Disney Plus is live: sign up here for cheap and start streaming

Disney Plus (also styled as Disney+) is up and running and live all across the world – and the way the world is at the moment, we could all use a new library of on-demand video to watch while we're spending more time indoors.

The Disney Plus streaming platform provides a wealth of video content to watch – hours and hours of the stuff – and Disney Plus has already become one of the biggest and best video streaming services on the planet (it was up to 50 million users at the last count).

If you're wondering how much Disney Plus costs, how to start streaming Disney Plus, what the best Disney Plus movies and shows are, or what the cheapest Disney Plus subscription deals around are, then we can help – our indispensable guide covers everything you need to know about Disney+ and then some.

Whether you want info on the Disney Plus apps, the top 4K Disney+ movies, which episodes of The Simpsons you can watch or whatever else, we've got all the info you need on everything Disney Plus – all here to help you make the most of your Disney Plus subscription.

• Sign up to Disney+ right here

It's clear that Disney+ has got off to a fantastic start, with a ton of content ready to watch on demand in 2020: hundreds upon hundreds of big blockbusters and must-see shows, all available at the click or tap of a button as soon as you sign up. With other services like Apple TV Plus gaining momentum as well, Disney knows it needs to be on top of its game.

You've got Disney Plus questions and we've got Disney Plus answers, including but not limited to "what does Disney Plus offer?", "how much does Disney Plus cost?", "when can I sign up for Disney Plus?", "which Disney Plus channels do I get?" and "what devices run Disney Plus?".

To get started, we'll cover the very best Disney Plus deals available for you right now in 2020, so you can jump into this top-tier selection of video streaming content for the best price that you can currently get. Once you've done that, you can start enjoying some binge watching. We're constantly updating this guide too, so be sure to check back often.

Best Disney Plus deals

Disney+ | $6.99 per month
The basic Disney Plus package costs a very reasonable $6.99 per month, and you get seven days to make your mind up during the initial free trial too – that gives you access to all the movies and TV show content that Disney Plus has to offer for a whole week before you have to pay any money.

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Disney+ | Hulu | ESPN+ | $12.99 per month
Right now this is the best launch bundle deal available for Disney+, delivering the streaming service along with full access to Hulu and ESPN+ for just $12.99 per month... so that's thousands of movies, TV shows, channels and live sports events, for one affordable price (remember the standard Netflix plan costs $12.99 per month on its own, so this is a really good deal).

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Disney+ Subscription Gift | 1 Year | $69.99
Disney has also launched a Gift Subscription program for its streaming service, which allows you to purchase a year's subscription of Disney+ for a friend, relative, colleague or loved one. On the day the buyer selects, Disney will then email the gift receiver the good news as well as instructions about how to start watching. It makes a great last-minute present too.

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Disney Plus: why sign up right now

If you're thinking a Disney Plus subscription might be for you, you're not alone. Consider all the content that's already on the service (covering Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and Simpsons), and everything that's on the way, and it's clear that this library of original programming is very difficult to top.

Disney Plus may well replace Netflix as the streaming service that people sign up to first, and cancel last – remember that not only do you get access to a huge amount of content as soon as you sign up, but that Prime Video and Netflix might not seem quite so appealing without the Disney movies and shows.

Disney+ is also very competitively priced, with the service currently available on its own for around half of what a standard Netflix subscription costs. Factor in all the extra value you get for everyone in your family, and it's honestly hard to come up with reasons why you wouldn't sign up.

And remember, if you need to take a break at any stage, that's no problem either: Disney Plus can be cancelled at any point through the website, through the Settings app in iOS, or through the Google Play Store app in Android. Just like Netflix, you can stop and restart your Disney+ subscription at any time.

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Disney Plus launch date, pricing, bundles

After one or two technical hiccups at the beginning, Disney Plus is now live in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, launching across the 12-19 November 2019. In the US, it's available to subscribers for $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year – that compares quite well with Netflix, which offers a choice of tiers to pick from at a starting price of $8.99 a month (and that's for a non-HD stream).

There's a bumper pack option as well: $12.99 a month, which also gives you access to Hulu and ESPN Plus as well, two other streaming services that Disney already owns (see above for details). As we've said, Disney owns a lot of stuff these days. Based on reports, more than a million people have already signed up for the service.

When it comes to Disney Plus pricing, always bear in mind that there might be special offers available for you to take advantage of: in the US, for example, Verizon is offering a free year of Disney Plus to unlimited data and Fios customers.

