Disney Plus has a new Hulu-ified logo

Disney has made some slight but notable updates to the logo and splash screen for its Disney Plus streaming service that likely nod to its looming merger with Hulu. The biggest change is the new teal / seafoam background color, which appears to be a rough mix between its original blue background and the green that Hulu uses.

(Update March 27th, 9:35AM ET: The updated Hulu / Disney Plus combination app has now officially launched, along with the very green new icon and logo. Our original story continues below.)

At face value alone, the updated design — which can already be seen on the Disney Plus website and various app stores — makes sense for the corporate giant. Aside from the obvious unity with Hulu, the new color also makes it stand out more against the sea of blue and black logos used by other streaming services like Prime Video, Max, and Paramount Plus. But I am actually sad to see the old logo go.

Since it was released in 2019, the Disney Plus service has used a deep royal blue that’s very reminiscent of the company’s famous Cinderella castle logo. That design — introduced in 1985’s Return to Oz — is a prominent childhood memory of mine. Variations of it featured on just about every Disney movie I watched in theaters and on VHS and DVD. That logo has since fallen out of use, but it was nice to see it memorialized in some way.

Even the curved swoosh on the Disney Plus logo, which previously featured a color gradient that resembled Tinker Bell flying over the castle, has been updated to be solid white. It’s not a bad design by any stretch, but I can’t help but feel that some of the whimsy has been lost. The new design may also confuse some Disney Plus subscribers outside of the US in locations where Hulu isn’t well recognized and has already been merged with Disney’s streaming platform for some time.