Here's a way to watch The Mandalorian (and other Disney+ content) without paying a Hutt-sized cost

The days of genre fans being contented with Netflix alone are almost certainly over. Though both Netflix and Hulu churn out plenty of quality content, Amazon Prime has been making huge strides (Good Omens, The Boys), and DC Universe has proved its worth with the Doom Patrol series alone. Genre fans might have been hoping that they could skip out on Disney+ when it unleashes itself, but then the trailer for The Mandalorian hit, and, yeah ... who are we kidding, the credits are gonna have to flow.

Between The Mandalorian, the return of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and oh yeah ... a seemingly infinite amount of MCU programming, Disney+ is going to be a hard mouse to avoid. It's going to be dropping episodes the old-fashioned way (that is, they won't be dumped all at once), and even the most skeptical fans are not going to be able to resist Werner Herzog, Carl Weathers, and Ming-Na Wen in the same Star Wars show.

How best to manage the costs, especially if you want to keep up with everything, and don't necessarily want to pay more than you'd be paying for regular cable? There is an offer on the sabacc table, and it's a way to get into the Disney+ action that will not involve you needing to take out a Hutt-sized loan.

Though the easiest way to get a discount would have been physically being in the room for the Disney+ panel at the D23 Expo (SYFY WIRE was there, and they were offering advance memberships), this new promo is a little more involved. It's for anyone who is a D23 member (or is soon going to become one), and the full set of information can be found here. The short version is that D23 General, Gold, or Gold Family members with an active membership as of 11:59 p.m. PT on September 1, 2019, will be eligible to get a three-year subscription to the service for $140.97 (or $46.99 per year). One year of the service is set to go for $69.99.

All in all, this amounts to less than 4 bucks a month, which is 7 bucks less than Netflix's most popular plan. Disney+ isn't going to have a Dark Crystal show on it, though, is it? Netflix has that. Batman comics? Yeah, that's DC Universe.

Therein lies the problem — no matter how you shake things out, there's always going to be something on another service that you're going to want, and this is before HBO Max and Apple TV+ have gotten their days in the sun. Even if you decide to join the D23 fan club to get this three-year discount, who's to say that you're going to want three years of the service? You'd be signing up for The Mandalorian, a lot of The Simpsons, and a shipload of promises. What if they don't all pan out?

Nobody seems to care about that. Deadline reported on Wednesday that interest in Disney+ is actually going to exceed the company's expectations, which doesn't seem possible. The number of American customers alone who are signing up for the service at the moment is such that projections will be overshot when the service launches November 7.

The deal mentioned above proves that interest in Disney+ is very high — toward the end of the day in which it was announced, it was almost impossible to sign up for D23 membership. The fact that D23 has a free membership tier probably helped boost their traffic.

If all of this is making your head hurt, then take comfort in the fact that the streaming wars have barely even begun. With the deals, price point, and potential content, however, it's looking like Mickey is gonna go full Han Solo and shoot first.

Disney+ launches on November 7.