25 items
A honey-colored giant of a bear leans into the camera, sniffs, and announces you smell nice today. Jim Henson Television's gentle giant anchored Playhouse Disney mornings, and ended every episode on the balcony singing goodbye with Luna the moon.
Erik von Detten as Andy "Brink" Brinker, a Southern California inline skater who secretly joins the sponsored Team X-Bladz for $200 a week when his dad's disability pay runs thin, betraying the "Soul-Skaters" who skate for fun, not money. Disney Channel premiered it on August 29, 1998, as only its third Original Movie, and it has anchored best-DCOM lists ever since.
Demi Lovato's big break, the Jonas Brothers as a fictional band called Connect 3, and a summer camp where every problem gets solved at Final Jam. Disney Channel's 2008 answer to its own High School Musical phenomenon.
The That's So Raven spinoff that moved Cory Baxter into the White House — and, a decade later, got crowned the internet's favorite ironic 'best anime ever.' Kyle Massey ran get-rich-quick schemes out of the presidential kitchen for two seasons of peak Disney Channel.
The made-for-TV Disney Channel movies you cleared your Friday night for — Halloweentown, Zenon, Smart House, and eventually the High School Musical juggernaut. The premiere was an event, and you'd seen it ten more times by the next weekend.
Louis versus Ren, chaos versus perfectionism — the Disney Channel sitcom that let a young Shia LaBeouf demolish every scene he was in. Three seasons of schemes, a beloved musical episode, and a send-off movie, all before anyone knew what a Transformer was.
The Disney Channel movie that turned every October into a ritual. Halloweentown premiered in 1998, but its real reign was the 2000s — three sequels, endless reruns, and a generation's gateway to comfort-food spookiness with Debbie Reynolds as the world's best witch grandma.
The Disney Channel sitcom where Miley Stewart lived a secret double life as pop star Hannah Montana, complete with the unforgettable theme "The Best of Both Worlds." It premiered March 24, 2006 and ran until January 16, 2011, launching Miley Cyrus's career and creating a merchandising phenomenon.
The Disney Channel musical that launched a thousand hairbrush-microphone performances. When a basketball star and a brainy new student auditioned for the school musical, their chemistry and catchy songs—especially "Breaking Free"—captivated millions of kids and turned Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens into instant teen icons.
Lizzie McGuire on TV, platinum pop star on the radio, and the face on every 2003 tween's binder. Hilary Duff was the blueprint Disney Channel superstar, running the show-to-albums-to-movies pipeline that a whole generation of stars followed.
The 1999 Disney Channel movie about a 13-year-old Hawaiian surfer whose family moves to Vermont, where the mountain is split between rich private-school skiers and public-school snowboarders. He picks the snowboarders. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays his grandfather, the surf legend of the title.
The Disney Channel animated series about high-school cheerleader and part-time crime-fighter Kim Possible, her clumsy best-friend sidekick Ron Stoppable, and his naked mole rat Rufus, foiling villains like Dr. Drakken and Shego. Catchphrases 'What's the sitch?' and 'So not the drama' became part of the language; created by Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle.
Four preschoolers and their sentient red rocket ship blasted off every episode to a soundtrack of actual classical music. You remember the theme — "We're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship" — and the way each mission smuggled a museum masterpiece and a classical movement into the adventure.
Disney Channel's '00s tween sensation starring Hilary Duff as awkward Lizzie, with an animated cartoon version of Lizzie voicing her inner thoughts. The relatable humor and heart made it a cornerstone of early-2000s children's television and rocketed Hilary Duff to stardom, leading to the 2003 theatrical movie and a music career.
The 2001 Disney Channel movie that turned Shakespeare's Twelfth Night into a dirt-bike race. When her twin brother gets hurt, Andi Carson secretly races in his place under his name, with her mother in on it and her father off in Europe looking for a replacement rider.
"Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!" Two stepbrothers build a roller coaster or get a band back together before lunch, their sister Candace fails to bust them, and their pet platypus slips off to fight Dr. Doofenshmirtz, whose latest invention erases the evidence just in time. Disney's 104-days-of-summer cartoon ran a song in nearly every episode and became one of the channel's biggest animated hits.
The 1999 Disney Channel movie where a kid wins a computerized house and teaches it to be his mom from old sitcoms, until PAT the house becomes a 1950s-housewife hologram and locks the family in. Entertainment Weekly has twice ranked it the best Disney Channel Original Movie ever made.
Disney Channel's sitcom about identical twins living in a Boston hotel lobby. Zack and Cody Martin were troublemakers in suits and ties, navigating the Tipton Hotel with their mom the lounge singer and a cast of misfits—the rich girl London, candy-counter staffer Maddie, and a hotel full of chaos waiting to happen.
A Disney Channel hit (2003–2007) starring Raven-Symoné as Raven Baxter, a San Francisco teen who experiences brief psychic visions of the future. The show's running gag: Raven's attempts to change what she's foreseen inevitably cause the very chaos she was trying to prevent. One of the network's biggest comedies of the era, it was among the first Disney Channel sitcoms led by a Black female lead.
Four New York friends, a girl group, and matching cheetah print. The Cheetah Girls premiered August 15, 2003, as Disney Channel's first musical original movie, drew 6.5 million viewers, and turned Raven-Symoné, Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, and Sabrina Bryan into a real touring act with two sequels and an arena tour.
Rome, Paolo, the Trevi Fountain, and "What Dreams Are Made Of" sung at the International Music Video Awards. The 2003 movie was the first theatrical film ever spun from a Disney Channel show, the finale of Lizzie McGuire, and the moment Hilary Duff graduated from cable to the multiplex, opening second only to X2.
The 2001 Disney Channel movie in which a teenage basketball star loses his lucky gold coin and starts shrinking, turning red-haired and growing pointy ears, because his mother's family are secretly leprechauns. Collider called it the strangest DCOM ever. Ryan Coogler says it helped inspire Sinners.
Penny Proud, her embarrassing dad Oscar, and the one and only Suga Mama — the first animated series made exclusively for Disney Channel, and a landmark Black family cartoon. The theme song alone, sung by Solange with Destiny's Child, is an instant time machine.
Disney Channel's late-2000s flagship spent four seasons turning Selena Gomez into a household name and making millions of kids believe they could be teenage wizards living above a Greenwich Village sandwich shop. The premise was simple and tight: three wizard siblings, one family competition, and only one of them gets to keep the magic.
Kirsten Storms as Zenon Kar, a 13-year-old exiled from her orbiting space station to boring old Earth in the year 2049, where nobody gets her slang and she has to stop a plot to crash the station for the insurance money. Disney Channel premiered it on January 23, 1999, and "zetus lapetus" entered the vocabulary of every kid watching. It was the first Disney Channel Original Movie to get a sequel.