Disney+ crashes, high consumer demand blamed

The launch of Disney's new streaming service has got off to a rocky start with thousands complaining of problems.

Disney+ launched today in a number of countries, including the USA, Canada and The Netherlands where users are reporting that the service has crashed.

This has stopped users from signing up or logging in to the service, with users seeing an error message aptly featuring characters from Disney film "Ralph breaks the Internet".

Web monitoring service Downdetector recorded severe issues with the service on the US East and West Coasts as well as in The Netherlands.

Commenting on the issues, a Disney spokesperson said:

 The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our high expectations. We are pleased by this incredible response and are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. 

Disney+ launches in the UK, Ireland and a number of other western European countries on 31st March 2020, and across remaining European countries in the following 12 months - by which point Disney should have stabilised the service.

Crashes appear to have become a rite of passage for most streaming services, with Now TV, Amazon's Prime Video and Netflix all having suffered from outages at some point in their history.