Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, went live this morning. I’ve been waiting for this since it was first announced, been looking forward to Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, The Simpsons, and a ton of other content.
Things hit a few bumps right out of the gate. I signed up on my Mac and hit a “Sorry something went wrong. Please try again later.” alert (no comma after the word “sorry”, which gave it an odd tilt in my mind. Tried reloading, logging out and back in, no dice. So I switched over to the iOS app.
On the iOS app, things went a little better, though I did have to do a few retries before I finally got through to the streaming screen. And, just when I started to hear the opening sounds of the first episode of The Mandalorian, an Apple TV alert dropped in front of the app, asking me to connect to Apple TV. Odd that that bit of homework wasn’t taken care of before I started a show, but just a nit. I have to say, if you’ve got a Star Wars bone in your body, The Mandalorian looks great.
I did a search to get a sense of what’s available at launch. Though there’s a lot, there are some surprising omissions. Of course, Toy Story 4 is not there, to be expected, too early. But though Toy Store 2 and 3 are both available, the original Toy Story is not. But wait, did the search again, and there it is.
The Simpsons has 6 seasons available, an odd mix of old and new. That can’t be right. Supposed to be all 30 seasons. Search for Marvel, same thing, many of the movies, but not all. Did the search again and got slightly different results each time. What’s going on with search?
I suspect some missing content will appear over the coming weeks/months. And search is definitely inconsistent, so it’s possible some of the missing content will turn up in future searches. Wondering if the huge demand on opening day is contributing to the odd search results. What’s there is a huge catalog, even with the missing/not missing elements.
Got a Verizon account? Here’s how to get your free year of Disney+.
I’m definitely excited about Disney+. I think Apple and Netflix have their work cut out for them.