Don’t get too excited, fellow non-Antipodeans: Disney Mix isn’t available yet anywhere outside Australia and New Zealand. But it’s on the way soon.

What is Disney Mix? It’s a messaging app designed for children: a bit like a kid-friendly WhatsApp with more games and fun photo-customisation features.

“Messaging has become a phenomenon around the world, and yet we’ve noticed that there aren’t any messengers designed with kids in mind,” explained Disney in a blog post, as the app went live down under.

“We know that kids don’t just want to chat, they want to play with their friends. So we’ve created an experience where chat and play are seamlessly intermixed. And we’ve innovated on the messenger interface so that kids can play with their friends while not missing out on the conversation. Kids can play games, make funny memes, and share stickers. Even better, kids can make their own custom 3D avatar that can be customized in an infinite number of ways and that can bring their expressions to life through fun animations.”

Disney says that it’s used the experience from running its Club Penguin virtual world to work on the safety policies for Disney Mix, including “empowering the community to help us keep it safe by giving them easy ways to report bullying and other inappropriate behaviour so we can address it quickly”.

Disney Mix is an app for iOS and Android devices, but as we said, it’s only available in Australia and New Zealand for now according to Disney’s support site – although it says “keep checking back for the worldwide release date” so it could go global soon.

When it does, Disney Mix will sit alongside apps like PopJam in trying to be a child-safe alternative to social apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat which are really for adults.