We've seen Disney Plus given away with certain smart TVs in certain countries too, so look out for those sorts of deals. Disney has also starting selling Disney Plus gift cards at its stores in the US, so you can buy someone special a 12-month subscription (just make sure they invite you round to watch).

Expect Disney to come in at similar price points in every country that it launches in, though it won't of course be able to offer the same sort of bundles – Hulu and ESPN are exclusive to the US, for example. Disney has been tailoring specific deals for the specific markets that it arrives in up to this point.

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Disney Plus channels, movies and TV shows

There's stacks of content on Disney+ in the form of movies and TV shows, and the selection is expanding all the time – Frozen 2 is the latest blockbuster to hit the service, for example, with its on-demand launch date brought forward in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The musical Hamilton, filmed on Broadway, has been given the same treatment.

Pixar movie Onward was made available on Disney Plus just a few weeks after it was released in cinemas as well, on April 3, and similar treatment is being given to Artemis Fowl on June 12, when it will go straight to Disney+ rather than opening in cinemas as normal.

If you're wondering what's coming to Disney Plus during 2020, Disney has very helpfully put together a trailer showing some of the highlights, which you can check out below. We've also put together our own list of the best original TV shows and movies coming to Disney Plus in 2020.

Big blockbuster movies like the updated Lion King and the updated Aladdin are included, as is the second series of The Mandalorian of course (and we're continuing to get news about that). Falcon And The Winter Soldier and WandaVision are both arriving in 2020 too (the latter seems to have been pulled forward from 2021).

Disney has built up a huge vault of video content down the years, so you're never going to be short of movies and TV shows to watch when you sign up for a Disney+ subscription. From classic Disney productions to newly acquired franchises like The Simpsons, there's a fine mix of stuff available.

Indeed, you might have noticed some of this content disappearing from other platforms so that it can be exclusive to Disney's new streaming service. Even Disney's own properties might start shrinking, with recent news reports suggesting the Marvel Television company is going to be scaled down. It seems that certain content will disappear and reappear while Disney sorts out its licenses with other services.

Disney is keen to push its material as well, making the most of any award nominations and wins that it gets – see the way that it celebrated Toy Story 4 winning the 2020 Academy Award for Best Animated feature, for example.

In terms of movies, we've got classics like The Rocketeer, Tron and The Love Bug rubbing shoulders with more recent fare including Frozen, Captain America: Civil War, Big Hero 6 and Queen of Katwe. If you've not seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? yet, we'd recommend checking it out – a fantastically entertaining film, and way ahead of its time.

That said, there are gaps – films like Dick Tracy, Father of the Bride, Mrs Doubtfire, George of the Jungle, Enchanted and Fantastic Mr Fox are all owned by Disney in one way or another, but have yet to make the jump to the streaming service.

On the TV show front, some of the best shows you can settle down and enjoy are The World According To Jeff Goldblum, the X-Men animated series, Duck Tales, and The Muppets. The jewel in the crown is the new and original Star Wars show The Mandalorian, while there are 30 seasons of The Simpsons as well, of course.

It's a good idea to keep your eyes on the Disney Plus Twitter feed, or on the Disney Plus interface itself if you've already signed up – new content is being added all the time, so if you think you're getting close to exhausting all the movies and shows... you're probably not. The selection varies slightly between countries, but not hugely.

Shows like The Mandalorian and The World According To Jeff Goldblum had new episodes added week-by-week – in contrast to the Netflix approach, where entire seasons of new shows go live on the service at the same time. We'll have to wait and see whether it works for Disney+.

Thanks to Disney's acquisition of Fox, The Simpsons is available to stream exclusively on Disney Plus in the US – all 30 seasons of it. All of the Star Wars films are now available on the streaming service as well, and it's going to take you a long time to get through it all.

As for original content, we've got five Marvel shows on the way to the streaming platform (covering characters including Hawkeye and Loki), while the first live action Star Wars series, The Mandalorian (spot the Boba Fett link), has finished its first series and a second on the way. The animated series The Clone Wars is switching to Disney Plus too, and there's an Obi-Wan TV show in the works as well, though we don't know exactly when that's going to appear.

We also know that Avatar is making its streaming debut on Disney Plus, as per a couple of tweets from the official account – it's available to watch now. If you want to dive back into the world of Pandora and the Na'vi people, then the Disney Plus streaming service is the place to do it.

