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Disney's ENTIRE Movie Library Is About To Be Available Online 

by Christina Marfice
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Image via Walt Disney Productions / IMDB

Disney’s new streaming service is the end of the infamous Disney Vault

Every Disney fan (nay, everyone who has ever owned a TV with cable) remembers the threat of the infamous Disney Vault. Every time the company would release one of its classic animated films on tape or DVD, its commercials would warn that you only had a short period of time to purchase it before it went back into the vault. It’s enough to scare any Mouseketeer into heading straight to the store to pick up whatever film has been released for a limited time.

But no longer will the threat of the Vault hang over our heads. Disney has announced that with the launch of its streaming service, Disney+, every film that normally stays in the Vault is going online, which means, God willing, our children will never know a world in which Disney classics aren’t available at our fingertips, 24-7.

“At some point fairly soon after launch, it will house the entire Disney motion picture library,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said at the company’s annual meeting in St. Louis this week. “So the movies that… traditionally have been kept in a vault and brought out basically every few years will be on the service.”

Yes, you read that right. The entire Disney motion picture library. If you want to watch Snow White, you can watch Snow White. Sleeping Beauty? You can watch that too. The Princess and the Frog? You betcha. Bambi? Get the tissues ready and queue it up.

What’s that sound you hear? Why, it’s every Disney-loving person on the internet loudly rejoicing at hearing this news.

Of course, there’s never been an actual Disney Vault, despite the animations showing reels of film getting locked up behind a heavy metal safe door. The “Disney Vault” is just a part of Disney’s marketing strategy, which involved releasing titles on a schedule, then pulling them from the market for, usually, 7-10 years at a time to let demand build before they were released again. Sorry if that kills any of the magic; it just is what it is.

But that doesn’t change the fact that in our increasingly digital world, strategies involving physical vaults and timed schedules of release for physical copies of films are both obsolete. More and more, people are moving to streaming and digital downloads for media, rather than physical copies like VHS tapes (LOL), DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. This is a genius move by Disney to get out ahead of that change, and to build hype for its streaming service. As if we weren’t already hyped AF.

There’s no official launch date for Disney+ yet, but barring any delays, it should be sometime this year. We also don’t know for sure what the pricing structure will be, but with this announcement, in addition to the original content that’s already been announced for the streaming platform, it will be easy to justify shelling out for another streaming site account. Especially if that streaming site account comes with every Disney classic at our fingertips.

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