To every one of my peers out there, I know you love Disney. Don’t deny it. They were one of the only companies that you ever watched as a child and it would be rude to diss them like that.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that think Disney has gotten worse over the years and essentially refuse to watch any movie if they know it was made by Disney.

Contrary to what people might think, Disney movies have actually stepped up their game throughout the last couple of years. I personally thought they had gone downhill, but the flaw in my thinking was that I was only considering Disney Channel movies, not Disney itself–because those are two different things. Therefore, Disney Channel is not within my examination because those are movies made for TV.

But let’s take a step back. When I say Disney, what is the first thing that comes to mind? High School Musical.

Obviously. It is the clearly the best movie Disney has ever released.

But I just found out that the 2006 movie is a Disney Channel Original Movie, not a Disney movie, so it is sad to say that it is excluded from my examination of Disney movies as well.

I also just found out that the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are Disney movies … but I excluded those from my examination as well because there are five of them, and I thought it was an unfair advantage.

When I began my research, I started looking at movies from 1999 continuing through present movie productions. I thought this was fitting because all of the people in our age range out there will know what the heck I am talking about.

Although there are so many movies – some of which I had never heard of – I  only took movies that I felt were the most popular based on critic and audience score, a total of 48.

I always thought that some of the best movies made by Disney were the ones from the early 2000s and late 1990s: “The Parent Trap,” “The Princess Diaries,” “Freaky Friday” and so on.

But as I went through all of the critic scores, I saw that the further down the timeline–into present productions — the more popular and liked the movies were.

As you can imagine, I was just so completely shocked. I mean, what movies did I miss throughout the years that I thought so many others were better?

As I got to thinking, I realized I had completely forgotten about the most recent ones: the remaking of “Cinderella”, “Maleficent”, “Saving Mr. Banks,” “The Jungle Book,” “Beauty and the Beast,” the list could go on for miles. These have been some of my favorite Disney movies of all time and they had completely slipped my mind.

The more I looked at the critic scores, the more I saw that Disney could not be better. Some of their best movies from the past five years have scored 7 and 7.5 out of 10. I guess so many others and myself just didn’t get the memo that all of these newer movies were phenomenal.

Obviously, I am not saying that Disney is the best movie producing firm out there, but I am not denying that they are clearly quite good. Their movies have gotten more developed and detailed with consistently better acting.

I could not be more impressed by the progress Disney has made.

Now, in the chart provided, it shows that ‘The Jungle Book’ has placed as number one out of the top 48 movies. Although “The Jungle Book” is a 2016 movie, the 2013 movie “Saving Mr. Banks” would have come in a tie for first–I felt The Jungle Book was more popular–the 2014 movie “Maleficent” would have come in second, the 2017 movie “Beauty and the Beast” would have come in third and the 2015 movie ‘Cinderella’ would have come in fourth. Clearly, within the last five years, Disney has risen to the top of their game and is winning their own championships.

I just felt that, since Disney was such a big part of many of our childhoods, we needed to know that Disney can still be a part of their lives.

After all, it is ‘The Happiest Place On Earth’ ‘Where Dreams Come True,’ and it still holds true today.