Disney+ Pricing

[Rob]

I paid $76.29 in 2020.
Then $87.19 in 2021 and 2022.
It jumped to $119.89 last year.
Now $139.99

I exclusively watch new Star Wars stuff on it and don't use it for anything else.  Then I spent $40-ish per season to buy stuff on 4K when they release it anyway.

So I just canceled it and figure I can subscribe a month at a time when there is a new season of something released.

Anyone else doing something similar or have any tricks to get it for less?  I just don't get that much out of it and am annoyed that it's gone up like 60% in two years.

[Dave]

Yeah, I just get it for Star Wars too.  Sure I watch some of the Marvel series, but I don't really feel I need to watch those.

I'm tempted to switch to the ad based version and save $36 a year.  I get ads in Hulu and some of the Prime stuff and its not the end of the world.

It is a lot of dough for watching a new live action series every year or so.

[Rob]

I thought about that too but ads in the middle of something like Andor is the only thing I’d consider worse than the price hike…

[Ryan]

Yeah, I just get it for Star Wars too.  Sure I watch some of the Marvel series, but I don't really feel I need to watch those.

I'm tempted to switch to the ad based version and save $36 a year.  I get ads in Hulu and some of the Prime stuff and its not the end of the world.

It is a lot of dough for watching a new live-action series every year or so.

I thought about that too but ads in the middle of something like Andor is the only thing I’d consider worse than the price hike…

We have the ad version of Hulu and had ads run during Shogun. It is the WORST. Not only does it take you out of the moment but the contrast (both visual and audio) is soooo jarring going from darkly lit cinematographic scene w/ quiet score or dramatic moment to a solid bright pink screen with someone yelling something at you trying to sell you a phone. I couldn't do that for Andor (I'm surprised we did it for Shogun).

We are in a similar boat. We mostly watch Star Wars & Marvel on D+, very little on Hulu, & almost nothing on ESPN+ (If ESPN+ didn't blackout every single game our local teams play, I'd feel like we got a lot more value out of it.)

Streaming is now just as bad as cable used to be.

[Jeff]

So I just canceled it and figure I can subscribe a month at a time when there is a new season of something released.

If you can get away with it, that is the best option.  Once you've been off of it for a while, you'll get email deals to entice you back so not only do you save money the months you are skipping but you'll get lower prices when you come back.

We were able to stick to that for a long time and tried to limit ourselves to just two options -  Amazon Prime (mainly for the free shipping perk) plus one other streamer at a time.  We'd have Max for 3 months, binge what we wanted, then switch to Netflix or whatever and repeat.

It worked well for a while but then the model fell apart. We kept one streamer so I could finish a show/season but my wife started a new one early to watch a show with her friends.  Then it was my kids needing something to watch with their friends.

We have way too many now and I hate it.  Feels like I am tossing money out the window each month for no reason as there is way more content than we could possibly ever watch at once.

We have the ad version of Hulu and had ads run during Shogun. It is the WORST. Not only does it take you out of the moment but the contrast (both visual and audio) is soooo jarring going from darkly lit cinematographic scene w/ quiet score or dramatic moment to a solid bright pink screen with someone yelling something at you trying to sell you a phone.

100% this.  I had the same thoughts trying to get through Shogun on Hulu via D+.  I loved the show but the experience with the ads and such was awful.

My new pet peeve is watching tv shows that were clearly designed to run on an ad free platform and now have ads seemingly randomly inserted into the show with no awareness to the situation or plot or scene.

At least in the old model, network shows knew there would be commercials and plotted for those breaks accordingly.  Now though, I can't tell if it's just the ad algorithm trying to figure out where the ad should go or the streamers purposefully making it terrible to get you to pony up the extra to go ad free.