What does Disney Plus include? Before you subscribe to one of the Disney Plus bundles, is important to know what Disney Plus includes. Disney Plus is one of the best streaming services around, whether you’re a diehard Disney fan or a parent looking for family-friendly movies and shows to watch with your kids.
What Does Disney Plus Include?
From classic Disney programs to new series developed exclusively for members, Disney Plus has a growing library of titles to stream. Subscribers can watch the studio’s animated films, new Pixar movies, and hours of content from the “Star Wars” and Marvel franchises. Big-screen releases also hit the service after running in theatres, including “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3.”
Here’s what’s included in Disney Plus:
What Product Features Does the Service Include?
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Video And Audio Formats
Disney Plus can stream 4K Ultra HD content in Dolby Vision, HDR10, and Dolby Atmos immersive audio. You can see a title’s available formats in any of the Disney Plus apps by clicking on that show or movie’s main page and then clicking on the details tab. The app for streaming boxes, like Roku and Apple TV, is also designed to briefly flash a symbol telling you the format that you’re watching. It appears in the upper-right corner of the screen for a few seconds when a video begins to play.
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Simultaneous Streams
Every Disney Plus account can stream to four devices simultaneously and create seven profiles for different members of the household. Each account can pick an avatar of a Disney, Pixar, Marvel, or Star Wars character, with more than 200 avatars available.
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Group Watch
Disney has a group-watching feature that lets you synchronize your stream of any title on Disney Plus with other accounts through the app, so you can watch a program at the same time as friends or family even if you’re apart.
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Languages and Accessibility
The service supported English, Spanish, French, and Dutch at launch, including in its user interface as well as audio support and subtitles for library content. Disney Plus originals and much of its library are available in multiple languages as audio or as substitutes. The app also supports closed captioning, descriptive audio, and navigation assistance to help subscribers with disabilities.
(In July, the American Council of the Blind gave Disney Plus an achievement award for its descriptive audio, specialized tracks that describe the settings and the action taking place alongside a program’s dialogue.)
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Mobile Downloads
Disney Plus also offers unlimited mobile downloads for offline viewing. Subscribers can download to up to 10 mobile or tablet devices, with no constraints on the number of times a title can be downloaded. The number of titles stored at one time on a device depends on how much storage space is available on the device.
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Parental Controls
Disney Plus offers parental controls in the form of kids’ profiles. You can designate any profile to be in kid’s mode, which has a simplified interface designed for younger viewers. These kids’ profiles limit the library to programming that’s rated TV-7FV and G in the US or the equivalent ratings in other geographic markets.
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Ability to request Shows and Movies
While the Disney Plus content library is pretty comprehensive, some shows and movies from the Disney catalog are missing. If you can’t find your favorite title, you can request it be added by accessing the Help Section and using the Give Feedback feature.
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IMAX-Enhanced
On November 12, 2021, Disney Plus will be adding IMAX’s expanded aspect ratio to select Marvel films. In layman’s terms, this should allow the film to take up your entire screen instead of being full-width but still having black gaps at the top and bottom of the screen.
How Much Does Disney+ Cost?
The pricing options for Disney+—and sibling services Hulu and ESPN+—are a bit of a mess. And they’re getting a refresh as of fall 2023. For the sake of our sanity and because Disney is doing everything it can to upsell you, we’re going to go ahead and list them all here. (The new pricing, which we’re listing here, goes into effect on September 6, 2023, or October 12, 2023.)
Disney+ costs $8 a month if you don’t mind advertising. (There’s no annual option with that scheme.) If you want to get rid of ads, it’ll cost you $14 a month or $140 a year. However, Disney+ isn’t Disney’s only streaming service. Following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, Disney also controls Hulu and offers the sports-focused ESPN+.
- Disney Bundle Duo Premium, which includes Disney+ and Hulu without ads for $20 a month,
- Disney Bundle Duo Basic, which includes Disney+ and Hulu (both with ads) for $10 per month,
- Disney Bundle Trio Basic with Sports, which includes Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ (all with ads), is $15 per month.
