Disney’s Genie+ and Individual Lightening Lane options are getting a great deal of attention and for good reason. Some people love them, some people don’t. For us, it was worth every penny and I doubt I’ll ever go to Disney World without Genie+ again. If you have been to Disney World post-covid, you know the parks feel packed. Although Disney has stated they will most likely never return to a “full capacity” situation in order to improve the quality of the experience for their guests, it is incredibly busy in every park, every day. So, for the rides we all love, the wait times are often over an hour for most of the day. For new attractions and the most exciting thrill rides, the wait is often over 2 hours. Now, I don’t mind waiting 30-45 minutes to get on a ride, but 2 hours…heck-to-the-no! So will I spend the extra 15 bucks a person or the Genie+ and extra 7-15 bucks for the individual lightening lane passes for the rides we really want to ride? Abso-flippin-lutely. I’m not patient enough or physically fit enough to be okay with standing in a line for 2 hours to experience 2-10 minutes worth of “wow”. I’m just not. That 15-30 extra dollars per person per day is worth my sanity. It’s worth the couponing, shopkicking, fetch rewarding and all the other random money saving things I do throughout the year to ensure I have the means to afford this weird little luxury for us. But I digress…let’s get into how Genie+ and the Individual Lightening Lane Passes actually work.
Genie+ is a replacement (of sorts) for the former Disney Fast Pass. The way it works is different but the ultimate goal is the same: to save you time waiting in line so you can enjoy other things Walt Disney World Resorts parks offer. When staying on the property, you have the option to add Genie+ to your tickets when you book your resort stay. You can also add Genie+ to some of the packages offered by participating off property hotels. This is why using a travel agent is so valuable. We have access to the properties, deals and package info that you may not see when booking on your own…plus our planning and booking services are always free and we help with other things like making every effort to get reservations at your favorite restaurants and magical extra experiences also for free. As Dhubs says, “it’s if free it’s for me”. But back to Genie+…it costs $15 each day for each person and covers many of the most popular rides in each of the parks. If you can add Genie+ to your ticket package…DO IT! Don’t wait until the day of your visit to do it. You’ll lose precious ride choosing time trying to buy the passes at 7 o’clock in the morning. You can start picking your ride times for the park you have reserved via the My Disney Experience (MDE) app at 7am on the day of your park visit. The key is to log into the MDE app, refresh right at 7am and grab the most important ride/show/experience to your party first. Chances are…if you like it, so do most of the other folks who are going to the park that day. The ride times are one hour windows. You can check into the ride 5 minutes before your window opens. A lot of people worry about having dining reservations or stacking Lightening Lane passes at the same time as Genie+ reservations. You can totally do both if you set it up right. We chose a ride time for 2-3pm and had dining reservations for an in park restaurant at 1:30 which meant we weren’t getting out of the restaurant until around 2:30. After we ate, we just walked over to the ride and were able to redeem it at 2:50pm. Just be aware of the walk time and be sure to check into your dining reservation as soon as check in becomes available (usually around 15-20 minutes before your reservation time). Disney is accommodating. If you tell your server you’re trying to get to a ride by a certain time, they’ll do their best to expedite your meal if that’s what you really want. Just make sure you have time to get from one ride to another if you have overlapping ride time windows booked between Genie+ & Lightening Lane passes. If you are freaking out about it, you can always cancel the ride time for the Genie+ ride and try to grab it for a later time. Now, here’s the thing… you can only pick one ride at a time for Genie+. It feels like a bummer when you want to plan out your entire day like an overachieving champ (like me) but it’s really a more fair system so everybody gets something they want. There are a couple of interesting things we found regarding this. First, if your ride time is early, you can pick another ride after you’ve checked into your first ride. If your ride time is later in the day, you’ll have the option to choose another Genie+ ride after a couple of hours. As an example, one of our ride times was at 10:25-11:25 for the Navi River ride in Animal Kingdom. We grabbed this at 7am. We couldn’t pick another ride until we checked into Navi. At Epcot, we chose Soarin, but the first available ride redemption time was 2:30pm-3:30pm. We were able to grab the Mission: Space for 12:30pm-1:30pm at 11am. One of the keys to remember is that ride times become available throughout the day. So don’t panic when you see the Genie+ selection option grey out on a ride you want. It will most likely become available again every couple of hours. I’ll post how our days at each park went later today so you can see how much we packed into each day. There were other rides and attractions we could have added, but on this trip, we were more interested in relaxing than cramming in every single ride possible. We found that the earliest time we were eligible to pick a new ride was 2 hours after the park opened and then subsequently, every 2 hours after that. It’s both a pro and a con. There are options available for ride times that you can see, but can’t get when you just randomly check your device which is irritating, but you also aren’t glued to your phone trying to grab a ride all day. You know you can’t grab another ride for 2 hours. We found setting alarms for the next time our party was “eligible to select a ride” to be most helpful. One thing we also like is being able to stack a Genie+ ride reservation and an Individual Lightening Lane pass.
Lightening Lane passes also go on sale at 7am for the most popular rides in each park. At this time, LL passes are available for the following:
Magic Kingdom
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train $10
Epcot
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure $9
Animal Kingdom
Avatar Flight of Passage $11
Hollywood Studios
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance $15
Something to note: these are non-refundable, so be sure whoever the passes are being purchased for are going to ride or you are just out the money. We didn’t realize my husband was going to be unable to ride Avatar Flight of Pa ssage because of the pressure of the restraints on his legs. So we said adios to that 11 bucks. Not the end of the world, but something to remember.
You cannot purchase Individual Lightening Lane (LL) passes until 7am on the day of your park visit. There’s no option to add these to a package or anything like that. So, how do you stack the Genie+ and LL quickly? Two people in your party hitting the app at 7am! In our case, I bought the LL passes for our entire group each day at 7am (everybody just Venmo/Zelled the funds for their LL after we got the ride). Dhubs hit the Genie+ ride our group chose at the same time. We were able to stack the rides and it was awesome. It felt like an actual accomplishment, yes I know, it’s not but let me feel awesome about something silly.
What do we think about it overall? Ultimately, we think it’s worth it. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is useful and definitely improved our Disney experience compared to the last trip when we didn’t have it. I’m sure there are days in the parks when you wouldn’t necessarily need it if you don’t mind waiting in line for 45 minutes to 2 hours for the popular rides. But if you’re impatient, unable to stand for long periods of time, or want to have time to do more without feeling like you have to rush to get into the next line when the parks are busy, bite the bullet and buy the Genie+. If you can afford to add the LL passes for the rides you just don’t want to miss, do it. It’s going to make your day less chaotic and more enjoyable if you use it correctly. As always, we’re happy to help you learn more about this Disney option and how to use the Genie tip board as well to plan your best even if you don’t purchase the Genie+ option.
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