How to Host a Watch Party and Watch Hamilton with Friends and Family

Getting tickets to see Hamilton was difficult before the global pandemic. The last time I had checked, ticket prices were over $600 on the low-end, and that was to reserve them 9 months early. With the pandemic, well, it’s just best to stay home.

Fortunately, on July 3rd, Disney released the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical on Disney+. You no longer have to Wait for It. What if you want to watch Hamilton with your friends while still practicing social distancing? We Know, and we’re about to show you. Best of all, your friends won’t need to be In the Room Where it Happens. We’re probably not going to stop with the Hamilton song title puns either.

What’s a Watch Party?

A Watch Party is where you gather some friends or family to stream a show or movie together, from different locations. Some services, like Amazon video, have adopted this to help us get through the global pandemic. 

Here’s What You Need to Host a Hamilton Watch Party

Everyone Needs Disney+
First of all, all parties involved will need their own Disney+ account. Unfortunately, Disney+ just stopped offering the free trial. I think they said “You’ll Be Back,” to everyone who let their subscription lapse after The Mandalorian was over.

Just log in to https://www.disneyplus.com/ and subscribe. Verizon has a promo right now, so if you recently bought a phone or signed up for Verizon Internet service, you might want to check to see if you are eligible.

Everyone Needs to Install a Browser Plugin
Next, all parties involved will need to install a Chrome browser plugin. If you only care about doing a watch party with Disney Plus, you can use the Disney Plus Party plugin. If you want to host watch parties with Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, and Hulu as well, you can check out Vemos.

Either way, as the host, you’ll want to pick one, install it, and ensure everyone else gets it before the show starts, to avoid technical issues. 

Both plugins allow you to sync up the video with your watch party and includes the ability to chat with each other during the movie. Once the Disney Plus Party plugin is installed, click the icon it adds to the top right of your Chrome browser and create an account.

Once you’ve followed the steps to create an account, start up Disney+ in Chrome and start a movie. Then click the Disney Plus Party button and Host a Movie. It will ask you to create a name for the room.

Your friends will need to install the plugin, create an account, and click Join a Movie and type in the name of your room.

From there, the host will be able to play the movie and it should sync across everyone else’s device. You can pause it (so nobody asks, “What’d I Miss?” if they Take a Break), or you can watch the whole movie Non-Stop. There is one caveat though… as of right now, Disney Plus Party is only free for the first four hours per week. Hamilton’s run time on Disney Plus is just under three hours, so it’s a good way to try out the plugin before committing to spending money on it.

We hope everyone in your watch party is Satisfied! 

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I think we did a pretty good job with the Hamilton song title puns, but feel free to take a shot in the comments!