The Disney+ Pre-Launch Anxiety Is Real

At the time of this writing, we're less than 24 hours away from the debut of Disney+, a streaming service that feels like the biggest challenge to Netflix's crown. The service will not only feature the majority of Disney's classic back catalog of films but will also house the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, every Star Wars film (as well as the highly anticipated Star Wars series The Mandalorian), every episode of The Simpsons, and much, much more. They more than likely already have your $6.99, but therein lies the problem: as of right now, no one knows how we'll be able to access Disney+ on November 12.

That's just a small taste of the comments about the forthcoming release of Disney+, but it makes sense why they'd be going so hard. The house that Mickey Mouse built owns some of the most beloved IP across the globe; everyone and their moms have already pre-ordered the service, which in itself seems weird; what does one get from pre-ordering a streaming service? That said, we're here now...will Tuesday, November 12, 2019 be an entire shit show? That's hard to say.

Disney hasn't gone into Disney+ blind; back in September, Disney soft-launched Disney+ in the Netherlands (for free!), which seems like a solid testing ground for this kind of service. Sure, it isn't the cavalcade of streaming that'll be going on when the entire United States and Canada gets their hands on Disney+, but it's a start. They're even pulling in unsurprising streaming data—of course Star Wars and Marvel content is the most-viewed on the service during this trial—and as of right now, there's no word on any issues in terms of overloaded servers or anything, but that's something Disney took into account when building Disney+.

Back in August, Disney streaming services president Michael Paull toldThe Verge that they are “thinking very much about [overload]. Fortunately, we’ve had the experience with Game of Thrones, we’ve had the experience of ESPN+ with the big pay-per-view events that we’re doing with UFC exclusively on our platform. We’re getting big bursts. We’ve built capabilities to sustain that, both in terms of processing the transactions that all come in — in a very, very short period of time — as well as the streams.” That's encouraging, but when it's game time, shit can go left.

Somehow, there's a trickling of information regarding the performance of the app (which we still currently don't know how to access) and things seem...fine?

That sounds promising less than 24 hours out, but if you listen to some people out there, there's a cause for concern when it comes to Disney rolling out new services that should be taken into consideration.

It happens. One would hope that, in 2019, Disney of all companies could easily launch a streaming service without major hiccups. Not releasing an app before the launch might've been an anxiety-inducing misstep, but let's keep it a buck: you know damn well you'll be lined up to check out Disney+ whenever the app is available. Until then...