Finding Dory

Finding Dory is the follow-up to the highly successful Finding Nemo, and takes us on a story with Dory. We’ve been to see a 3D preview screening as part of our DisneyLife membership which we now pay for.

Finding Dory

Finding Dory. Ahh see, sequels can be so difficult to make when following something which is much-loved and done well. In a nutshell, Finding Dory succeeds – it really does. It’s funny, it isn’t a tear jerker like some of the Pixar films can be, though it has its moments.

We have a brief recap of Finding Nemo and Dory’s life before we’re whisked forward a year and our story begins.

Dory has short term memory loss. We find this out straight away as her parents are trying to teach her to remember things – and through a chain of events (which Dory has flashbacks to throughout the film) she loses her parents. In the future she has a flashback while helping Nemo’s class and remembers her family and information about where they live. Accompanied by Nemo and his dad Marlin, they make their way to the Marine Life Institute on the other side of the ocean. They handily get a lift there from some turtles!

Finding Dory - Dory

So then it’s the big task of Finding Dory ‘s parents, which of course isn’t straightforward. Marlin and Nemo are split from Dory, who is captured and placed in the Marine Life Institute in quarantine, where she meets Hank, a seven legged octopus aka a septopus (he has seven tentacles due to being grabbed in the ‘Touch Pool’ area of the Marine Life Institute). Dory also meets friends she knew when she was younger.

There are plenty of twists and turns, plenty of laugh out loud moments, and some moments where you really hope good things will happen. It’s a really enjoyable hour and a half – and there’s a lot of Dory of course.

There is a LOT going on in Finding Dory, with an easy to follow plot. I found I didn’t drift off at all and was laughing a lot. It is definitely the lighter side of Pixar and – SPOILER ALERT – handy for concerned parents who know how Pixar films tend to go – there are no deaths.

Finding Dory H with poster

The final word goes to H on this, who as we were leaving the cinema (we had to rush out, but I’ve since read there’s a little Finding Nemo reference right at the end) said, “we’ll be getting this on DVD, right?” – think that’s a big thumbs-up then!

Finding Dory is in UK Cinemas from the 29th July 2016. We received a free invite to attend a 3D screening via our paid DisneyLife subscription.

Oh, and as a final note, H still has NO idea she’s going to Disneyland Paris this year – and we’re doing a great job at keeping quiet about it all!

Celebrate Father’s Day with DisneyLife!

DisneyLife is celebrating the magical relationship that Dads have with their children this Father’s Day by releasing a ‘top ten’ Disney Dads montage.

From words of wisdom to embarrassingly lingering hugs, the short film draws on Disney and Disney•Pixar’s incredible back catalogue to showcase some of the most touching fatherly moments from family favourites including The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Pinocchio, and The Little Mermaid.

DisneyLife’s top ten father and child moments, include:

  • Marlin reunited with Nemo and seeing him off on a school day adventure after his deep ocean odyssey in search of his son (Finding Nemo)
  • King Fergus letting his daughter try her strength with her very own bow for her birthday (Brave)
  • Simba receiving words of wisdom from his adoring dad (The Lion King)
  • Ariel receiving her father’s blessing to pursue life on land (The Little Mermaid)
  • Mr. Incredible encouraging his children to embrace their superhero destiny (The Incredibles)

These and many more treasured stories are available to enjoy via the DisneyLife app, which offers access to the largest collection of Disney entertainment and features movies, books, music and Disney Channel TV box sets, all in one place.

Whether it’s sharing a special Frozen bedtime story with Dad or enjoying a Star Wars Rebel adventure together, DisneyLife is a pretty excellent way to add some magic to Father’s Day this Sunday, June 19th 2016!

We have been given a six month subscription to DisneyLife. 

Disney Life – Extra Things

So I’ve written a bit about the films on DisneyLife and what we’ve seen, but haven’t really gone into the extra things that are offered with a membership, which are definitely worth a mention.

DisneyLife logo

This year is a pretty busy year for Disney with some BIG films coming – we’re looking forward to Finding Dory, The BFG and the new Alice Through the Looking Glass’ film too. We recently saw the new Jungle Book film as well.

As DisneyLife members we were offered tickets for an exclusive viewing of The Jungle Book – which unfortunately we couldn’t do as H had swimming (it was a Wednesday) – but as luck would have it another blogger friend passed us on her tickets so we got to go on a Sunday instead. We’ve since been offered an exclusive presale on the new Aladdin show in the West End which we’re looking into.

As well as this, DisneyLife has some special exclusive content from ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ and the original Disney Alice in Wonderland animation.

You can discover more about the quirky characters from Alice’s world in all-new Live Action Character Worlds – characters include Alice, the Red Queen and the Tweedle twins. There is also a special featurette ‘Lewis Carroll’s Alice’ and a behind the scenes ‘White Rabbit Teaser’ from the new film.

