YMMV / Disney Speedstorm

• Awesome Music: Disney's classic tunes are already this are their own, but being given catchy bass-dropping Electronic Music remixes? Now that takes the pole position!
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Expect to see a lot of Mike Wazowski players online, due to his ridiculously powerful "Hold the Doors" skill that quickly teleports him forward while sending opponents back. Even after being repeatedly nerfed, he's still a popular choice for online races and events because of how exploitable said skill is at allowing him to, with some luck, skip large stretches of the track altogether.
  • Jessie became a popular choice starting with her introduction in season two due to her being a brawler with good stats (which have a similar spread to Mike Wazowski's) and her effective "Yodelin' Cowgirl" skill spawning so many toys in the way that it becomes an obstacle course for the other racers.
  • Stitch very quickly became a popular choice after he was introduced. Besides his already-high popularity as a character, players found that not only did he have similarly good stats as Mike, his charged unique skill has him bombarding the track around him with plasma blasts that ricochet off everything for several seconds, making them difficult to dodge without constantly jumping and ruining their momentum.
  • The arrival of Prince Eric saw this trope reach a whole new level, due to a good stat spread and his very powerful unique skill, "Set Sail", that either gives Eric a speed boost and a protective shield that damages racers it hits or sends a ship flying forward like a giant Red Shell when charged. It eventually got to the point where players were encountering races wherein every other opponent was using Eric and nobody else.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Figment's reveal brought a lot of Disney Parks fans into the game.
• I Knew It!: When WALL•E was added to Speedstorm in Season 5, EVE did not join him, which lead to players quickly assuming that she would be added in the next season. This was bolstered by the fact that neither EVE herself nor Captain B. McCrea, a major character from the film, were among the Crew Members in the initial roster for the WALL•E collection, leading to players deducing that the latter was being saved as EVE's epic crew. Sure enough, come January 2024, EVE was announced to be the bonus Racer for Season 6.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Despite his popularity and being a limited-time event character, Figment is infamous for being considered one of the worst racers in the game. His stats are mediocre to the point where he doesn't excel at anything, he has a poor skillset (his Epic Crew member gives him Hack - a single-target, non-damaging Interface Screw - as his starting skill), and his unique skill is considered one of the worst; the uncharged version only covers a small area around him while the charged version only fills his boost meter up if someone drives behind him, and both skills' Interface Screw is extremely easy to see past and so essentially have no effect at all. He did get a minor buff for Season 6, where he now gets one star for his unique skill's speed boost regardless, but he's still by no means a top choice as a Racer.
• Memetic Mutation: "I hope [insert wanted Disney/Pixar character] doesn't get Pleakley'd."^ExplanationRefers to when Agent Wendy Pleakley of the Lilo & Stitch franchise was revealed during the week of Lilo & Stitch Racer reveals to have not been chosen as a Racer but instead was made Dr. Jumba Jookiba's epic Crew Member, much to the dismay of several Speedstorm fans (especially puristic fans who were against Angel's inclusion). Tainted by the Preview below goes into detail about the ordeal. Thus, much like "deconfirmed" characters in the Super Smash Bros. series, when a Disney character that was highly requested (or even expected) to be a Racer is revealed to be a Crew Member instead, they are said to have been "Pleakley'd".
• Narm Charm: Hearing classic Disney tunes such as the "Mickey Mouse Club March" and "Beauty and the Beast" be given EDM and dubstep remixes is as ridiculous as it is amazing.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This isn't the first Disney all-star racing game; over two decades ago there were Mickey's Speedway USA and Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour.
  • The game's soundtrack being made up of EDM remixes of classic Disney songs does bring to mind the tragically obscure Eurobeat Disney set of albums from over twenty years prior.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • When you fall off the track, you are placed behind where you fell instead of ahead making you lose a lot of time and chances of catching up.
  • Due to the lofty physics, when you hit even the smallest bump, your car will go soaring through the air, making you lose a lot of ground speed.
  • Some daily challenges only give you one try but require you to complete objectives more than once, forcing you to play more than once in a day and lock you out for several hours. Thankfully, this appears to have been removed in Season 5.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • When it was announced, gamers liked the idea of a high-speed Disney kart racing game, but several were completely turned off by the fact that it was going to be a free-to-play title.
