The Corner Penthouse

The Disney Movie Insiders program (originally Disney Movie Rewards) was launched in 2006. It allowed fans and customers to earn credits via a point system by submitting ticket stubs from theatrical films and "magic codes" from physical media (DVD, Blu-Ray, and even CDs!). Those points could be redeemed for various prizes, including more physical media (DVDs and Blu-rays), books, posters, and highly sought-after collectibles. It was an easy-to-use free program that rewarded Disney fans for their loyalty to the company. Naturally, The Walt Disney Company decided to do away with it. The program officially ends on December 4th, though it technically ended on September 7th when codes could no longer be entered into user's accounts.

At this point, the program is coasting on fumes with users having acquired massive amounts of points with little to nothing to use them on. A few statues, a cookie jar, and some common 4K UHD and Blu-ray videos have been randomly added to the site over the past two months. However, for most, this stuff isn't anything they want to spent their points on. For me, I already have all of the videos they added. I would love some of those Disney Movie Club-exclusive Blu-rays that may never be released again since Disney ended that program on May 20, 2024, but they haven't been added so far, and I'm not holding my breath that they will. (Hopefully Disney will let Mill Creek Entertainment re-manufacture those Blu-rays using the same disc masters, as they have for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Grosse Pointe Blank.) I also would have liked to have had the Disney Movie Club-exclusive Kim Possible: The Complete First & Second Seasons DVDs that were once offered on the old Disney Movie Rewards site, but were gone just as soon as I amassed enough points to buy them.

That just leaves digital (and physical) Disney Gift Cards, which can be used at DisneyStore.com to buy other Disney merchandise. Of course, these digital gift cards are supposedly "out of stock" almost as soon as they're added. Obviously, digital items can NOT go out of stock. While they are not always selectable from the website, the truth is that these digital Disney Gift Cards are almost ALWAYS IN STOCK! You just need to have saved the url for the gift card's product page before the site proclaims it as being "out of stock" (and disables the link). So, without further ado, below are the links to redeem your points for all of the DIGITAL "eGift" Disney Gift Cards. (Physical gift cards are not include on this list.) Disney may take down these pages at any time, which it will definitely do after December 3rd.

• $5 Disney Gift Card eGift: Mickey and Minnie I Heart You
650 Points - https://www.disneymovieinsiders.com/reward/574228

• $10 Disney Gift Card eGift: Mickey and Minnie Hugs and Kisses
1,250 Points - https://www.disneymovieinsiders.com/reward/574227

• $10 Disney Gift Card eGift: Marvel Studios' Thor: Love and Thunder
1,500 Points - https://www.disneymovieinsiders.com/reward/576271

• $50 Disney Gift Card eGift: Avengers (LIMIT 1 PER CALENDAR WEEK)
6,500 Points - https://www.disneymovieinsiders.com/reward/592194

• $100 Disney Gift Card eGift: Friends (LIMIT 1 PER CALENDAR MONTH)
13,000 Points - https://www.disneymovieinsiders.com/reward/587891

(UPDATE, 11/5/2024 - It seems that Disney got wise to the fact that digital gift cards could still be ordered directly from the product page even if the category page listed them as "out of stock". After logging in, some of the product pages listed above will tell you that the DIGITAL gift card is "out of stock" and will not let you order it. Oh well, I tried to help. I'll keep this list of links up anyway for historical reference.)

Yes, even though the program is ending, Disney still has redemption limitations in place! With December 3rd being the last day you can redeem your points, and the $100 card being limited to one redemption per calendar month, if you need more than one, you can only buy two of them; three if you get one before tonight (Halloween) is over. Oh, and that "per calendar week/month" limitation is bullshit. Disney has the "one per calendar week" limitation in place for the Disney Movie Club Mystery Blu-ray, yet I could not buy a second one on Sunday October 27th after having bought one on Friday October 25th. It would seem that Disney's "calendar week" starts on Monday, not Sunday.

After two months of checking the site every day for something I could use my 15,265 points on, and not finding anything I wanted, or didn't already have, I decided to "cash out" on Friday October 25th. Yeah, there's still a month left to go, but I am not hopeful of there being anything worthwhile, and I just want to be done with this. Also, On October 15th, a rep posted a comment on the official DMI Facebook page that didn't give me much hope: "While it is possible other rewards may be added to the catalog prior to closure, Disney Movie Insiders cannot guarantee the restock or addition of any particular items."


So, although the $100 card was listed as "out of stock" on the site...


...because I had the url for the product page, I had no problem redeeming 13,000 points for it.


Then it was just a matter of going to the My Rewards page in my account to redeem the gift card. I clicked on "View Details"...


...then on "Redeem Offer Now".


