Firstly, you need a company who actually cares about what its users want. Otherwise all the product and UX people's skill gets directed into things like "optimising engagement" which tends not to result in a good experience for the user.
This is the biggest one right here. The platforms that have the most viewers will receive the most attention from the UX team because the risk of a poor experience driving people away is much higher. I'm willing to bet that the average Disney+ subscriber is probably watching shows on their TV and using different methods of input such as a controller or TV remote instead of using a keyboard.
Disney has _passionate_ engineers, not necessarily good. Disney also has the mantra of "we will tell you if your idea is good," rather than empowering their software team to make positive changes. Finally, they pay far less than the industry average, so if you believe in a correlation between good pay and good people, you can see where they come up short.
It seems Disney relies on passionate people will do what is right for the customer in all aspects of their business. That's fine for working in the theme parks, but when you miss out on talented engineers, the folks that work there are passionate but get either blocked by lack of knowledge on how to make a desired change (they don't hire the best), or lack of management support to make the change (we will tell you if your idea is good).
All in all, in sums up to mantra "Disney is bad at tech."
Other data points - their website is horrid. I figured out once that only 23% of the page showed me information I wanted (reservation availability, park hours, etc...) and the other 77% was branding, whitespace or terrible nav UI.
D23 attendees had to install 2 apps, log into 1 and then were able to buy merchandise in the 2nd app.
And so on...
And their TV app is also buggy. I have 2 shows that I have watched all episodes that won't clear from the "currently watching" list. There is no way to 'give up' on a series and remove it from the currently watching list either. It also logs me out if I walk away for a few minutes to grab some food or whatnot.
Counter argument: you need time to develop a product and not all features will get the same priority, but things might get there over time. The alternative would be to delay releasing it until it is "perfect".
Do you watch only on Web? Or have you also tried their TV app?