The future of Disney Plus is a confused mess

Newly minted CEO Josh D’Amaro says that he wants to turn Disney Plus into “the immersive, interactive digital centerpiece of the company.” It used to be that people went to the movies or theme parks to immerse themselves in Disney’s fictional worlds. But now, D’Amaro says that he sees Disney Plus becoming “the primary relationship between Disney and its fans.”

The general idea that D’Amaro put forth during his call with investors this week is that Disney Plus and Disney’s parks are both places that people visit to spend money while engaging with the company’s characters and worlds. D’Amaro framed the streaming service and the parks as complimentary parts of Disney’s larger brand that, together, could create “a more connected fan experience” where Disney uses “technology as an accelerant.”

A lot of this makes sense on paper. Seeing a movie or show on Disney Plus could inspire a fan to plan a trip to Disney World, and a trip to Disney World might push a visitor to sign up for the streaming service if they don’t already have one. It also tracks that Disney would put more energy toward building Disney Plus’ profile given how much cheaper a subscription is compared to the costs attached with making a trip to one of Disney’s theme parks.

D’Amaro — who has been banging this kind of synergy drum ever since he became CEO — told investors that reducing Disney Plus’ churn by making the platform central to Disney’s brand “might be the single most significant opportunity that we have.” But what’s hard to understand is how putting Disney Plus “right at the middle” of Disney’s sports, games, and experiences (read: parks) might actually work in practice or if it’s something viewers would actually want.

Disney first began making overtures about supercharging Disney Plus a few years back when Bob Chapek was still in charge. In 2022, Chapek outlined a vision for Disney Plus in which the platform would eventually merge “the physical and the digital aspects of your Disney lifestyle.” Back then, the company was talking about building a system in which the details of a person’s visit to a Disney Park could influence the kinds of content that would be featured on their Disney Plus accounts. Under Chapek, there were also reports that Disney was considering an Amazon Prime–inspired subscription tier that would have given users access to discounts on physical merchandise and theme parks tickets. But by 2025, then-reinstated CEO Bob Iger appeared to be much more focused on fashioning the streamer into a metaverse filled with games and AI slop. None of these previous experiments to reinvent Disney Plus ever actually materialized.

Now, the plan seems to be a unification of Disney’s various applications — like My Disney Experience and Disney Cruise Line Navigator — that would turn Disney Plus into a one-stop shop for all things Disney. But a souped-up Disney Plus that also functions as a hub for information about upcoming theme park trips and cruises does not exactly sound like something that would be very enjoyable to use.

What this does sound a lot like is Disney taking cues from other tech companies like Meta that have a history of juicing engagement on their various platforms by adding features that no one asked for. The idea of Disney Plus going this route calls to mind the way that Instagram became an overbloated, unintuitive platform as executives built Stories / Reels / Shopping features into it in order to keep people from jumping ship to other social media apps. Most of us can agree that this approach to boosting engagement led to a markedly worse user experience, but at the same time, it did keep users logging on.

Like all major streamers, one of Disney Plus’ biggest goals is to keep its subscribers from leaving the platform. One of the ways Disney can realistically do that is to keep releasing new projects that people want to watch, but D’Amaro’s recent comments make it sound like we might soon see a Disney Plus that feels more like an overbusy, maze-like mall that’s designed to get people to spend money on things they weren’t even thinking about in the first place.

That would be deeply at odds with the thing that draws people to streaming platforms: a desire to watch something with the understanding that they have already paid the price of entry up front. That sort of experience is fundamentally different from what motivates people to go on expensive vacations where they’ll encounter Disney characters while having no choice but to buy overpriced food. But that might not stop Disney from trying to make this work — especially because some of its other recent gambles haven’t paid off.