• by Wayne Friedman , November 13, 2019

Walt Disney’s launch of Disney+ on Tuesday overdelivered its results: 10 million subscribers since starting the service, according to the company. And investors liked it. Disney’s stock closed up 7.4% to $148.76 on Wednesday.

Disney made big gains because of a big Verizon promotion that gave existing and new Verizon broadband customers a free monthly subscription to Disney for the first year.  

Disney+ is regularly priced at $6.99. A streaming trio of Disney streaming platforms -- Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu (on-demand) services -- is priced at $12.99 a month.

Early reports said that Disney+ had massive streaming connection issues -- all due to an unexpected big rush of subscribers to the service.

But consumer satisfaction of Disney+ is still largely positive.

Social researcher Sprout Social says the first full day of Disney+ resulted in 1.15 million Twitter mentions -- with 36% positive, 15% negative, and 49% unrated.

The number of Disney’s mentions was much higher than mentions for Apple TV+ at the launch date of Nov. 1 -- 69,904 Twitter mentions, with 16% deemed positive, 7% negative, and 77% unrated.

Before the launch, MoffettNathanson Research estimated Disney+ could have 8 million U.S. subscribers at launch and 18 million by the end of 2020. Of the 18 million subscribers, under 9 million U.S. subscribers would be coming from Verizon alone.