As far as the scheduling is concerned, many big-name titles – including The Mandalorian and Captain Marvel – are already live. Other material will be later: the Loki series isn't due until 2021, for instance. We'll have to wait and see how long it takes for everything to become available.

Disney has posted a three-hour (!) trailer showing everything that was available on Disney Plus as of the November 12 launch day – from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Country Bears to Lost Treasures of Maya. Get settled down and check it all above.

Plenty more content is on the way too, though that doesn't mean you won't see properties like Marvel appear on broadcast television as well as Disney+. Some shows and movies will be exclusive to the streaming network, while others will appear across several different platforms.

Below we've split up some of the movies and shows on offer into the main 'pillars' of content that Disney+ has an offer at the moment – no matter what your taste in entertainment, it's likely that there's something here of interest.

Disney Plus: Star Wars

Disney has some huge franchises to call on for its Disney Plus service, and there's none bigger than Star Wars – the western-in-space property that Disney paid Lucasfilm $4 billion for back in 2012. Since then, we've seen plenty of new movies and new shows from Disney set in the Star Wars universe.

Brand new, live action Star Wars series The Mandalorian has been attracting the most buzz as far as new Disney+ shows go, and you can check out a trailer below. The entire first series is now available to stream and series 2 of The Mandalorian is arriving in October 2020 – apparently with some "major, major, epic, epic lightsaber action" happening.

Disney is certainly trying to wring as much out of The Mandalorian as possible, too: it also has a behind-the-scenes show for fans to take a look at, though we'd recommend watching through all of the available episodes before diving into the documentary, just to minimize the chances of stumbling across spoilers.

You are of course also able to watch all nine main franchise films on Disney+, with the original trilogy available in 4K HDR quality for the first time. Expect future Star Wars movies to follow suit in the future, with Taika Waititi the latest major director to put his name to one.

On top of that you've got documentaries and animated series, including five seasons of The Clone Wars. A series based on Obi-Wan Kenobi is in development too, though it seems Disney isn't exempt from the problems that happen at other studios – the series has apparently been delayed while some extra script work is carried out.

We've also heard that a spin-off series based around the Rogue One movie is on the way, focusing on the character of Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna. Shooting is due to begin this year on that, so we might see it in 2021.

Disney Plus: Marvel

If you're not a Star Wars fan, then what about immersing yourself in the Marvel universe? Disney+ is the perfect streaming platform for Marvel superhero content new and old: several original series are on the way, including ones focusing on Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, and Loki.

During the 2020 Super Bowl event we got a brief look at some of these original Marvel shows, specifically Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Loki. You can see the spot embedded below.

We're not quite sure exactly when all this new material is going to show up – The Falcon and the Winter Solider is scheduled to appear in August 2020 though, with WandaVision due in December 2020. There are also a variety of Marvel documentaries and other features to be watched.

None of those series are available at launch though, unlike The Mandalorian Star Wars spin off – you're going to have to wait until 2020 or even 2021 before those Marvel originals start streaming, with exact release dates to be announced nearer the time. Let's hope Disney gets them right.

Then there are the movies: Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man, Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World were all available at the launch of Disney+ or soon after. In fact 17 of the 23 MCU movies are now available at the last count.

Black Panther turned up on Disney Plus in March, and two more movies have arrival dates confirmed: Avengers: Infinity War hits Disney+ on June 25, 2020, and Ant-Man and the Wasp lands on July 29.

As the tweet above announced, Avengers: Endgame was available straight away from the launch day of November 12 too – showing that Disney Plus had plenty of great Marvel movies on offer right from the beginning.

And what about the future of the MCU? In an interview with Bloomberg, Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige has confirmed that anyone who wants to "understand everything" in future Marvel movies is going to have to pick up a Disney Plus subscription.

In other words, the original Disney Plus content – including those series featuring Hawkeye, Loki and others – will feature information that'll help you understand what happens next in the next phase of the movies.

More recently, we've heard that a couple of Marvel Universe shows might be in development: one is said to be based around the Secret Invasion comic and the shape-shifting aliens known as the Krulls.

To work out when new content is going to drop, the best place to keep tabs on is probably Twitter – see below for details. Such is the level of interest in these Marvel properties that you're probably going to see a lot of leaks and rumours before the shows actually appear on Disney Plus.

Disney Plus: The Simpsons

And then there's The Simpsons: the classic comedy is into its 31st season now, having completed more than 650 episodes, and they're (almost) all on Disney Plus, thanks to the Disney acquisition of 21st Century Fox. Future episodes will be available to stream too, though it's not exactly clear how long they'll take to get from the small screen to the streaming service.

