re right. But Disney has done well to pave this road with the also extremely successful ESPN+, which also is owned by Disney and runs on the same technology. (In fact, Disney bought the company that built the streaming side of things.)

So with all that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about Disney+.

When and where is Disney+ coming?

These are the confirmed countries in which Disney+ is launching in 2019:

• November 12 — United States, Canada, Netherlands
• November 19 — Australia, New Zealand

Disney plans to launch Disney+ globally in dozens of countries over the next two years, and it gave a tentative timeline in April 2019. These dates are very vague and subject to change because media and streaming laws vary from country to country and need to be navigated and negotiated by Disney’s fleet of lawyers before Disney+ can launch there:

• March 31, 2020: United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain
• First half of 2020: Other western European countries
• First half of 2021: Eastern European countries
• Throughout 2020-2021: Asia-Pacific countries
• First half of 2020: Latin America

There are differences in available content between countries — for instance, French law forbids theatrically released films from being put on a streaming service in that country for three years, so don’t expect to see Avengers: Endgame on Disney+ in France until 2021.

How much does Disney+ cost and can I bundle it with Disney’s other services?

The pricing of Disney+ varies a bit from country, but in all of the countries where Disney+ is launching, you can save yourself a few bucks by opting for the annual billing rate rather than the monthly billing. One account can have up to four streams going at one time and up to seven profiles on the account, so you probably won’t need to shell out for multiple accounts in one family.

Disney also has a bundle option that gives users Disney+, ESPN+, and ad-supported Hulu for $12.99 a month. It gets a little complicated, but the short version is if you have separate accounts on each of the three services you can link them together in a sort of virtual bundle via a single address, and then credits will be applied to bring the cost down to the bundle price. You should still be able to keep the various Hulu add-ons like Hulu with Live TV and Limited Commercials via this method.

Disney offered a 33% discount on a three-year subscription to D23 members back during and after the D23 Expo in August that has since closed. You had to pony up for the entire three-year subscription upfront, but you essentially paid two years to get one free, so for die-hard Disney fans, this was an excellent deal.

If you have a Verizon unlimited plan, you can get a year of free Disney+ thanks to a promotion it’s calling “Disney+ on Us. You can sign up for your free year through Verizon’s website, and if you’d already taken advantage of the D23 three-year subscriptions, congratulations, you can stack promotions and get four years for the price of two. Oh, how I envy you!

Parental controls, concurrent streams, and device limits

As stated above, you can have four streams going at once on one Disney+ account and as many as seven user profiles, which should be enough for most families. Disney+ is a family service, and as such, parental and data controls are paramount. Disney+ has profile-based parental controls to help keep children out of some of the service’s more mature content.

You can download any and all the Disney+ content you want for offline viewing, but only on up to 10 devices per account. For a single user — or even a couple — this shouldn’t be a problem, but families will need to be mindful of how many devices they download content on.

There is no device limit for streaming, only for downloaded content, so this means that most families shouldn’t run into problems streaming their favorite movies at home even if they hit the offline limit.

What platforms does Disney+ work on?

As you’d expect of a streaming platform with Disney behind it, Disney+ is available on a wide variety of platforms:

• Android phones and tablets
• Android TV devices
• Amazon Fire TV devices
• Google Chromecast
• Apple iOS phones and tablets
• Apple TV
• Desktop web browsers
• Xbox One
• Playstation 4
• Android-based Sony TVs
• Samsung smart TVs
• LG smart TVs
• Roku

What content does Disney+ have right now

Disney has prided itself on its Vault of extensive content for decades. While the Vault strategy was starting to decay in the digital age, Disney+ will reap most of its rewards by hosting most of the Disney+ vault as well as an impressive array of content from Marvel, Lucasfilm, Fox, and National Geographic. At launch, Disney+ has about 500 films and over 7,500 TV episodes, including most of films in the Marvel Infinity Saga and Star Wars Skywalker Saga.

Bugs, glitches, and overloaded servers: Dealing with Disney+ launch day issues

I’ve been waiting a decade for an all-in-one Disney streaming experience like Disney+, and considering that Disney+’s servers have been taken to the absolute limit today, I know I’m not the only one. We expect issues with every service at launch, especially for something as highly anticiapted as Disney+. Some users have seen issues downloading the apps, others are seeing timeouts while trying to sign up for that delectable Disney+/ESPN+/Hulu bundle, and most have just been experiencing issues with the servers while trying to binge all our favorite new and old shows.

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