A streaming candy store for kids, but parents should be wary of Hulu

I’m old enough that my kids grew up watching a combination of VHS tapes and DVDs. I can only imagine what it’s like for modern parents to have access to Disney+, the streaming service that delivers Bluey, Moana, Luke Skywalker, Iron Man and endless other kid-friendly content to just about anywhere: living room, restaurant, backseat, window seat, etc. I’m insanely jealous. While kids certainly need limits on screen time, there’s no denying the precious resource that is Disney+. It’s almost silly to review it, but review it I shall — in part because there’s a very important (and kind of disappointing) wrinkle parents should consider before subscribing. Here’s my Disney+ review.

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Disney+: What will it cost you?

Disney+ is available on its own or as part of a few different bundles — and to say this gets a little confusing is an understatement.

The cheapest, simplest, most straightforward option: Disney+ Basic, which costs $9.99 per month but does include ads and doesn’t let you download content (like to a phone or tablet) for offline viewing. Disney+ Premium ($15.99) frees you from commercials and allows downloads on up to 10 devices. It also adds Dolby Atmos into the mix; Basic limits you to 5.1-channel audio (which, to be honest, is perfectly fine unless you’re a die-hard audio enthusiast).

My take: It’s worth the extra $6 per month to avoid ads and be able to download content to phones and tablets (for car, airplane and other on-the-go viewing).

Ready to complicate things a bit? The Disney Bundle Duo Basic adds Hulu — like, the entire streaming service, with all its content — for just a buck more. The Disney Bundle Duo Premium, same deal: no ads, a dollar extra. The latter is, to me, the slam-dunk choice, no question.

Unless, that is, you like sports, in which case it’s worth considering the Disney Bundle Trio Basic or Trio Premium ($16.99 and $26.99, respectively). Those net you ESPN+ — with ads, though, regardless of tier, because it’s all broadcast sports, and there’s no getting around those commercials.

There’s one last option: You can get Disney+, Hulu and Max together for $16.99 with ads or $29.99 without. That brings HBO, Warner and Discovery content into your viewing mix. Assuming you value all three services, the ad-free tier works out to $10 per service per month, definitely a better deal than you could get subscribing to them separately — and pretty impressive bang for the content buck.

Disney+: What kind of content does it have?

But we’re here to discuss Disney proper. (If you want to know that’s on tap at Hulu, read my separate Hulu review — which, incidentally, also details some of the above bundling options.)

As you’d expect, the service is home to the vast majority of Disney media: Classic and recent favorites from the company’s archives (everything from Bambi and Cinderella to The Lion King and Moana 2), as well as newer TV series like Bluey, Phineas and Ferb and Young Jedi Adventures. Vintage Mickey Mouse shorts, modern live-action movies, Disney originals — it’s an embarrassment of kid-friendly riches. (There are a few movies still locked in the Disney vault because they haven’t aged well or they’re enmeshed in some convoluted licensing issue.)

I’m partial to some of the documentaries, including absolute gems about composer John Williams and Muppets creator Jim Henson. If you’re a Star Wars fan, Light & Magic is not to be missed.

And that’s just under the Disney umbrella. You’ll also find just about everything from Pixar, Marvel, the Star Wars universe and National Geographic. So you’ve got Coco and Toy Story for the younger kids, Avengers and The Mandalorian for the older ones and on and on.

Because Disney owns the bulk of the 20th-Century Fox film library too, you’ll also find some proto-Fox family fare like Home Alone and Ice Age, too. That includes all 30-plus seasons of The Simpsons, too.

With the notable exception of Dancing with the Stars (and a simulcast of the free web stream from ABC News), Disney+ doesn’t have much live content. However, the service recently added a “Streams” section that lets you dip into one of five ongoing programming blocks divided by genres, including musicals, preschool-targeted cartoons, documentaries and family-friendly adventure movies. (At this writing, however, Streams is difficult to locate; it’s relegated to one of the randomly ordered rows on the Home page.)

When you consider that you can get all this for as little as $10 monthly, it’s easy to see why I’m so enthusiastic. (Or, as noted above, rather jealous. I really wish Disney+ was a thing when my kids were younger. We had to drive all the way to Blockbuster just to see if Tangled was in stock. It was the Stone Age, people!)