Simpsons episodes are exclusive to the platform, like a lot of Disney Plus content: you won't be able to stream The Simpsons anywhere else. The Simpsons World digital service, which previously hosted all the episodes online, has been closed down with the arrival of Disney Plus.

If you're a passionate fan of the adventures of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the rest of the crew, then you've got one more reason to sign up for Disney Plus. Watching all the episodes of The Simpsons back-to-back sounds like the ultimate binge watch.

All those lovely Simpsons episodes are available to stream at launch, in the US at least (though it does appear that the Michael Jackson episode has been pulled for obvious reasons). As yet though, Futurama – another Matt Groening creation – hasn't been confirmed for Disney Plus.

Disney Plus streaming, content and image quality

When it comes to devices and quality Disney Plus can be streamed on up to four devices at the same time in lovely 4K HDR with any package – unlike Netflix, which charges a premium for 4K streaming. On top of that, Disney Plus comes with support for both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, so if you have the hardware you'll be able to enjoy an incredibly immersive, cinema-grade audio-visual experience.

Disney has a lot of older content of course, so not everything is available in 4K UHD at the moment. It's the same story on Netflix, which only offers a selection of its content (including all the Netflix originals) in the highest 4K resolution.

Some of the content you can already watch in 4K includes the first Frozen movie, the original Lion King, the original Star Wars trilogy and all the Marvel movies currently screening, so that's a good selection to get you going. Hopefully older content is going to get upgraded in the future too.

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Disney Plus app and features

No matter what device you're using, the Disney Plus apps are a breeze to use. Whether you're on Android or an iPhone, an Xbox One or a PS4, a Roku stick or an Amazon Fire TV stick, you can start watching in seconds.

If you're on a laptop, you can log into Disney+ on the web as well to start watching. There are also some keyboard shortcuts you can take advantage of too, to save you reaching for the mouse – they include Space to pause (and play again), M to mute, and the left and right arrow keys to rewind and fast forward.

Just like Netflix, you can set up multiple user accounts on the Disney+ service, so everyone in the family can keep their own viewing history and recommendations separate. Just select your avatar on the web or in the app to create a new profile.

The service continues to make it to more and more places too, with Tesla boss Elon Musk confirming that Disney Plus is soon going to be available on the console inside his company's electric cars – giving you yet another way to watch all that Star Wars and Marvel content you need to get through.

When it comes to TVs, check with your manufacturer: Samsung smart TVs running the Tizen OS (basically anything from 2016 and later) have a dedicated Disney+ app, so you can get up and running straight away. For other TVs without that functionality, you could always use a Chromecast or a similar device.

The latest series of devices that have been confirmed to get Disney Plus access are those launched under the Amazon Fire TV banner: if you use Amazon kit to do your streaming, then you're able to tune into Disney Plus, and control everything with Alexa too.

Vizio recently became the latest TV maker to confirm that there would be a dedicated Disney+ app arriving on its smart hub platform: all Vizio SmartCast TVs from 2016 and later will get the app. It's a sign that Disney Plus carries enough clout to make manufacturers sit up and take notice.

The Disney Plus interface was shown off in advance, with the familiar rows of shows and movies arranged in blocks for viewers to scroll through. Content is sorted into major hubs, including Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Now the service is live, you can log in and check for yourself.

Keep your eyes peeled for Disney+ functionality arriving on new TVs and other devices, because several bits of hardware have gained an official app since the service first launched.

Disney Plus also offers support for multiple users on the same accounts, like kids and parents – that's actually something that Netflix does very well – and parental control features come built-in. You're able to limit what the kids are able to watch, if you've got some of them with you at home.

Also confirmed is the ability to download content from Disney Plus to devices like smartphones and tablets, ready for watching offline. That should come in handy if you're travelling away from home and want to take the Marvel Cinematic Universe with you.

These apps are still a work in progress though – quite remarkably, at launch the Disney+ service didn't offer a way to automatically resume movies and shows you were part way through, which made it hard to keep track of where you were if you had to break off. That functionality has now been added, as has a "continue watching" bar on the front screen.

There have been a few hiccups along the way as well – Disney Plus suffered some downtime across the world at the start of 2020, though it only lasted a few hours. If something has gone wrong with the Disney servers, you'll probably see an "error 83" message on your device.

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