By Erich Schwartzel 

Walt Disney Co.'s big streaming debut arrived with technical glitches that the company blamed on unexpectedly high demand.

The company's new flagship service, called Disney+, launched Tuesday and immediately caused technical issues for some users, many of whom took to social media to complain about long wait times and error messages.

"The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our high expectations," a Disney spokeswoman said. "We are pleased by this incredible response and are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. We appreciate your patience."

An attempt to watch the Star Wars spinoff "The Mandalorian" on Tuesday was met with a loading page that lasted for more than 40 minutes and still never resulted in the show starting. Other users said online that their attempts to watch a movie or TV show were met with error messages that said, "There seems to be an issue connecting to the Disney+ service." The error messages appeared with animated Disney characters like Pluto.

DownDetector.com, a web service that monitors technical issues on websites, at one point had more than 8,000 reports of issues on Disney+ on Tuesday morning. The majority of the issues reported had to do with video-streaming capabilities, with a smaller number reporting problems with logging into the service.

Disney has been under intense pressure to get this launch right. The company acquired BamTech, a streaming-technology company, to build the technical infrastructure of the app.

Disney+ has been marketed to users for months, and many of those trying to watch today bought three-year subscriptions to the service at a significant discount. Users signing up today can either pay $6.99 a month or an annual rate of $69.99 after a seven-day trial.

Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 12, 2019 10:45 ET (15:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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