Disney Movie Club Review: The Truth.

Disney Movie Club ReviewFor the last couple months I had seen advertisements for Disney Movie Club here and there saying “4 Blu-Rays for $1,” or “4 Movies for $1.” Immediately I think, scam… there’s no way you can get 4 Disney Blu-Ray movies for $1 because these movies are $30 a piece no matter where or when you buy them. What’s the catch to this? Do I have to sell my soul? Somethings wrong.

First thing I do is Google “Disney Club Movie Review” and you immediately see “435 Disney Club Movie Complaints,” “Customer Service Complaints” and similar pages like that. That might turn you off immediately because of the quick and seemingly large amount of negative remarks, but if you read in a little further, inside of all the negative reviews are tons of positive ones defending the club.

Maybe that’s not enough so you look up YouTube reviews: problem is a lot of them are 1, 2 — even 3 years old. Most are positive, but if you’re like me you want something current because things change, but the problem again is a lot of those reviews are lost in with “Disney Movie Club Unboxing” and things like that. This review, which isn’t free or sponsored by Disney will list how to take advantage of this program and why it’s such a steal, in 2016 aka something new, current, now. This in in-depth and full of everything you will come across. Hope it helps.

OK OK, enough of the intro, what’s my point? Let’s get into it.

Part 1: More Movies: It’s 5 Movies for $1, not 4 

If you go the standard way through a advertisement the deal is “4 Movies for $1,” but if you get a referral link, like mine — CLICK HERE, you get a better deal which is actually “5 Movies for $1” when you join the club.

Part 2: The Catch: When you join the club you commit to buying 4 movies over the course of 24 months

This is the catch, when you sign up you get the deal, but you have to buy 4 more movies at full price. So it’s around $30 per movie over the course of the next two years. Don’t let that scare you off just yet.

Part 3: Featured Title of the Month: How you can get charged if you don’t pay attention!

Every 4 weeks or so you will get something in the mail and email that tells you what the “Featured Title of the Month” is. If you don’t respond to that you will get charged for that movie. Pay attention, it isn’t that hard. If you somehow get lazy and forget, you will get charged and it will count as one of your 4 commitment movies.

Here is a screen shot of the Disney Movie Club home page when you sign in. The left part was empty until (at the time May 24th) when it was updated with ‘Your Featured Title.’ This is the thing everyone complains about. Clear as day you can see respond now and you have almost a month to respond. It’s that simple, if you are that lazy, yes you will get charged for it, but c’mon….. it’s so simple.

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That’s really all there is to know, but it still can be confusing because you want to see it all in action. Here’s what I did and what you should do to get the most bang for your buck.

Step 1: Start by CLICKING HERE to get my referral, you will get 5 Movies for $1 as you join the club. Pick your 5 movies.

Step 2: On your initial order of 5 movies, add two additional movies.

Why? because they are offered at a discounted price and one is added towards your commitment. Add your sixth movie $14.95 and then add your seventh movie $9.95. The total for your first order of 7 movies will be around $28. (or less)

Note: in the newest update you will add your additional movies after you complete your order. It will be in the final screen after you click submit. This isn’t how it used to be, so don’t worry — it will come up before it’s all said and done.

My first order was: Toy Story 1, 2 & 3, Cars, Up, Finding Nemo & Wall-E on Blu-Ray for $28.10. Now, after that first order I am only committed to buying 3 more movies over the course of 24 months. If you’re right there with me we are in good shape.

If I ordered these movies off Amazon, Best Buy or Walmart the total comes to an average of $180. That means so far the savings equals to $152 on the first order. Crazy huh? That is the best part, but the trend continues.

Step 3: Wait. Wait. Wait.

You have 24 months to buy 3 movies, there’s no rush to spend your money if there aren’t movies you want. Make sure you decline the “Feature of the Month” when it comes through. Maybe your thinking “there are more movies I want…” The key is to wait for the Exclusive Member Offers that come up time after time.

Note: Offers that have come up during my time include: 3 Blu Rays for $30, Buy 1 get your second 40% off and 20% off your entire order just to name a few. With this you can definitely take more advantage of this program and stack your collection if you’d like to.

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Step 4: Commit.

Place those orders wisely and make use of those member offers. Here’s how I did it.

*Note again: Savings are based off Amazon, Best Buy & Walmart’s average prices.

