Disney+ Pandemonium! Disney Streaming Service Struck with Glitches

The Disney streaming service Disney+ launched today and it’s absolute chaos. Everyone calm down! We’re going to be okay. I promise.

Based on the countdown clock, people were expecting the new Disney streaming service to go live at approximately 6 am Eastern this morning, but many late-night observers spotted the app available many hours earlier than expected. I suspect this was an attempt to curb the inevitable strain on the Disney+ servers, hoping to prevent a full crash or extreme lag. I can assure you that when I watched The Mandalorian last night there were no issues with the service, but I woke up to absolute chaos. Disney+ was down and people were freaking out.

The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our high expectations. We are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. We appreciate your patience.

— Disney+ Help (@DisneyPlusHelp) November 12, 2019

This isn’t the first time a streaming service has crashed. During the entire last season of Game of Thrones, HBO Now would lag for several minutes. Once the onslaught of people staggered their start times, however, the service would run fairly smoothly. And that was just one show at one time once per week. Disney+, however, is an entirely new streaming service with thousands of hours of content being dropped at once with millions of subscribers racing to see both brand new content and their old favorites. I know several people who took work and school off to binge content (you know who you are). 

We really shouldn’t be surprised that this is happening. I mean really. People are enthusiastic and this was inevitable. 

However, once the servers were back up and running, some content was still listed as unavailable. My attempts at rewatching The Mandalorian this morning before work led to the above error message, and judging by the absolute chaos on Twitter, I wasn’t the only one to get that message. It’s especially frustrating with The Mandalorian because Star Wars fans are going to want to start talking about that episode soon, meaning the Internet is going to be a minefield of spoilers. 

Just keep trying, but maybe mute some words on social media or avoid it all together until you can get through. Trust me. The spoilers are gonna be huge, guys.

In addition to server connection problems, it seems there are several issues with The Simpsons. There are cropping and aspect ratio issues, and episodes are missing. Some of these issues are actually changing the actual jokes, too, which is pretty bad. Simpsons fans are a lively bunch so I’m sure Disney+ customer service will be getting an earful. This is a pretty big error and I hope it gets corrected as soon as possible.

All of this sucks and people have a right to be upset. But let’s step back and take a deep breath. The servers will bounce back. People are logging in as I’m typing this and getting a good connection, so have some patience. 

And as far as the aspect ratio and missing episodes go… that one’s a little worse. You can’t just wait that one out. That’ll take some pushing to get the message to those in charge, but remember that the poor customer service reps you talk to on the phone or via social media aren’t the ones who made that decision, so be kind to them. It’s not their fault. And they aren’t paid to be your verbal punching bag.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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