Unlocking Potential: 6 Key Upgrades Disney+ Must Adopt for Revitalization

Key Takeaways

• Make more of Disney’s classic content available for streaming and rely less on Star Wars and Marvel.
• Bring back the GroupWatch feature for easier remote viewing experiences among friends and family on all devices.
• Implement better search filters to aid discoverability and let us binge by releasing episodes in bulk.

Disney+ is great to get your latest Star Wars or Marvel fix, but the House of Mouse’s streaming service hasn’t innovated much since its launch in 2019. With such competition for our attention, Disney can’t afford to rest on its laurels.

While I subscribe to Disney+ and enjoy watching it, these are some changes I think would make it even better.

1 Stream More Classic Disney Content

Disney has existed for over a century and in that time has produced some undisputed classics: Cinderella, The Lion King, and Frozen to name but a few. While these popular flicks are all available to stream on Disney+, there are many hundreds of movies and shows from the company’s archives that are missing (including from studios it has consumed).

Movies like The Brave Little Toaster, Tower Of Terror, and Dragonslayer aren’t to be seen, nor are shows like Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Mickey Mouse Works, and Aladdin: The Series.

That’s not to mention shows like Willow and The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, which debuted as Disney+ exclusives and were removed with dozens of others as part of a cost-saving exercise .

2 Resurrect GroupWatch

In 2023, Disney+ removed its GroupWatch feature without fanfare. GroupWatch let you and up to six other subscribers remotely watch something on Disney+ simultaneously. It was perfect for long-distance relationships and the like.

While those on Apple devices can still use SharePlay , GroupWatch supported all devices you could stream Disney+ on, and didn’t require any third-party tool.

Disney said it removed GroupWatch because of the meaningless reason that it’s “always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+.” When it’s not possible to gather everyone in the same room, GroupWatch is sorely missed.

3 Rework the Continue Watching Row

Have you ever started watching something, decided it’s not for you, and then found it sticks around in your Continue Watching row for seemingly ever? Or even that shows and movies you did watch all the way through randomly reappear? You’re not alone.

The problem is, Disney+ has no easy way to remove something from Continue Watching. You have to skip near the end of the movie or the show’s last ever episode, let it play for a bit, and then hope it disappears—a tedious and unreliable method. All it needs is a simple “Remove from row” button like Netflix.

And would it be too much to ask to keep the row pinned to the top for quick access, rather than buried beneath others? Moving it around presumably helps push you into watching something new, but it’s inconvenient.

4 Add More Search Filters

If you know exactly what you’re looking for on Disney+, it’s easy to find. You can search by title, character, genre, and actor. There are even curated collections, like “Adult Animation” and “Animals and Nature.”

This is all great, but it could be better. For example, you can’t search by release year, duration, or age rating. If you want to combine parameters, like to find only TV shows with Mickey Mouse in, you can’t do that either. The best you can do is go to the movies or series page and filter by genre, with no further search functionality.

5 Stop Releasing Episodes Weekly

It’s acceptable to binge-watch TV , so it’s a shame that many of Disney+’s shows release episodes weekly. While that schedule does help pace the conversation and build suspense, it also means you need to subscribe for longer if you want to keep up. Sure, you can wait until all episodes have dropped and then binge, but that requires patience.

Instead, it’d be great if Disney+ released all episodes at once, and then it’s entirely up to you how you watch. In fairness, this does happen for some shows like Echo and Renegade Nell, but others like Loki and The Mandalorian are firmly weekly affairs.

6 Rely Less on Star Wars and Marvel

Star Wars and Marvel are billion dollar franchises, so it makes sense that Disney would want to milk them for all they’re worth. Much of Disney+’s original scripted offerings are based around these properties, and I’ve certainly enjoyed shows like Andor and X-Men ‘97.

Nevertheless, Disney has a wealth of other licenses to mine—let’s see some more original programming based on these, or even entirely brand-new worlds.

This is less of a concern outside the US, where regions benefit from the Star brand for no additional cost (featuring the likes of The Bear and Only Murders in the Building). In the US, that content lives on Hulu. While you can combine Disney+ and Hulu in a single app , that comes at a premium as you need to pay for a bundle containing the two services.

At the time of writing, Disney is soon to crackdown on password sharing . Though technically the subscriber agreement already forbids this, there’s nothing stopping you sharing your Disney+ account with friends and family outside your household.

But Disney has seen the success Netflix has had with account-sharing restrictions, raising its profits with little subscriber fallout, and it wants in. It doesn’t benefit us, of course, just Disney’s bottom line—making it all the more necessary that the streaming service implements some improvements, like the ones I’ve raised here.

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