Disney+ surprise: everything’s in Chinese

English viewers must purchase a $20/month “English Unlock Key.”

BURBANK, CA — The long-awaited unveiling of Disney’s streaming service, Disney+, is here. And there are some mighty disappointed people who signed up.

Skeptics who asked how Disney could afford to offer almost all of their content so cheaply now have an answer: the Disney+ app defaults to Mandarin Chinese. Not only that, but English is not available as an option, unless you have first subscribed to an “English Unlock Key.” The app shows a price tag of $20 per month for that key.

It’ll never last

Combined with the pitiful selection the service offers, we predict that Disney+ will fold by the end of the week as people cancel. It’s possible, too, that viewers will choose to switch to the $290/month cable-based “Everything Bundle.”

UPDATE: We left off a third option, which we did not see coming. There has been a surge in Mandarin language enrollment with free language instruction app Duolingo. Apparently Disney fans would rather learn Chinese than be without their DuckTales reruns. Huh.

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Cover photo: 另一家大公司向中國政府傾斜！Photo by Daderot [CC0] via Wikimedia.