That redeemed the gift card on the Insiders site, but did not activate the gift card itself. For that, I was taken to the gift card site, where I inputted the "Reward Code" I was given, along with my e-mail address.


With the gift card now activated, I was given all of the important details.


I then hopped over to the Disney Store website and ordered the items listed below. I would have preferred to buy videos that I don't already have, or want to buy for a friend of mine, but the Disney Store website doesn't sell any videos anymore. A movie studio that doesn't sell its movies?!? Go figure.

$79.99 - Disney Princess Holiday Soft Doll Set (of 4) - Small 9"-10"
$20.99 - Mickey Mouse Walt Disney Studios Sticky Note Holder - Disney100
FREE - Mickey and Minnie Mouse Light-Up Figural Ornament - Walt Disney World 2024 (alt url)

The free gift is what I selected from the Free Gift with $100+ Purchase selection page. Code "GIFT" got me the $19.99 ornament for free, while code "SHIPMAGIC" got me free shipping. I could use up to five Disney Gift Cards to pay for this order, though I only had the one. I wanted to pay the difference with PayPal, but Disney doesn't allow that. The site proclaims, "Sorry, you can't combine PayPal with a Disney Gift Card". Disney forced me to use my bank debit card, which I normally keep locked for security reasons. (I unlocked it for a few minutes when I placed this order, then locked it back up after Disney did a pre-authorization of $7.88.) The reason Disney doesn't want customers to use PayPal is so they can steal more money from you later on... but I'm getting ahead of myself.


Now, you would think that the $100 Disney gift card (essentially store credit) would be taken off the $100.98 subtotal, and then I would be left to pay the remaining $0.98 (and the $0.08 New York sales tax on that amount), but you would be wrong. I was charged $6.90 sales tax based on the $100.98 subtotal, forcing me to pay $7.88 for these "rewards". While that's $6.82 more than I feel that I should have paid, I had no problem paying that small amount in order to get these items and be done with the Disney Movie Insiders program. (Aside from the 256 point balance I still have that I'll have to fritter away on crappy printable activities in early December or let the points vanish with the program itself.)

Things went well, at first. Five hours after I placed the order, I received a shipping notification e-mail. That's so much faster than the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Blu-ray I bought for 1,200 points on September 4th (for a friend of mine), which wasn't shipped until three weeks later. (The other two rewards I bought on September 4th were shipped a week later.) At 5:21 PM Eastern, I received the e-mail seen below telling me that my order had shipped and quoting the same order total I was given when I placed the order: Subtotal: $100.98, Shipping: FREE, Sales Tax: $6.90 = Total: $107.88.


At 5:55 PM Eastern, I received an e-mail from my bank notifying me of a blocked charge from Disney in the amount of $1.81. I had no clue what this was about. Disney already charged the agreed-upon price of $7.88, so why did it want $1.81 more? Disney didn't quote a new price in the shipping notification e-mail, nor did Disney send me a separate e-mail informing me of a change in the order total.


Out of curiosity, I decided to do a guest log-in to see the "order status", even though I already knew it was shipped via UPS. (UPS even sent me a separate e-mail letting me know that the package details were in its system, too.) That's the only place where I noticed what Disney was trying to do.


The shipping notification e-mail shows the original order total of:
Subtotal :$100.98
Shipping & Handling: FREE
Sales Tax: $6.90
Total: $107.88

The order status page shows a new, HIGHER total:
Subtotal: $100.98
Shipping and Handling: FREE
Sales Tax: $8.71
Total: $109.69

This is why Disney tried to bill the additional $1.81. However, I did not agree to this higher price when I submitted the order, nor was this higher price listed in Disney's own shipping notification e-mail, which could legally be considered the "final" total. Disney did not give up on trying to get this additional $1.81 from me. After the attempt on October 25th at 5:55 PM Eastern, a second attempt was made on October 26th at 5:54 PM Eastern...


...and a third attempt was made on October 27th at 6:05 PM Eastern.


Disney has not tried again since. I guess Disney gave up after three failures. Good for me, as it means that I don't have to cancel my card and get a new one. I suspect that because Disney thinks that if you pay with a credit/debit card, it can make unauthorized charges to it later, is why Disney doesn't want customers to pay with PayPal when using a Disney Gift Card. Disney probably can't do the same thing with PayPal.

I really don't understand why Disney would try to make a charge to a customer's debit/credit card AFTER shipping out all of the items. That makes zero business sense. I also don't understand why Disney wouldn't inform a customer of an additional charge it intends to make.