You can read the original ‘Alice in Wonderland’ tale too, and listen to the new soundtrack from ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ – something I like doing before we see a film. We’ve also been told to look out for an exclusive link for preview screenings of the film before it’s release on the 27th May, though nothing has arrived yet… there’s still time…

I really like features like this as it makes you feel like your membership is valued and worthwhile – it’s the little extras that make you feel special.

An additional note too – we watched Cars 2 last night, and yet again no buffering happened – so I think it’s fairly safe to say the initial problems have been sorted!

We have been provided with complementary DisneyLife membership for six months, all opinions are our own. 

A DisneyLife Update

It has been a while since I’ve mentioned DisneyLife – and I have to be honest, we have been so busy we haven’t watched it as much as I thought I would. With it being so mild this year we’ve gone out more and had less time when we’d sit and watch a film, so I already feel like this is something that would work for me if I could dip in and out of it.

DisneyLife questions, DisneyLife six month subscription

BUT! We have Disney plans afoot. I’ve just booked us into Disneyland Paris for H’s 7th birthday, something I have to keep really quiet about now for the next three months (anyone who knows me knows this will be extremely difficult). We’re in the Rio Grande hotel, which is themed like the Pixar movie Cars. This means H needs to watch it properly – we’ve caught the end of tv screenings of the films but never watched them in full. Amazon Prime doesn’t offer them, nor Netflix, a quick check on DisneyLife and it has all the films plus offshoots – exactly what we need!

Our biggest problem up to now has been the streaming. At home we have fibre optic internet and found some films would pause and buffer – to the point the film was unwatchable. At the start of the year it was less annoying to buy High School Musical 2 on DVD for £1 than put up with the buffering. Since then there have been several updates to the app, which (touch wood) seem to have fixed these issues. We watched Cars, and there were no pauses at all which was a huge reassurance.

The other problem we’ve had is using the additional content. H’s tablet is an Amazon Fire Tablet, and the DisneyLife app isn’t available as an option, just Amazon Kids. So a lot of the content she could have accessed wasn’t possible. I don’t know whether it’s a conflict of businesses, and hope it’s just an oversight. I couldn’t work out a way around it to install it either, so for us, DisneyLife has been about the movies they offer and not the other content.

Having said that, there is a LOT of content – just look at what you get when you search for Cars!

Cars related content at Disney Life

Right now I feel like DisneyLife is something I would sign up for a few months if we had several Disney films to watch – and there’s plenty of them you’re not likely to run out. The most recent releases (Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur kind of era) aren’t on DisneyLife yet, but with there being so much to get through that hasn’t been a problem – and we ended up buying Inside Out on DVD anyway!

More updates soon…

DisneyLife Questions

Today I was sent an exciting package – a six month subscription to the new DisneyLife service. So I thought I’d start this off a bit differently – as I feel like I have a lot of DisneyLife questions to ask.

DisneyLife questions, DisneyLife six month subscription

DisneyLife launched in November 2015, so is still in its early days, but has a lot of potential. Think of it as a child-friendly Netflix – at least, that’s what I’m reading from reviews.

So I thought I’d do a post before we’ve started using it, asking all my DisneyLife questions – and in fact, if you’re reading, maybe you have some to ask as well? Feel free to add them here and we’ll do our best to work it out.

My first one – is it worth £9.99 a month? What do you get? Considering we’ll spend quite a lot on Disney and Pixar related DVDs, could this replace our buying habits?

Question two – how soon do films come onto DisneyLife after being released on DVD? For Christmas H got Inside Out, The Incredibles and Big Hero 6. They’ll all be getting repeated viewings, so are they all available? I’m curious to find out what the turnaround time is.

Question three – how is the quality of the films? And which of our devices is it compatible with? At the moment we have two iPads, one Samsung tablet and two Kindle Fire’s (one of which has a subscription to Amazon Kids), as well as a MacBook Pro and a WiiU (which we use for Amazon / Lovefilm video). Add to that a Chromecast, and it should be something fairly straightforward to use.

Question four – you know what you’re getting with Disney. We have a LOT of Disney DVDs. There are going to be favourites in there – and I’ve noticed films like Snow White haven’t been available on DVD for ages – will DisneyLife have it?

Question five – Music. We have ‘Now That’s What I Call Disney’ on CD, and it’s wonderful, bringing back memories of my childhood. I’m looking forward to seeing which songs feature on the music part of the package.

Question six – what exactly is DisneyLife?
Movies, Music, Books, Kids TV Box Sets and Apps – in a monthly subscription of £9.99 which you can cancel at any time – I love things where you aren’t tied into annual contracts as I feel like the company has to work to keep you there rather than making it difficult for you to leave. This YouTube video tells you lots too…

Question seven – what are you looking forward to the most?

I can answer that – watching more DisneyPixar movies – we haven’t really watched the Cars/Planes series much, and have wanted to, so that’ll be one of the first ones!

So, lovely readers, do you have any DisneyLife questions you would like to ask?

DisneyLife’s website is here. We’ve been provided with a six month subscription for the purpose of review. All opinions are our own.