Disney's Fastplay

Submission 13,813

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About

Disney's Fastplay refers to the audio that used to play at the beginning of Disney DVDs prior to the DVD automatically launching into a series of ads that could only be bypassed if one pressed the "main menu" button on their remote in time. The feature was widely disliked and later caused the "Disney Fastplay" text to become a copypasta, reading, "This Disney DVD is enhanced with Disney’s FastPlay. Your movie and a selection of bonus features will begin automatically. To bypass Fast Play, select the Main Menu button at any time. Fast Play will begin in a moment…”

Origin

The "Disney Fastplay" feature originally began appearing on Disney DVDs in the mid-2000s among the switch from VHS formats to discs (shown below).

The feature was quickly met with disdain. For example, on October 4th, 2007, Entertainment Weekly^[1] penned a negative opinion of the new feature. Key complaints were that if one did not press the "main menu" button on their television remote quickly enough, they would be forced to start viewing minutes of ads for other Disney movies until they got to the film they wanted to see. In the article, writer Steve Daly wrote:

And boom -- before you know it, without having actually made a selection (you’ve got to be really quick to select “Main Menu” -- which, trust me, is what you want to do), FastPlay engages. Except it ISN’T fast play: It’s slow play. Notice the announcer said “your movie and selection of bonus features.” But when he soothingly coos “bonus features,” he ain’t talking about fun stuff like behind-the-scenes documentaries or production-art galleries, folks. He’s talking about commercials for other Disney DVDs (a term the company loves to repeat ad nauseum, as if it were a unique technology instead of just a label distinction), plugs for other Disney products, and those infuriating FBI warnings.

The text did not start becoming a copypasta until a decade later. On November 13th, 2017, Redditor thatcoffeeguy posted the "Disney Fastplay" text to /r/copypasta.^[2]

Spread

In the late 2010s, multiple posts of the Disney Fastplay copypasta appeared on various social media platforms, including Reddit,^[3] Twitter^[4] and Twitch.^[5] The format was also parodied on YouTube. For example, on April 2nd, 2019, YouTuber KippyKip posted a parody that played the Disney Fastplay audio over a man shaking his head, gaining over 40,000 views in roughly three years (shown below, left). On October 29th, 2020, YouTuber Frostsonium posted a similar video, gaining over 6.6 thousand views in roughly one year (shown below, right).

On January 4th, 2021, Urban Dictionary^[6] user honeycloudss posted a definition for the copypasta, highlighting how the audio would cause viewers to scramble for their remote in order to skip the ads and trailers (shown below).