Day 6/365
September 26 came and went, but no new website for Disney Movie Rewards. It wasn’t until yesterday, October 2, 2019, that it finally went live. Here are my initial thoughts on the new Disney Movie Insiders site.
Clunky Navigation
I tried the site from my phone yesterday before trying it on my laptop today. I thought, “It must be better there!” but it wasn’t. Both mobile and desktop versions are very clunky and hard to navigate. The sliders don’t slide. You click something for more information, and it goes to a screen with the same information, and nothing is clickable. On my laptop, the site looks great in Firefox, but crappy in the recommended browser, Chrome. Some of the graphics are pixelated and blurry. It really seems like a botched job overall.
Missing Account History
Since I had taken a screenshot of my account before the Disney Movie Rewards site went down, I know that all of my points came through on the other side. However, when you click on Point History, it only shows the points that were migrated over. I like to look through my history to see which movies I’ve redeemed, tickets I’ve uploaded, if I’ve gotten my bonus points, etc, so now I’m completely in the dark.
Redemptions
The redemptions page has been completely gutted. Right now, only digital awards are available, with the promise of physical rewards returning in the future. I do like the fact that there are several denominations of Disney gift cards, plus Disney Store vouchers, but the redemption values are all over the place! $5 cards vary from 500-600 points, the $10 plain Mickey card is a whopping 1225 points, while you can get an $100 Olaf card for the low, low price of 8500 points. Hopefully, people will pull out their calculators and do the math before they redeem for a gift card.
Barebones Content
This really seems like a skeleton site that was hurriedly thrown up in order to have something since the site had been down past the due date. All of the great content is gone, most notably the Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary Celebration. There are no sweepstakes to enter, and sadly, my beloved Disney Challenges are no more. Maybe this is just a beginning, and they are planning to add more content as they go along, but it’s not a fantastic start.
App Forthcoming
While I wasn’t looking to download yet another app, I may have to if I want creative ways to add points to my account. DMI promises an app is coming soon with new ways to earn points by “playing interactive experiences”. Maybe they’re planning something even better than Disney Challenges! At this rate, I’m not holding out hope, but I guess they could surprise me.
Glitches Galore
One check of the announcement post on Disney Movie Insiders Facebook or Twitter pages show that DMI is experiencing some technical difficulties. Many users are reporting that their points didn’t migrate over properly or at all. Others are getting an invalid code error when entering the new movies they received during the blowout sale a couple of weeks ago.
Released Too Soon
Even though we waited several extra days for the debut of the new website for Disney Movie Insiders, perhaps we should have waited several more. I guess we should reserve judgement while they work out the technical difficulties, but in this day and age, I feel like a company as big as Disney should have their digital ducks in a row before they launch something like this or at least release a beta version in order to work out the kinks first.