  • First order = 7 movies for $28.10 (Savings $152)
  • Second order = 2 movies for $49.22 (Savings $0) See Note

On my 2nd order there were two discounts applied! All the Pixar movies were $5 off at the time so instead of $30, they were $25, but on top of that order another discount: 20% off your entire order was applied. Therefore every PIXAR movie was $20. The total for the two (Inside Out & The Good Dinosaur) was $40, not including the additional tax and shipping which added the $9.22. Realistically is was $10 of savings on the movies, shipping ruined that.

Note: At first I thought that this order wasn’t going to count towards my commitment status because the items were ‘On Sale’ and not full price. Officially the item is suppose to be at ‘regular club price’ and these weren’t. Luckily, these were ‘Featured Titles of the Month’ so they counted towards my commitment!

Disney Movie Club ReviewSo far in total we’re at 9 Blu-Ray Disney movies for $77.32 ($8.59 per movie)

  • Third order = 2 movies for $57.90 (Savings $2)

This is where it sucks, I had to order one at regular price $29.99 (another commitment down) and then I used the 40% off Member Discount on my second so, $17.97. Tax and process added another $9.99 which brought (Monsters Inc & Monsters University) to $58. You might think this is crazy but these movies go for $30 a piece at Best Buy & on Amazon at the time. So it was a wash.

Disney Movie Club ReviewNow we’re at 11 Blu-Ray Disney movies for $135.22 ($12.29 per movie)

Note: When I made this order I noticed that it didn’t show up as a commitment right away. Before I got angry I did a little digging and I figured out that it takes “some time” for it to show up after it’s shipped and payment is processed. About 48 hours later it showed up as an official commitment! Just for fun I emailed Customer Service and this is what they said:

“We sincerely regret any inconvenience you may have experienced. After shipment of movies, please allow 2 weeks for the commitment status to be updated on the website.”

Hope that helps if it had come up or will come up for you.

  • Fourth order = 2 movies for $49.22 (Savings $0)

Note: When it came to this order there were discounts of course. Zootopia was $24.99 and during the Special Promotion counted as 1 unit toward purchase commitment ($5 off). On top of that you had, once again 40% off your second title along with another $5 discount on Pixar movies which made Brave half off at $14.95. The total for the two (Zootopia & Brave) was $40, not including the additional tax and shipping which added the $9.22. Realistically, again is was $10 of savings on the movies, shipping ruined that.

Disney Movie Club ReviewNow we’ve completed out commitment with a total of 13 Blu-Ray Disney movies for $184.44 ($14.18 per movie)

Step 5: VIP!

Once you complete your commitment soon after you become a VIP member which gets you even more discounts on movies, options for special packages, pins and more. If you want to continue your membership in that field, that’s up to you. My recommendation is canceling your membership when your commitment is fulfilled so your done and there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not enough for you, wait a little bit and then re-join the club and get all these deals all over again to build your collection.

(So far the deals aren’t impressive, but if you are a pin collector there are free pins with movie purchases.)

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Step 6: Disney Movie Rewards

Something not to forget is that every one of these movies comes with a code for Disney Movie Rewards Club, a free service where you can stack your points and get rewards. Each of my 13 Blu-Ray movies had a code in them and at 150 points a piece I stacked up 1,950 points from this. With that I turned in some points and I got Cars 2 on 3D/Blu-Ray for FREE and still had 300 points left over. With those 300 points you could get a free poster or for 300 points you can get a $5 gift-card for next Disney Movie purchase.

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Negatives

Even though the majority of the Disney Movie Club is positive, there are a couple little annoying things to point out so you go in knowing everything top to bottom.

Slow Shipping: A lot of the comments on the internet say it takes multiple weeks to arrive. You would think that a company like Disney would have huge outlets with UPS & FedEx. Standard shipping takes no more than what, 5 business days if it were to go coast to coast?

My case wasn’t as bad as the comments. My first order ‘when I joined’ was placed on May 17 & the following day I received an email saying my order had shipped.

With a May 18th ship date, it came in on May 27th. (8 Business Days) 

Note: Media Mail is USPS, so Saturday counts as a day.

