I first joined the Disney Movie Club five years ago and have cancelled and re-enrolled repeatedly in order to stock up on a lot of blu-rays from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. Eventually I got pretty much everything I wanted so I have been picking up newer movies. During my fourth enrollment, I picked up a lot of referrals and got more movies from the referrals than enrollment. Eventually the referrals started to dry up and I joined a fifth time in February of last year. Since then I only picked up one referral, but the bigger problem was that once Covid hit, there were fewer movies being released and therefore fewer blu-rays. Now things are picking up again and I was able to put together six titles I wanted for a new enrollment. Disney’s releases lately haven’t been great, but still decent enough to justify $8 or so per movie and I wound up picking up Onward (B+), Cruella (A), Raya and the Last Dragon (A), Black Widow (B), Luca (B+), and Soul (B+). I could easily pass on Black Widow, but I didn’t want to wait for Shang-Chi (B+) or Free Guy (B+) to be eligible for enrollment (usually 9-12 weeks after the movie is released on blu-ray). I definitely would not get Jungle Cruise (B-) or Ron’s Gone Wrong (D).
If I wanted, I could go ahead and pick up Shang-Chi now as one of my two full-price commitments purchases to complete my membership. Since it just came out it is still only $24.95 instead of $29.99. I kind of wanted to pick up Fantasia which I’m not crazy about, but it is a classic. Rather than include it in their Signature series like most of their other classics, Disney released it in a box set with Fantasia 2000 and a collection of short features called Celebrating Mickey. Unfortunately, that set is $34.95, $10 more than I would like to spend on a commitment. That means I am basically paying $10 extra to get Fantasia 2000 (which at least I liked more than Fantasia) and Celebrating Mickey. So I bit the bullet and got that set as my first commitment, but it is going to really raise the cost of this membership. Now that I have seen West Side Story, I may wait on that to come out as my next commitment unless something good comes along at $19.99, the minimum price for something to count as a commitment. Another thought was to get the Disney canon movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire which includes a direct-to-video sequel that was not as good. The problem is the original wasn’t that great either, getting only a B from me. But the member-exclusive 2-pack of that movie includes digital copies of both movies while the one for enrollment does not.
Anyway, the good thing is that Disney is now releasing a lot of new movies despite pushing back any new Star Wars releases. They acquired 20th Century Fox which opens up more possible purchases. The problem with owning 20th Century is those titles used to get pretty cheap after they had been out a while, dropping to $6 or so, when I would buy them. But Disney holds the line on prices and doesn’t seem to be letting things go for less than $12 in stores.
For my last commitment I decided to get Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Star Wars movies are not eligible for enrollment, so if I am ever going to get the prequel trilogy, I will have to order them as commitments. Sometimes they show up at Target as part of a Buy 2 Get 1 Free special, but they probably wouldn’t have these in stores and then you have to pay for shipping. I could get Episodes 1 and 2 as commitments next time maybe. I could see getting Encanto (B+), Shang-Chi (B+), Free Guy (B+), and West Side Story (A) at some point after they become eligible for enrollment, maybe by May. However, that is only 4 and I need 6 for an enrollment.