Adults who obsess over Disney theme parks are a very special bunch, and it looks like an app to help them find love with each other is on the way.
Meanwhile in Japan, a dating app can verify if you’re married or not, as concerns about married folk using the apps for some side action reach fever pitch. There’s also a new double date feature on Tinder, cuts at Bumble, and expanded selfie verification checks, in the latest of our monthly dating app news roundups.
New dating app for Disney park nuts
A dating app for Disney theme park obsessives called Single Riders is set to launch in beta later in 2025, according to the content creator behind the project.
TikTok user joethebeardednerd, who described himself as “one of those Disney adults” and appears to be based in Florida, said that Single Riders would be for “Disney adults and other theme park enthusiasts”. Ahead of beta testing, he invited followers to say which functions they’d like to see in the app.
There are few details about the app, but the team behind it has said that it will allow friendship matches as well as date matches, and that it will launch across the US. It will also cater to fans of non-Disney theme parks, such as Universal Studios.
Adults going big on Disney theme parks is a well established internet niche, with its own culture of content creators and fans, so Single Riders certainly has the potential to find an already-established audience.
There are, however, some dating sites catering to Disney fans already, such as MouseMingle and Meet Up On Main.
The man behind Single Riders seems to know quality content, though – he used to post drunk reviews of Disney films online.
Tinder rolls out Double Date…
Tinder has rolled out a function in the US called Double Date, that allows you to team up with a friend on the app and match with other pairs for a… yes, double date.
To activate it, you tap the Double Date icon in the top right corner of the app screen, then select a friend to make a pairing with. You then use Tinder as you normally would, and if either members of the pair ‘like’ another Double Date pair, a match is made and you can all get pulled into a group chat, where you can vibe and try to work out how you’re going to split the forthcoming dinner bill.
Tinder seems to have made the move to bring more appeal to Gen Z users.
The company said: “Tinder tested the feature across key international markets and found that nearly 90 percent of Double Date profiles came from users under 29 – a clear sign of strong adoption among Gen Z and younger Millennials. This isn’t surprising, given that Gen Z makes up over half of Tinder’s global user base and often approaches dating as a team sport.”
…and expands video selfie checks
Tinder is forcing new users in California to verify themselves with a video selfie function called Face Check, when signing up to the app.
The biometric scan requirement rollout in the state, first reported by Axios, follows similar face scan verification rollouts for Tinder in Colombia and Canada. Match Group, which owns Tinder, said the move was made in California partly due to the state’s online privacy laws.
It marks another step in dating apps cracking down harder on fake profiles and romance scams, which have proliferated recently on some online dating services. Match Group is reportedly monitoring how the California rollout goes, to help the company decide whether to expand it further.
Tinder introduced photo verification options in 2021, and video verification functionality in 2023.
Bumble cuts workforce
Bumble has announced that it’s cutting 30 percent of the dating app’s workforce, resulting in around 240 jobs losses, as the company attempts to weather the industry’s general decline.
CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to Bumble in March for her second stint at the head of the company, with a spokesperson saying that the job cuts were “not made lightly”. The money saved from the salaries of those leaving the firm are reportedly set to be invested in Bumble, rather than to take the slack of recent losses.
Bumble launched in 2014, and is one of many dating apps struggling to relevance as its original Millennial user base leaves the dating field, with Gen Z users not signing up in enough numbers to plug the hole.
In the first quarter of 2025 Bumble’s revenue was down eight percent. The app’s user numbers peaked at 58 million in 2023 but by the following year had plummeted to 50 million.
Recently Bumble has been pushing photo verification on the app in various countries and regions, as dating apps attempt to crack down on fake profiles and scams.
Japanese app launches relationship verification
A Japanese dating app called Tapple now allows users to verify that they are single with government-issued ID, in an attempt to allay worries about married people using the app to get a bit on the side.
A survey by Tapple found that many users are concerned that they might meet married people passing themselves off as single on the app. For the new system, users scan their My Number card (a government-issued ID card) through a government-operated portal, which can then verify their relationship status on the app.
Worries about people misrepresenting themselves on dating apps are common among dating app users all over the world, so it’s perhaps a little surprising that Tapple was the first major dating app to introduce a status verification function like this.
However, the function does rely on the user having official ID that ‘officially’ recognises their relationship status, which dating app users in many countries may not have access to, limiting its appeal somewhat.
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