Disney+: What’s the interface like?

A streaming service designed with families in mind needs to be easy to navigate (though your kids will likely figure it out regardless; be prepared to ask them for help). For the most part, Disney+ is intuitive, with the now-standard lefthand menu that leads you to Search, Home, Watchlist, Movies and so on.

The home screen is headed by a carousel highlighting new and/or noteworthy items. Below that: icons for quick access to Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic sub-pages, a very smart and useful addition to the interface. Further down you get the usual rows of categorical selections: new additions, recommended for you and the like.

So, navigation is simple enough, but there are certain aspects of the interface I don’t like — especially in the Roku version of the Disney+ app. For example, when you pause a show, nothing pops up: no status bar indicating progress, no access to audio settings. If you hit the down arrow on your remote, you get the status bar, at least — but there’s still no option to change the language or enable closed captions. (Turns out you do that via a Roku menu.)

In the Google TV version of the app, pausing brings up a status bar and an audio icon, same as in pretty much every other streaming app.

The search function is also poorer on the Roku side, starting with the design of it: When you click the magnifying glass, you’re presented with a page showing a search field at the very top and a bunch of tiles beneath the heading “Explore.” If you navigate up to access that search bar, a keyboard appears — from the bottom of the screen, which is also where the active search field lives. The top one just sits there, unused. Weird.

What’s more, that keyboard occupies fully half the screen, so as you start typing, the results appear mostly obscured; you can see only one row’s worth of results. The whole thing is just poorly designed. On the plus side, you can use voice search if your remote has a microphone. But the Google app’s version of search is better all around, with a completely different (and more logical) layout.

Disney+: The Hulu problem

If you subscribe to a bundle that includes Hulu, there are a few things to know. First, while you’ll be able to use your Disney account credentials to sign into the Hulu app and use that service normally within the confines of that app, you’ll also find Hulu content scattered within the Disney+ app (though not vice-versa).

That means in the aforementioned carousel, you might see Inside Out 2 in one pane and The Kardashians in the next. Similarly, below a row of recommended Marvel movies, a row of Hulu recommendations including Hell’s Kitchen and the movie Nightbitch. See the problem?

Disney+ is meant for families, but a lot of Hulu content is decidedly adults-only. Seeing it all mixed together is jarring to say the least. Thankfully, you can set up child profiles and apply parental controls, which can reduce (though not fully eliminate) Hulu’s infiltration. And by default, any profile created for a child under 13 will be set to a content rating of PG-13, meaning the TV-MA stuff won’t be visible. However, unless parents also set up a PIN for their own profiles, there’s a chance kids might land there.

All this is to say that the Hulu integration adds complications for parents. And I don’t see the value of that integration, especially in its current iteration.

Indeed, the “Hulu experience” within Disney+ is mediocre at best. For example, if you select Hulu from the top menu (it gets added alongside Pixar, Marvel, etc.), you might reasonably expect something akin to the what you get in the Hulu app. You don’t; it’s a very stripped-down version, with little more than randomly organized categorical rows (Drama Movies, Complete Series, etc.)

What’s more, there’s no synchronization between Hulu proper and the Hulu inside Disney+. Any favorites you’ve identified in the former aren’t similarly tagged in the latter. Any progress you’ve made in a movie or series isn’t reflected in its Disney+ counterpart.

Hopefully Disney (which, if it wasn’t obvious, effectively owns Hulu) will eventually roll everything into a single app, with a much stronger delineation between family and non-family programming, but for now it’s all pretty messy. (And I haven’t even mentioned Hulu + Live TV, which adds cable-like live streaming to the equation and also has Disney-related bundling options. Even messier!)

Disney+: The verdict

Much as I’m flummoxed and frustrated by some of Disney’s interface decisions, I can’t deny the value of the Disney+ service. For parents and grandparents, for fans of Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars, it’s really a must-have. There’s simply no other source for all that great content, and happily it’s fairly affordable as well.

The only question is whether you want to bundle Hulu, Hulu and ESPN or Hulu and Max. Just take note that if you do that, Hulu content is going to clutter up the Disney+ interface whether you like it or not. (Note to Disney: My daughter has a degree in UX design. Ping me, I’ll make the introductions.)

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