Anyway, I received the package on Tuesday October 29th, just as UPS had scheduled. While I would have loved to have gotten some of those Disney Movie Club-exclusive videos (have I made that clear enough yet?), so I can avoid paying eBay scalper prices for them, I am satisfied with the cute little cozy holiday Princess plushies, the Walt Disney Studios typewriter, and the Mickey & Minnie ornament.

At this point, I have 265 points remaining in my account, but all physical rewards are 350 points and higher. It doesn't pay to waste my time doing individual checkouts for 26 useless 10-point or 53 useless 5-point digital "printables and activities", especially since they can all be downloaded for free from the fan-collected DMI Digital Rewards Google Drive folder (credit: Rachelguy72 on Reddit). Another DMI Digital Rewards Google Drive folder was created by "GE Cafe".

By the way, if you still have Disney Movie Insiders points to spend, rather than checking the DMI every weekday at 9:00am Pacific (12:00pm Eastern), you can also check out this Blu-ray forum thread where members have been keeping track of new stuff added, and stuff removed.

As an EPILOGUE, I have been keeping track of every code I added and every reward I bought since the day I started with the program. Since I will have no reason to keep that information after the program ends, for the sake of documenting my time with the program, I'm going to include that information here.

The first points ever added to my account was on June 27, 2008, when I obtained 100 points for doing a website survey (remember those?). That same day, I added another 100 points for my first video, appropriately enough, The Little Mermaid Special Edition DVD. The last video I got points for was the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 DVD, for which I got 100 points on September 6, 2024. On February 22, 2024, 12,200 points were removed from my account, resulting in the balance going from 32,520 to 20,320. This was done the day after I used 6,550 points to buy five Marvel Blu-rays for a friend of mine. I suspect that using the points to buy these Blu-rays is what triggered someone to check out my account. Since the Insiders system (which premiered around September 26, 2019) allowed users to be able to enter multiple codes for the same title/format, whereas the old Rewards system (2006-2019) did not, is Disney's mistake, not the users. Don't fault us, Disney, when your own system isn't obeying the rules :-)

As for everything I bought with my points, here is the complete list:

