The Disney channel is getting hurt badly by families cutting the cord. Disney streaming will be just as much about "The Mickey Mouse Club" as it is about big budget blockbusters.
I have a 2 year old. I will be wherever the Disney content is, and they could charge me basically whatever price they want.
Disney's attitude to selling to children is toxic IMO. But perhaps if you fully inhale you actually do start to get happier by just buying the latest movie franchise tie-in toy, made of cheap plastic using exploited labour?
It's not about enriching their lives, or encouraging their development by moving them away from material things...yet. Those goals come a little later.
My kid is actually 1.8, I was rounding up. He likes Moana and watches it every day. He can say ~15 words. The movie's chicken and recognizing songs he has heard before result in pure joy.
He likes to watches the Mickey Mouse club and also likes to point out the characters he recognizes. This is intellectually rewarding to him, because it is at the absolute edge of his abilities.
But I think like you. Disney is evil. When he turns 5, I will throw a brick through the TV and hand him a copy of WALDEN. For now, I'm fucked, at the mercy of a vicious corporate Mouse.
Being a human being is a social experience. If all of a kid's friends watch disney movies and have disney toys, there is an opportunity to connect with his friends. There is also the opportunity to feel excluded, to miss out on experiences and discussions with his friends. I remember quite fondly how excited me and my friends would get talking and arguing about Star Wars and Indiana Jones in the sandbox.