  • The week of Lilo & Stitch Racer reveals caused this to happen for some players. During the week, Gameloft hid the syllables of the names of the franchise's playable Racers in shared concept art of the game's then-upcoming Kauaʻi map as teases for their reveals. Said teases lead to a lot of intense debate between users on the official Discord server about who were or were not "worthy" of being playable, mainly between Pleakley and Angel (with some others also supporting either Nani Pelekai or Cobra Bubbles), especially after Captain Gantu was teased/revealed as the fourth Lilo & Stitch Racer. After Angel was teased as the fifth and final Lilo & Stitch Racer, many of the ones who were against her being chosen over other characters from the first film reacted so negatively that Gameloft has not teased new Racers in a similar manner ever since, preferring to just reveal new Racers outright on social media when they feel ready to.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Season 3 update has been widely panned by the player base, with the dedicated feedback thread on the official Discord server receiving several thumbs-down emoji (👎) reactions. While the Lilo & Stitch content added in the season was mostly praised as well as the decision to make all Racers available in Local Freeplay and Private Track regardless of player progress, everything else has been criticized.
    • The changes to the game menus, mainly splitting the single-player and multiplayer modes into two separate menus, have been seen as clunky, harder to navigate, adding extra unnecessary button presses, and feeling like they're designed for a mobile game. (In fact, the season saw a soft launch of a mobile version.)
    • Most players also believe that many of the other changes were made to encourage getting as many players to buy as many Tokens as possible, especially since they were made purchasable outside of Founder's Packs in the update, making the game less rewarding to play. Season Coin earnings have been greatly reduced overall (Season Coins were made also purchasable in the same update). The amount of free Season Box tokens that players can earn during the season was reduced (meaning players cannot open as many Season Boxes for free as much as they could compared to earlier seasons). Regulated Multiplayer rewards were reduced, with the maximum amount of shards players could earn for the mode's featured Racer of the Week reduced from ten shards to just three. Finally, the prices of the Token packs themselves are seen as too expensive, with the cost of buying Golden Pass tiers or Season Boxes with Tokens being too high to make them worthwhile.
    • Missions that require playing the ranked multiplayer mode, which previously also included regulated multiplayer, cut off the latter mode from progress, forcing players to play ranked exclusively. This was criticized as players have complained about the high frequency of being put into races with either highly-skilled players with high-level/high-star Racers, players who bought their way to high-level five-star Racers, or both.
  • Season 5 was even worse, with players arguing that the game has gotten grindy to Bribing Your Way to Victory levels, to the point that even some fans who have been around since early access have considered quitting the game.
    • The Season Tour, particularly the last three chapters, now has event nodes that require limited event or previous seasons' Racers to play as, some with quite high recommended levels that players might not be able to reach due to not having three or more stars for such Racers, thus being stuck with low level caps. To add insult to injury, the Season Tour often gates progress (mostly, but not exclusively, on side paths) and requires players to earn Medals from races to proceed — and this gate also applies to the Tour's grand prize. If you don't have most of the characters required, you can even be locked out of receiving it even if you get to the end of the main path.
    • Although this issue first started with Season 4, the game got skimpier with the leaderboard-based limited event rewards for the season's unlockable bonus Racers, making it harder to earn the rewards for their objective-based limited events. In Season 3, all players in an event could get at least enough shards to unlock the character, but Season 4 reduced it to the top 25% of players and Season 5 was 15%. One of the Season 5 prize characters was Oswald, who was only available for that season alone.
  • Then everything went to hell a week before Season 7 arrived when Gameloft announced several controversial monetization changes to the game, with many players going as far as to say that Season 7 will be the one that kills the game:
    • After only having a single Golden Pass that could be bought with the premium Tokens (or real money) up to this point, it was announced that the Season Tour and Golden Pass would now be split into two of each, with the premium tracks of the Golden Pass now only being able to be bought with real money instead of Tokens. Players were outraged (especially those who had bought the Founder's Packs and/or had been banking Tokens for Golden Passes), feeling that the developers had defeated the purpose of even having the Tokens in the first place.
    • Two new racers would temporarily only be able to be unlocked via the Golden Pass (becoming available in the shop later) and that players who didn't complete the first part of the Season Tour or Golden Pass would miss out on any races they didn't finish and rewards they didn't get before Part 2 started.
    • A new Tournament Mode would be introduced that would allow players to unlock past seasons' content via a Vault Pass... which would also have a premium tier that would only cost real money, on top of locking the player out of any tournament paths for characters they hadn't unlocked yet and only allowing four daily tries at the tournament if the player hasn't paid for the premium tier of the Vault Pass (again, only with real money).