08/02/2010 - 0750 - Inspector Gadget 2 DVD
08/02/2010 - 1200 - DuckTales The Movie & Donald In Mathmagic Land 2-DVD Set (Ducktales was a Disney Movie Club exclusive going for $30+ on eBay at the time)
03/02/2011 - 0550 - The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes DVD
10/10/2014 - 1550 - The Muppets (2011) Blu-ray Combo Pack
10/10/2014 - 1750 - Enchanted Blu-ray Combo Pack
10/10/2014 - 0550 - Phineas and Ferb: A Very Perry Christmas DVD
10/10/2014 - 0550 - Phil Of The Future: Gadgets And Gizmos DVD
10/10/2014 - 0550 - Sonny With A Chance: Sonny's Big Break Vol 1 DVD
09/11/2016 - 1200 - Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Pack (DVD Pkg)
09/11/2016 - 1750 - Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Pack (DVD Pkg)
09/20/2016 - 960+$3.26ship - Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Pack (DVD Pkg)
01/21/2018 - 1325 - The Muppet Christmas Carol Blu-ray
01/21/2018 - 1200 - Arachnophobia Blu-ray
01/21/2018 - 0750 - A Muppets Christmas: Letters To Santa DVD
01/21/2018 - 0750 - The Muppets Wizard Of Oz DVD
11/25/2018 - 0600 - Rock Candy: Comfy Princesses - Mulan (Ralph Breaks The Internet vinyl figure)
11/25/2018 - 0600 - Rock Candy: Comfy Princesses - Rapunzel (Ralph Breaks The Internet vinyl figure)
11/25/2018 - 0600 - Rock Candy: Comfy Princesses - Belle (Ralph Breaks The Internet vinyl figure)
11/25/2018 - 0600 - Rock Candy: Comfy Princesses - Moana (Ralph Breaks The Internet vinyl figure)
11/25/2018 - 0600 - Rock Candy: Comfy Princesses - Jasmine (Ralph Breaks The Internet vinyl figure)
11/25/2018 - 0600 - Rock Candy: Comfy Princesses - Ariel (Ralph Breaks The Internet vinyl figure)
08/13/2019 - 0400 - Muppets Most Wanted Blu-ray, DVD + Digital HD
08/13/2019 - 0300 - Phineas And Ferb: Mission Marvel DVD
08/13/2019 - 0300 - Phineas And Ferb: The Perry Files DVD
09/07/2019 - 0225 - Tangled: Before Ever After (DVD)
09/07/2019 - 0225 - Tangled: The Series: Queen For A Day (DVD)
09/07/2019 - 0400 - Princess And The Frog (Blu-ray + DVD)
09/07/2019 - 0600 - Cinderella (Diamond Edition) (Blu-ray + DVD)
10/16/2020 - 0925 - Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 2 (Blu-ray + DVD)
10/16/2020 - 1250 - Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 3 (Blu-ray + DVD)
01/27/2021 - 0540 - Alita Battle Angel Mini Poster (13" W x 19" H) (Final Few Sale)
12/18/2021 - 0500 - Disney's A Christmas Carol Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack (Holiday Sale)
02/09/2022 - 1100 - Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy (Blu-ray)
02/09/2022 - 1100 - Marvel Studios' Captain America: The First Avenger (Blu-ray)
02/10/2022 - 2200 - Marvel Studios' Thor: The Dark World (2013) (Blu-ray)
02/10/2022 - 0750 - Marvel Studios' Iron Man 3 (BLU-RAY)
05/18/2022 - 0800 - Brave Blu-ray Combo Pack (2 Blu-ray, 1 DVD + Digital Code)
05/18/2022 - 0925 - Olaf's Frozen Adventure Blu-ray Combo Pack (1 Blu-ray, 1 DVD + Digital Code)
05/18/2022 - 0650 - The Bob's Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers (Hardcover, 128 pages)
05/18/2022 - 0400 - The Bob's Burger's Movie Payoff Poster (27" W x 40" H, Double-Sided, Mirror-Image) (Hot Rewards Sale)
05/18/2022 - 0750 - Bob's Burgers Movie Teaser Poster (27" W x 40" H, Double-Sided, Mirror-Image)
05/28/2023 - 1000 - Cars 2 Blu-ray Combo Pack
05/28/2023 - 1250 - Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack
05/28/2023 - 1250 - Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Blu-ray
05/30/2023 - 0900 - Maleficent 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack
05/30/2023 - 0925 - Mary Poppins Returns Blu-ray Combo Pack
06/06/2023 - 1000 - Maleficent: Mistress of Evil 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack
06/22/2023 - 0600 - Winnie The Pooh: Springtime With Roo Blu-ray Combo Pack
07/19/2023 - 1050 - A Bug's Life 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Combo Pack (2 Discs: 1 UHD +1 BD)
07/19/2023 - 1350 - Inside Out 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Combo Pack (3 Discs: 1 UHD + 2 BDs)
01/17/2024 - 0500 - Disney 100th Funko Pop: Walt Disney with Drawing #74 (FRIEND GIFT)
02/21/2024 - 1100 - Marvel Studios' Iron Man Blu-ray (FRIEND GIFT)
02/21/2024 - 1100 - Thor Blu-ray (FRIEND GIFT)
02/21/2024 - 1250 - Marvel Studios' The Avengers - Blu-ray + Digital Code (FRIEND GIFT)
02/21/2024 - 1100 - Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Blu-ray + Digital Code (FRIEND GIFT)
02/21/2024 - 2000 - Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy 3D Blu-ray Combo Pack + Digital Code (FRIEND GIFT)
03/13/2024 - 1100 - Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Blu-ray DVD Combo Pack + Digital Code
03/13/2024 - 0950 - The Aristocats Special Edition Blu-ray DVD Combo Pack + Digital Code
03/13/2024 - 1200 - Beauty And The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas Blu-ray DVD Combo Pack + Digital Code
03/13/2024 - 1000 - The Jungle Book (1967) Blu-ray DVD Combo Pack + Digital Code
03/22/2024 - 0900 - Peter Pan In Return To Never Land Blu-ray DVD Combo Pack + Digital Code
03/22/2024 - 1100 - Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search For Christopher Robin 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray
07/29/2024 - 0500 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens DVD (FRIEND GIFT)
07/29/2024 - 0950 - Marvel Studios' Captain America: The First Avenger Blu-ray + Digital Code (FRIEND GIFT)
07/29/2024 - 1100 - Eternals Blu-ray DVD Combo Pack + Digital Code
07/29/2024 - 0900 - The Parent Trap Blu-ray (Disney Movie Club Exclusive)
09/04/2024 - 1250 - Rocketman 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray (Disney Movie Club Exclusive)
09/04/2024 - 1200 - Marvel Studios' Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 Blu-ray Combo Pack + Digital Code (FRIEND GIFT)
09/04/2024 - 1650 - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack + Digital Code (FRIEND GIFT)
10/25/2024 -13000 - $100 Disney Gift Card eGift: Friends
10/25/2024 - 1000 - Disney Movie Club Mystery Blu-ray (#1) (Received Dinosaur [Blu-ray+DVD] - not a DMC title)
10/29/2024 - 1000 - Disney Movie Club Mystery Blu-ray (#2) (Received Cars 2 [Blu-ray+DVD] - not a DMC title)

Thanks, Disney, for 16 somewhat wonderful years.