They do use media mail, the slowest and cheapest mail out there, but maybe it depends on where you live? I’m out in the Bay Area, maybe that makes a difference? So, I waited again on my next orders:

Second order: shipped on June 1st and it arrived on June 10th. (8 Business Days)

Third order: June 8th ship date, arrived June 13th. (4 Business Days) 

Fourth order: June 13th ship date, arrived June 20th. (6 Business Days)

If media mail is the way they always intend to go… there’s really no way around it. Ordering something and then having up to 10 business days go by not knowing anything is terrible. Sure, I can pay for priority shipping, but who wants to do that when we are all trying to save money.

Slipcovers or nah? Once again, something small, but confusing. Watching YouTube reviews, pictures uploaded on Instagram, etc… slipcovers for the movies seem to be random.

One video will show the subscriber opening 4+ movies all with slipcovers and others (with the same movies and around the same date) will have none. You don’t HAVE to have slipcovers, I know I’m being picky… but it makes the packaging look nicer and more legit. This “exclusive club” should have to perks to get the slipcovers. The question really is, why is it random? Note: my initial order of 7 Blu Rays, one (Toy Story) had a slipcover. For the other 6 movies, 2 of them (The Good Dinosaur & Zootopia) had slips.  That’s 3/13!

dm5Processing & Shipping Rates: This isn’t something I saw in comments online, just something that I noticed… Once again being picky! In your orders they add shipping and processing rates depending on how many movies you order. For example, my second order had a fee of $5.44. If I would have added a third movie they would have charged another $1.50 or whatever. It’s unnecessary and a bit ‘schemey.’

The total for my 4 orders… Shipping & Processing: $16.32

That’s Disney sucking out extra cash from you. Shipping might have an excuse, but processing? It’s media mail in an envelope…. The savings are unreal at the end of this so honestly, it’s whatever. I’m still saving tons of money in the end.

Information Lacking: Everything with this club — like the website, the brochures you get in the mail and the emails are all really legit and professional. It catches your eye and draws you in… The problem is you have to actually sit & dig into the FAQ and the rules so you can fully understand how to take advantage of this club. You can really get screwed if you don’t pay attention. That’s where I can understand people calling it a “hack,” a “scheme” and a “rip-off.” It really can be if you don’t pay attention and get your information down. Customer Service through email and social media is slower than normal too. You can sum it up like this:

Take advantage of this club or it could take advantage of you!

Conclusion — Join now! SAVE tons of money and stack your collection!

This program is a total steal and I recommend it to anyone wanting to build their Disney collection for the cheapest price. I came into this looking to get as many PIXAR movies as possible for the lowest amount of money and I achieved that. If you are looking to get a bulk of classics from Disney, which by the way —  will never be on sale unless it’s maybe something like Black Friday, this is the way to go.

Now that I have made sense of everything and did some knit-picking myself on a couple things, I realize that everyone that joins this club is a fan of Disney. With that in mind, and with Disney’s track-record you have high standards from a company as GLOBAL as they are. That’s the complaints with the uncertainty, the slipcovers, customer service and the semi-slow shipping… It’s not THAT big of a deal, you just expect more because it’s Disney. That’s it.

The Numbers

You have to go into this knowing that you’ll spend money, but it’s the final savings that makes it all make sense. I got 13 Blu-Ray Disney Movies for a total of $184 — $14 a movie. To go along with this I got Cars 2 for free and $5 off my next movie purchase from Disney Movie Rewards. Another $30 in savings on the house with rewards from these purchases.

That makes it, that’s the steal: total price per movie after commitment is fulfilled. Period.

Just for fun I added all these movies, identical in format to mine, into My Cart on Amazon — the “place you can get these the cheapest” and the total came to $351.17, at Walmart $369.79 & at Best Buy $348.86. Below you can check out all the prices in graphic form… There is a clear winner and it’s not even close.

If you take the next lowest best price, Best Buy you still save $164.42!!!!!!

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YES, I SAVED $164!

Now that I have completed this commitment I will be canceling, but rejoining and doing it all over again in the near future.

Hope this helps and you have a FULL understanding on how it all works and how to get the most out of it. Even more… how much of a steal it really is! Please let me know if it helped you in the comments and I will do more reviews on this in the future.

Update: (January 19, 2019) Disney Banned me from the Disney Movie Club, because this review was too popular. Check out what happened in my recent post. Thank you for all the support.

Matt.