- Disney Bundle Trio Premium with Disney+, Hulu (both with no ads), and ESPN+ (with ads) for $25 per month
What Features and Formats Are Supported on Disney Plus?
Disney Plus includes several features that make using the service more convenient. However, some features are exclusive to the ad-free plan. Here’s what you get with each Disney Plus plan:
Disney Plus Features Included with Ad-Supported and Ad-Free Plans:
- Up to seven user profiles per subscription
- A special kid’s profile option restricts streaming to titles that are rated TV-7FV and G.
- Simultaneous streaming on up to four different devices.
- Up to 4K resolution streaming with high dynamic range (HDR), using the HDR10 or Dolby Vision formats.
- IMAX Enhanced Playback for select movies, which lets you see even more pictures on screen,
Disney Plus Features Exclusive to Ad-Free Plans:
- Unlimited downloads via the Disney Plus app on up to 10 different smartphones and tablets
- GroupWatch is a feature that lets you watch Disney Plus with up to six friends.
- Dolby Atmos immersive surround sound is available on select programs.
What’s on Disney Plus?
The online service gives users access to a generous library of TV shows and movies from the Disney catalog, as well as titles from Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, National Geographic, ESPN, 20th Century Fox, and Hulu. Disney is investing heavily in original content for Disney Plus.
This echoes what competitors Netflix and Amazon are already doing. To begin with, the company relied on established brands instead of exploring new avenues, but its focus has shifted over time.
TV shows on Disney Plus
On the TV front, Disney Plus offers not only hours of Disney Channel programming but also original productions made especially for the streaming service. The list features the Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, which became an international hit shortly after its release. The Book of Boba Fett followed, then Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Subscribers also got a lot of new Marvel TV series, from WandaVision to Moon Knight to Ms. Marvel and beyond. Not only that, but the platform now hosts the Marvel shows previously on Netflix: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher.
Other series created for Disney Plus include Baymax!, The Wonder Years reboot, Big Shot, Doogie Kameloha, M.D., Turner & Hooch, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and more. You can also watch a whole lot of series courtesy of Star: Pistol, Life & Beth, Pam & Tommy, Desperate Housewives, 9-1-1, Scandal, Bones, Station 19, Castle, and so on. Subscribers can even binge-watch over 30 seasons of the popular animated series The Simpsons.
Movies on Disney Plus
On the movie front, Disney Plus is becoming the exclusive streaming destination for all titles under the Disney umbrella. The likes of Lightyear, Eternals, Encanto, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, to name a few, have all found a streaming home on Disney Plus after theatrical release. The catalog also includes hundreds of animated titles from the Disney Vault, as well as Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar films.
Pixar, in particular, enjoyed a lot of success with Soul, Luca, and Turning Red. Disney Plus even secured the likes of the Broadway musical Hamilton, The Greatest Showman, and the worldwide hit West Side Story.
Meanwhile, Star hosts films targeted at a more adult audience like Prey, Fire Island, Fresh, Free Guy, Nomadland, and more. All in all, it’s enough content to last you a couple of lifetimes.
FAQs
What devices does Disney Plus support?
You can watch Disney Plus on many connected devices, including all of our picks for the best streaming devices and 4K TVs. Here’s a full list of devices that support Disney Plus:
- Desktop web browsers
- Mobile devices and tablets (Android and Apple)
- Smart TVs (LG WebOS, Samsung Tizen, Android TV, Google TV, Vizio SmartCast, and Roku TV)
- Game consoles (PlayStation, Xbox)
- Streaming devices (Apple TV 4th Gen and later, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, Roku)
Does Disney Plus have a free trial?
Sadly, Disney Plus no longer offers a free trial. But there are often discounts and deals to help you get a taste of Disney Plus for free. For example,
Verizon includes a six-month subscription to Disney Plus with some of its unlimited data plans, and other plans include the whole Disney Bundle for free.
