Disney Headlines for October 28th, 2025
This past week, Disney stories ran the gamut, and we’ll discuss two odd ones in Disney Headlines.
So, let’s talk about a parent who narrowly avoided jail and some streaming nonsense.
What’s the Opposite of Mother of the Year?
Disney
I don’t have children, which makes any of my parenting criticisms a bit sketchy.
That’s a bias I must admit upfront, as I’ll level with you that the details of this story make me VERY angry.
As Justin Hermes discussed the other day, local authorities decided not to charge these parents.
In June, a five-year-old child plummeted from the deck of the Disney Dream into the ocean.
Thankfully, her father jumped into the water to rescue the girl and thereby saved her life.
A rescue team found the duo in the water and returned them to safety. It was a whole thing.
Image Credit: Disney Cruise Line
That story upset many people, with my wife and I being two of them.
We had been on that very cruise ship two months before then, and the story confused us.
Image Credit: Disney Cruise Line
As members of the media, we’d received in-depth descriptions of the cruise ship from its crew.
What the original reports suggested simply should not have been possible based on what we knew.
My wife and I watched countless YouTube videos and loaded every image we had taken of that deck.
We simply couldn’t get from here to there on the logic of how the accident could have occurred.
Image Credit: Disney
Well, the other shoe dropped the other day, and now it all makes sense. It was parental idiocy.
I don’t often speak in such plain terms about a subject with which I have little experience.
This one’s pretty cut-and-dried, though.
Not a Great Picture
Photo: Disney
As we’ve since learned, the mother endangered her child for a would-be photo op.
Unaware of the design of some elements of the ship, this parent incorrectly assumed something.
Her miscalculation almost cost her husband and child their lives, and I wish I were being hyperbolic.
The mother asked her child to stand in an open porthole to take a picture.
Photo: Disney
For whatever reason, this person believed that some unseen barrier protected the child from falling.
That obviously wasn’t the case. The child plummeted into the water and was in extreme jeopardy.
Disney
After 45 seconds, the father realized what had happened and jumped into the water to rescue his child.
According to the police, he initially couldn’t spot his daughter in the water, a terror I cannot imagine.
Photo: Disney
Thankfully, everything worked out for the best, as father and daughter are fine.
Heroes emerged on the rescue team, and the story has provided a bit of joy during the doomscrolling era.
Photo: Disney
Still, the surprise here is that the police chose not to press charges against the parents.
Presumably, the fear of God they had instilled in them at that moment seemed like punishment enough.
Here’s what the Assistant State Attorney had to say in closing the matter:
“While the defendant’s conduct is arguably negligent and irresponsible, it does not rise the egregious level of conduct necessary to establish criminal culpable negligence.
DCL
“Therefore, in light of the facts of this case along with the relevant case law, I am declining one count of child neglect without great bodily harm.”
The next time you’re on a Disney cruise ship, you may notice new signs or maybe even safety measures.
If so, remember this family as the explanation for why Disney has altered its porthole access.
The Good News in the Bad News
(ABC/Jeff Lipsky)
There’s a Headline circling through several major websites like this one.
The gist is that Disney+ may have suffered a high number of cancellations in the wake of the Jimmy Kimmel incident.
(ABC/Jeff Lipsky) JIMMY KIMMEL
I’ve linked one representation of the story, but all of them cite the same source.
Antenna, a research firm, tracks all sorts of streaming industry data, including pricing trends.
Photo: Center Watch
According to this data, the average major streaming service has increased its price by more than 20 percent…since 2023.
So, yeah, hyper-inflation is a thing with streaming, which you already know if you subscribe to anything.
Photo: TipRanks
Remember when we all got three years of Disney+ for $141 in 2019? Those days are gone.
Not coincidentally, all major streaming services track a specific statistic I’ve previously mentioned.
Disney+ logo
Churn is how the streaming industry knows how many people are canceling service each month.
Well, the Kimmel hullaballoo caused Antenna to do some specific tracking about the incident.
(Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
According to their research, Disney+ doubled its churn rate in the wake of that squabble.
The numbers are the interesting part, though, in that they tell a good story for Disney.
Walt Disney Company
I realize what I just said may not sound like it, but streamers want to keep churn under seven percent.
According to Antenna’s metric – one I’ll be honest with you that I don’t trust – Disney+ hovers at four percent.
So, Disney is doing 57 percent better than the industry standard, at least most of the time.
Last month, that number briefly doubled to eight percent for Disney+, according to Antenna’s data.
Hulu
The firm also suggested that Hulu’s cancellations doubled from five to ten percent.
While this sounds like bad news, it’s a temporary concern to Disney.
The Silver Lining
Photo: Disney+
What matters much more is the fact that only one out of every 20-25 customers cancels Disney+ and/or Hulu each month.
Every streaming service would kill to have those numbers, although one does.
Photo: Disney+
Netflix, whose stock just had a brutal day on Wall Street, falling $125 in 24 hours, has a churn rate of two percent.
Just to be clear, Disney+ executives should be dancing in the streets about four percent churn.
Deadline
Netflix averages half that, which tells the story about who runs the entire streaming industry.
The order of precedence is Netflix followed by Disney followed by everybody else.
Photo: Netflix
This is a case where Disney is VERY happy to be the Pepsi to Netflix’s Coke.
By the way, Antenna’s churn data is more likely to be accurate than the cancellation estimates.
Photo: Bank rate
Those are a bit of witchcraft, and I’ve performed a few such extrapolations myself over the years.
Everybody’s just guessing here, as the streaming services keep the official data close to the vest.
We’ll find out more during Disney’s earnings call in a couple of weeks.
Since this one signals the end of the fiscal year, Disney will publish a postmortem on its streaming empire.
Photo: vecteezy.com
From the data I’m seeing here, the news falls somewhere between very good and positively glowing.
Photo: MickeyBlog
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below, and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!
Feature Photo: Disney
