I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it recently, but times are tough. Gone are those brief, fleeting days during the late 2010s and early s when streaming was booming and, relatively speaking, so was the economy; days when you could proudly boast that you were concurrently subscribed to Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and the newly emergent Disney Plus with enough change left over for a daily sandwich at the supermarket.
How times have changed. All video streaming services are feeling the strain, raising prices to cope with demand and forcing consumers like me to trim the fat and consider cutting back as the economy struggles (and that’s before we even get on to how much a decent sarnie costs). Disney Plus is very much the cornerstone of my streaming platform collection, and while lesser services have been discarded at the wayside, I simply can’t do without the pleasures Disney provides. You think I’m going to go back to the days of watching The Simpsons via my shelf-long stack of DVDs, or even more desperately, relying exclusively on weekend Channel 4 reruns to get my animated fix? I’ve become accustomed to the high life. I can’t go back. I won’t.
Disney Plus stays, then. It’s our favourite video streaming service, after all, and while I can live without the temptations of Netflix and with being only an occasional tourist on Apple TV Plus when I fancy a nose around the platform’s latest slice of esoteric but talented TV offerings (see Slow Horses and Severance), there’s just too much good stuff over at the House of Mouse. Thankfully, there is now a way to keep your Disney subscription while saving money, and it comes in the shape of the platform’s relatively new ‘Standard with Ads’ tier option.
The Disney Plus homepage, as well as the content itself, is not adorned with ads or banners. (Image credit: Disney Plus)
Opting for the cheapest tier now offered by Disney has certainly saved me a good deal of dosh, although savings vary depending on whether you’re paying for a subscription monthly or via a single yearly instalment. That ‘Standard with Ads’ tier costs just £4.99 a month in the UK, with the Standard, non-ads level setting you back £7.99 a month and the full-fat, all-access Premium subscription costing a princely £10.99 per month (US users have two options: $7.99 a month for an ad-supported 4K tier and $13.99 a month for a parallel Premium subscription). Considering that the highest tier costs more than double the lowest for UK users, it is worth thinking about what you want from your subscription in these penny-stretched days.