    • Gameloft would eventually announce eight days later that they would continue to let players buy Golden Pass Credits with Tokens... for one more month. Not only did most players found this to be an inadequate compromise, it lead to accusations that Gameloft was trying to exploit the fear of missing out to get players to buy and/or grind Tokens before Token-based purchases are removed for good and using the one month deadline to prevent players from filing a class action lawsuit because they have now been given an "advance notice" about the Golden Pass monetization changes.
    • Another controversial announcement was that only some of the new racers per season would have voice acting, with the other new racers being silent. Since a large part of the characters' personality comes from their voice acting, and the game had previously went out of its way to get as many of the original actors back as possible, this did not go over well with the fanbase, with comparisons being made to the first two Nickelodeon Kart Racers titles.
• Unexpected Character:
  • In a release time example, Hercules and Megara were this. While many fans expected that they would be added sometime down the line, few expected them to be included in the base roster.
  • The announcement of Figment was a huge surprise given that he's a character from the Disney Theme Parks instead of being from a Disney movie or a TV series. His crew also includes the Dreamfinder, SMRT-1,^note from Epcot's CommuniCore Sonny Eclipse,^note from the Magic Kingdom quick-service restaurant Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe the Orange Bird,^note from Walt Disney World and The Enchanted Tiki Room birds. Meanwhile, the mottos associated with the parks also reference closed attractions, Kitchen Kabaret and Maelstrom.
  • Gilbert Goof, a Mickey Mouse Comic Universe-based only nephew of Goofy, getting a Crew slot over the more well-known Max Goof (though this does open an opportunity for Max to join as a racer later on).
  • Steamboat Mickey as a separate character from Mickey was a surprising inclusion, as fans assumed he would have been an alternate costume for Mickey if he got in. Steamboat Pete was similarly surprising, as he got in before the modern version of Pete.
  • While having Lilo & Stitch added down the line was expected, especially since Stitch is one of Disney's most popular characters, the small reveal that its season will have five characters from the franchise instead of the expected four (one for each of the four racer classes) got fans excited and lead to a whole bunch of guesses of who would get in. Two of the characters were especially surprising.
    • During the week of Season 3 character reveals beginning July 17, 2023, Gameloft teased through concept art shared on social media which characters from Lilo & Stitch will be added. The first two reveals (after the long already-revealed Stitch), Lilo and Jumba, were widely expected additions, but players were stunned when Captain Gantu was announced as the fourth racer, as many players thought he would be too big to be added, à la Ridley for Super Smash Bros. before Ultimate (Gantu's size inconsistencies in Lilo & Stitch: The Series notwithstanding).
    • The final character was revealed to be Angel, a character who wasn't even in the original movie, but rather the aforementioned Lilo & Stitch: The Series (as well as the Stitch! anime on which she appeared more often). While a massive Breakout Character who had appeared in several crossover games beforehand, including Gameloft's own Disney Magic Kingdoms and Disney Getaway Blast!, her inclusion still came out of left field for those who were either unaware of (or don't like or support) the sequel and spin-off material or didn't think Speedstorm would acknowledge it (or any Disney Television Animation character,^note outside of Mickey and Friends-related shows like DuckTales for that matter).
    • Even the Lilo & Stitch Crew Members have a couple surprises. One of the Common Crew Members is Luki, the shave ice vendor who appears only very briefly in the original film without any spoken lines, and while he also appears in a small speaking role several times in The Series with a different design for that show, Speedstorm uses his original film appearance instead. Meanwhile, Reuben (Experiment 625) appears as an Epic Crew Member, which itself was not a surprise; what is somewhat surprising was that he was made Angel's Epic Crew Member instead of Gantu's, who was given the Grand Councilwoman as his Epic Crew Member, despite some fans believing that she would be a Rare Crew Member instead. Similarly, Stitch's Epic Crew Members are (of all things) the swan family from his The Ugly Duckling book, who don't even physically exist within the movie's universe.
  • Oswald the Lucky Rabbit became playable in Season 5, making his first major media appearance since the end of the Epic Mickey series. Not only that, Ortensia joined him, too.
    • Even Oswald's original love interest, Fanny Cottontail got Crew slot making her first appearance since All Wet after Ortensia replaced her as Oswald's current love interest in later cartoons and begin scrapped from being used in first Epic Mickey game.
  • Frozen being added was a no-brainer, especially for the series' tenth anniversary, and most of the characters added were the ones audiences have come to expect...with one exception: Hans. While he is the main villain of his movie and was decently popular for a time, the 13th prince of the Southern Isles had been gradually phased out by both the passage of time and Disney themselves. Not only that, but he's being reprised by Santino Fontana for the first time since his brief cameo in 2015's Frozen Fever, and properly voiced for the first time since the original film came out in 2013.

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