Disney+

This Could Have Been Avoided: Disney+ Launch Gets Fumbled

The Disney+ steaming service is finally here – kind of. A response to the launch of the streaming service “exceeded our highest expectations” according the official Twitter account. The rollout of the service has been less than smooth. To put it bluntly, Disney fucked up.

As fans of the brand we’d all be forgiving if there was a hiccup or two along the way especially with a rollout this large. But they way this was done leads me to not be so forgiving this time around. This could have been avoided.

If you can even get the app to load (I have an Android phone, iPad, RokuTv, and and AndroidTV – they all sometimes work, barely, kinda) you’re usually greeted with some type of error screen which you can work-around by using the search or browse by category functions – you SHOULD NOT have to do this but hey there’s at least a work around. Once you find content, of which there is a ton, things seem to load and play nicely. However just getting thru the initial load is either a total fail or you’re greeted with the error screen which clearly isn’t ideal even with the work-around I just mentioned.

Disney has been hyping this thing since last year and the hype train has been picking up steam over the last month with Disney’s slick ads and social media drops. So my question becomes how are they shocked that this thing would get so overwhelmed with users on day one. Did some jackwad in a tie sit in a board meeting and say “hey let’s hype the shit out of Disney+ so we don’t have any business at launch” and the rest of the meeting goers agree to spend countless hours making the aforementioned slick ads and social media drops so that Disney could not anticipate those things working to bring in users?? What in the actual fuck, Disney?

So, what could have been different? Well the easiest this would have been to make the app available to download weeks before the actual launch day. they could have loaded it with those trailers and ads only. This spreads out the amount of traffic used to download, sign-up, sign-in over a longer period of time. Instead what we’ve got is a one-day massive shitshow of download, sign-up, sign-in, and streaming all blasting the Disney servers. What kind of sense does this make? None. This is pure dumbassery.

When Disney is about to launch a new attraction at one of it’s parks they do a soft opening in the weeks or days prior to let a reserve group of guest and workers experience the ride. This gives Disney a picture of what to expect and lets guest give feedback on the kinks that need working out. How was this step mostly skipped with Disney+? Beta testing something of this nature needs more eyes on it than a few users in Scandinavia (Disney literally beta tested the shit in Norway – no offense Norway). How is such a test akin to real world expectation when you go to ultimately roll this thing out to all, especially in the United States where your fan base is rampant. For two months Disney has been selling two and three year subscriptions to Disney+. Why weren’t those early adopters given access to the system with a limited access to the archives (no need to let them see the new content before launch) to get an idea how a much of a load streaming would put on the system at a larger scale? These are things Disney does already in it’s parks and pretty much any tech company does before full launch. Instead we got a broken homepage and constant loading graphics – for shame Disney.

Now, am I saying that you should avoid Disney+ – hell no! It’s full of amazing content and you can use work-arounds to get to it right now. It’s a fumbled launch day, but tomorrow is a new day.