Disney

Don’t Forget

The Disney Day offer for a month’s subscription to Disney+ for $1.99 will end on September 19th, 2022. And if you choose to subscribe, you can get money back through Rakuten, where you’ll also find offers for ShopDisney.com.

Au Revoir Mickey?

Disney may be closing all of their stores in Canada by the end of the summer in response to the pandemic and a shift in retail according to Retail Insider.

They had recently closed 60 stores, two of which were in Canada. And now they may close 18 of the remaining locations in this country, which are located in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba. But I suspect they may open a Canadian fulfillment centre or two for Canadian orders at their shopdisney.com site.

Perhaps we will eventually be able to order memorabilia from the Disney+ app itself in the future. But hopefully they might consider re-opening larger locations in the tourist hotspots in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Only time will tell.

Disney+ – My First Impression

As I have previously stated on this blog, Disney+ features 500 films and over 7500 television programs from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, National Geographic and other companies Disney distributes, many of which will be made available on the service in the future.

The initial releases are quite satisfactory and include several of the Disney films I had seen in my elementary school theatre in the ’80s, like The Cat From Outer Space, Unidentified Flying Oddball and The Apple Dumpling Gang and Herbie The Love Bug films. But the classic Donald Duck and Goofy cartoons I had wanted to see were not online yet. And the $6.99 monthly subscription fee mentioned online was incorrect.

The monthly fee in Canada is actually $8.99, with an option to prepay for a year at $89.99, which reduces the monthly fee down to $7.50. And although I think the later is great for families, I’m personally going to wait for more content to be added before committing to this service.

Parents that like to keep their kids entertained whilst travelling will love the streaming or download and go options. And the service is also great for parents that have young kids, that can’t handle and load films into their DVD and Blu-ray players. But I already own quite a few of the films featured on this service on DVD, Blu-ray and digital so there is no real incentive for me to subscribe yet.

The Mandalorian’s first season is comprised of eight episodes, that I can easily binge watch prior to the release of the second season, which is already being filmed. And I could always purchase the latest Spider-Man film during the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday events, pretty much completing my Marvel Cinematic Universe collection (minus a few mediocre films in the series). 

In regards to The Simpsons, I can also view the first 19 seasons in the original 4 by 3 aspect ratio on Apple TV/iTunes, Google Play and in reruns on television, so I am not missing much there either.

The addition of the aforementioned Donald Duck and Goofy cartoons to Disney+ will probably lure me back, as will the expansion of the 20th Century Fox Pictures, Fox Broadcasting Company and Touchtone Pictures catalogues to the service. But I suspect this will not happen until next summer, hopefully after they correct their playback and security issues.

Apparently some users had encountered technical issues and several thousand accounts have been hacked resulting in their details being posted online. But it was smooth sailing on my end via my Roku Premiere+, other than an issue with the playback language.

For some reason, it decided to play Star Wars – Episode IV in French, when all the other films played back in English. And although I managed to change the audio to English, I couldn’t figure out how to change the opening crawl.

I’m sure this minor glitch will be repaired by the time I decide to go back. And overall I’d say the Canadian version is an acceptable service for most. 

★★★★☆

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Disney+ Canada Update

Disney+ will be online in Canada on November 12th, 2019 according to their official site and according to several sources the monthly subscription rate for Canadian will be $8.99 (or $89.99 yearly).

According to Deadline, “Customers will be able to subscribe to Disney+ directly or via in-app purchases and will be available on a slew of platforms including Apple, Google, Microsoft’s Xbox One, Sony via its Android TVs and the Playstation 4 and Roku.

There’s no news on when Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic titles will be removed from Netflix’s catalog in Canada. But Reuters confirms that “Avengers: Endgame”, “Aladdin” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” will stream exclusively on the new service.

Bloomberg has also reported that Apple TV will be available by November but no specific information about Canada has been made available.

Netflix Canada Price Hike? Really?

Netflix has decided to raise their monthly subscription plan prices by three dollars, days before the departure of Disney, Pixar and Marvel films from their service.

Yes, I am as baffled as you are in regards to this timing. But apparently they think they have enough material to keep their current customers, which in my case is quite the risk.

I already have my favourite Disney, Pixar and Marvel films on blu-ray thanks to the Amazon and the Disney Movie Club. And Prime Video has just recently expanded their catalogue, although it needs to expand further to be compatible with Netflix, especially when it comes to concerts and music documentaries.

My previous relationship with Netflix was on and off due to their lack of material and they’re basically keeping me on with the odd film, stand up comedy program, concert and the American remake of The Office. And unfortunately for them I own quite a few films from their catalog on DVD and blu-ray already.

It would be nice to be able to just store these away and use the service to view them but they’re still not up to par with the American service and they don’t appear to be interested in foreign language films from Europe.

For example, where are the great French performances by Louis De Funes, Gerard Depardieu and Pierre Richard? Where’s the Gaumont film catalogue?

Netflix Canada need more films like “The Train To Busan”, on top of the mainstream classic Hollywood productions. And I suspect that if no major improvements are made that I will be leaving the service again, especially if they subject me to yet another $3 hike within two years.

It should also be noted that DC Universe is also starting its own streaming service in Canada shortly, which will likely cause additional material to disappear from Netflix Canada’s catalog. But I guess all we can do is wait and see what will happen in 2019.