Wow – talk about a swing and a miss, eh? Leave it to Disney corporate to try to break into the “fan community scene” with a $75 price point…
So as you may have already heard, it turns out that D23 isn’t a new DVD box set or any of those other rumors, but actually Disney’s attempt at building an official community for its fans. And I say attempt because with all sorts of great free fan communities already online like AllEars.Net and MousePlanet and The DIS Boards and countless others, I’m not really sure what would implore someone to actually spend $75 a year to be a “member” of D23.
But frankly, I think it goes a little deeper than just the $75 price point because let’s take a look at what exactly one gets for seventy-five bucks these days:
- a subscription to Disney Twenty-Three – a quarterly new magazine (cover price on these babies is $15.95 and word has it you can already pick up a copy at your local book store)
- a membership certificate and card (also known as a receipt)
- a “surprise collectible gift” (likely a pin or lithograph of some sort – I just don’t see them shipping out Mickey statues or crystal figurines here)
- discounted admission to an annual D23 Expo fan gathering
- D23 – the website, to stay connected and up to date on all of the latest Disney news (www.disney.com/d23)
So a couple of things here, with the most notable of them being that at least as of launch, there are no ways for fans to “connect” via the D23 website! Sure, you can read a few glossy stories that Disney has posted (and I wonder if these are the same that appear in the magazine…), but one of the huge attractions that people have to all of the unofficial Disney fan sites is the feeling of community and the ability to share content with each other, whether it’s by posting trip photos and other randomness in forums, leaving comments on posts made by the owners of a given website, or following updates and being able to respond via Twitter. When you visit the official D23 website, you’re greeted with a few posts surrounded by plenty of options for you to spend some money on D23 – subscription prices, the upcoming expo, and of course, all sorts of limited edition, official 23 merchandise – and that’s about it.
Needless to say, I won’t be signing up for D23 … I may pick-up a copy of the magazine the next time I’m in Barnes & Noble, but that’s going to be the extent of my participation at least in the foreseeable future. As several other folks have already said, there are just too many other things that could be bought with that $75, from a day’s park admission to a night at a value resort, a really nice dinner, etc.., and honestly, what’s being offered for that price isn’t really all that great of a deal anyways. Those who’ve seen the magazine thus far (I have not) cite that, while all shiny and pretty, the content isn’t any better than any of Disney’s other publications, and I’m sorry, but just like their various pin expos for pin-trading fans, it’s kind of hard for me to get excited about paying a fairly high entrance fee to an expo just so that I can have the opportunity to spend even more on specialized merchandise … especially when in this case, the expos won’t even be exclusive to D23 members – they’ll just get a discount off the admission price.
To be truly cynical, it just sounds to me like the idea for D23 was cooked up when some executive at Disney was made aware of all of the unofficial fan sites already online and decided that they needed to get a piece of that pie … except that then they proceeded to just throw their marketing department at the project without actually doing any research into exactly what makes the existing community sites so successful. That said, it’ll certainly be “interesting” to see how D23 evolves over the upcoming months – no doubt despite its lack of actual value, there will still be a hardcore audience that will happily send in their $75 anyways just because it’s Disney, but I don’t think that any fans of other community sites have much to worry about their favorite gathering places disappearing anytime soon.
You know, maybe sometimes things are better off being left unofficial…