Last month, the Walt Disney Company unveiled plans to offer customers a unique subscription service that would be called DisneyLife. Disney has delivered on that promise by launching the service this week in the United Kingdom. DisneyLife is Disney’s new streaming subscription service that gives subscribers access to Disney movies, short films, TV shows, music and books. Fans of Disney can subscribe to DisneyLife and access all of its content via a mobile application on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Subscribers can also stream the content to their television if they have a chromecast or Apple TV.
The full extent of content that is available cannot be determined without subscribing and exploring the application itself, but from what we can tell, this service contains an enormous library of Disney content that will keep everyone in the family entertained and engaged for hours at a time! DisneyLife will give subscribers access to Walt Disney Studios live-action films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Enchanted; Disney Animation films including the Jungle Book and The Lion King; and Pixar films such as Toy Story and Brave.
Subscribers will also have access to short films and full seasons of TV shows from Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior. Music is available to stream from Disney Artists as well as from Disney’s film soundtracks. Disney novels, picture books, and classic movie stories are available to read or listen to in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. DisneyLife is packed with content but it also is full of features that make this service great for families.
When users subscribe to DisneyLife and download the app they will gain unlimited streaming of all of the content that is included in the service. In addition to unlimited streaming, users will have the option to download content for offline viewing when no internet connection is available. Families will be able to create up to six profiles so that each member of the family can customize their DisneyLife experience. Parents will be able to manage their children’s time within the app with built in parental controls. Families can add up to 10 compatible devices that will play content from the DisneyLife. We anticipate more features becoming available as Disney receives feedback from families who use the service.
Customers and fans of Disney that live in the UK can begin a free month trial of DisneyLife right now. Once the trial ends the service will cost £9.99 per month and can be cancelled at any time. The service is exclusive to individuals in the UK right now but Disney does plan on rolling out the service in France, Spain, Italy and Germany in 2016.
If you’re in the UK, we would love to hear from you if you subscribe to DisneyLife!
I signed up last night. It’s a pretty incredible library, there’s a lot of super deep cuts. It runs the gamut from classic Mickey Mouse shorts to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie. There are a few strange cases of content missing in action – The Lion King and The Lion King 3 (Known as 1 & 1/2 in the US) are present, but not The Lion King II; A Goofy Movie is there, but An Extremely Goofy Movie is absent – but broadly speaking the movie selection is pretty incredible. The TV Box Sets are a bit more limited, but all the current shows kids will care about are there and there are some classics on offer for those a bit older (Season 1 of Recess for us twenty-somethings to indulge in a bit of nostalgia, Duck Tales – a woo-ooh – for even more people to do so). I assume these gaps will be filled and the TV selection to expand over time. If they can get Fillmore! on there, they win the internet in my opinion.
There are a few launch period teething problems. The login process seems to like popping up error messages even when it’s working okay and once I had to log in to the App again when re-opening it after a crash. There was also an amusing issue with some of the Recess episodes. I didn’t try watching all of them, but of the four or five I did, two weren’t available in English for some reason, and started playing in Spanish and French. The ones I watched (which were in English) played flawlessly though.
Hot tip for anyone watching on an iPad, if it’s bothering you that the 4:3 classic content is surrounded by black borders, you can fill the screen by unpinching on the video.
One other thing, each month subscribers are given a choice of Disney Apps to download for free. It seems like there’s a selection of six each calendar month, and each account gets to choose any one of them to download for free each month. I had a quick look this morning and it seems like it was mainly a selection of Disney’s interactive story Apps in November.
Bit of an update on this, looks like the content is gradually expanding because while The Lion King 2 was missing this morning, I’ve been looking through again now I’m back from work and it’s now available. An Extremely Goofy Movie still MIA though and the episodes of Recess which were missing English versions still are, so I’ve Tweeted the Official account for the service to let them know about the issue.
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