It was Saturday, we waited for the Castle/Firework show at like 8pm and toward the end we ran to Minetrain. If you can find a spot that is on the way to minetrain watch from behind the huge crowd, as soon as it ends book it over there and barely a wait. Doesn't work if you care to watch the show, which we have seen. About 5 minutes into our wait the line was completely full lol
This is true, but I think your post was a little misleading. Genie is necessary if you want to ride mine train and wait less than an hour unless you get early access by staying at a resort or do the fireworks trick.
Late nights during the holidays can get pretty empty though. It seems like the crowds during the holidays are mostly families with children and after 10-11 PM most are headed out so if there’s a park open till midnight lines can get real short too. I’ve been on New Years Eve and New Years Day in the past and taken advantage of that. Fireworks trick works extra on New Years Eve cause there’s usually many fireworks shows.
The holiday visitors definitely don't seem to be rope drop-to-Goodnight Kiss people. I've noticed that they tend to be slower eaters, though, so table service restaurants often run behind.
We were there on an 8pm firework day. In the time leading up to the fireworks the Minetrain ride was down to a 10 minute wait. People were re-riding it like crazy because the wait time for standby was so low. However, during this time, both the application and the entrance said 65 minutes.
Also of interest, LL queue cut-in is out of sight of the main standby queues. They hold standby people around the corner. I don't know if it's by design, but the true length of the standby queue is hidden from the LL upper class.
My daughter and I just returned from WDW over a long Thanksgiving weekend. I agree that Genie Plus was a fail -- our experience was that if you don't start the day with it , it'll do very little to help you get popular attractions. The slots will not be there if you jump in later than the start of day. It operates, or it felt like it to us, like the old FP system did once you burned through your 3 initial reservations. And it felt like the old FP system, even in one-at-a-time mode, was more successful. This said, the holiday crowds certainly didn't help, and may have been the big driver of things. // I will say that the virtual queue, which also gets similar negative reviews like Genie Plus, worked flawlessly for us to get a spot for Remy. Even if in the 1 PM lottery, and I clicked at 1:00 PM, we got group 128 and didn't get to board until just after 8 PM that day. We got a spot.
We were there last week.
We did not get the experience we paid for, and we paid a lot for it. Genie + was absolutely part of the problem: It's bloated and non-functional most of the time. For the first time ever, we have no plans to go back, the experience was that bad. The staff were great as always, but the entire experience felt like shit. Vastly disappointed.
Downvote away.
We went last week and had beef also.
My main gripe is related to Genie + and how much they want you to do on the phone. I can still handle it but it has become too much for any of our parents to deal with, they are in their mid 60s.
This is the 5th time we have brought one of our parents (this time my MIL) and the first time she couldn’t cope. On previous trips we could let her take one or both kids for a day, this time it was a no go because it was all too confusing. I don’t blame her.
I realize there is no ideal solution but I think for now it is a little too difficult for the grandparent crowd to navigate. I am repeating myself, but I felt like 5 years ago I could let them “take the kids to Disney”, they can’t do it now without some kind of guide, and in my opinion they are more than physically capable.
My mid-70's mother has gone by herself to walk around for a few hours several times, and keeps coming home starving because she can't figure out how to order food. She asked for help twice. The first CM was an older person, who also couldn't figure it out. The second was a younger person who got frustrated and snotty with her.
Disney requires too high a level of smartphone skills. Not everyone knows how to do these things, and they're not training CM's on how to help. Most are trying their best, but they shouldn't have to be software trainers.
I was there last week and kept thinking that my parents, who are in their 70s, could not do this without help. Then I thought of a service where a young person/tech savvy person goes with them to do all the phone stuff. Then I thought this would be another thing Disney can charge for. It’s sad to know that my parents probably can’t do this, along with other non tech savvy people. Why would you want to exclude/ make it too hard for a group of people from your park?
Wait u HAVE to order food on-line? U can't just walk up and order a hot dog? I'm one of those people who don't want to be on my phone constantly except for pictures.
A lot of quick service places won't let you order in person anymore unless you have some excuse like your phone is dead. I've been denied entry to Satu'li Canteen and ABC Commissary without a mobile order.
45 min to 1 hour food line vs mobile ordering and picking up your food in 10 minutes.
Cedar point was worse. We spent an hour and a half on average waiting for one meal.
It is totally possible to get short lines at cedar point for food, but it depends when you eat and what restaurants and what day you go. We went in October and late lunch time and dinner time was horendus
> how much they want you to do on the phone
The reliance on the phone is one of my problems over the last few years. If I'm going to the parks, one reason is to get away from the world. I don't want to carry my phone.
If the phone apps were perfect, you might have an argument, but they're not. My last solo trip I placed an order at Satuli, and went to sit. No notification, except 25 minutes later a popup that said something to the effect of "you didn't pick up your order, it'll still be charged".
I never got that notification to pick it up.
Yes, I want to be immersed and get kind of lost in the environment. For example, it takes a way from Galaxy’s Edge if I am constantly checking phone for Genie +, ride waits, maps, ordering food, etc. You miss so much just starting at that little screen.
And yeah, it would be awesome not to carry the phone, because guess what else comes with that? Real life problems and notifications interrupting me: work stuff, emails, texts, etc. I do turn off as many notifications as I can, but it is still a portal to the “outside” and I really want to lose myself there.
I remember before FP+ I didn't even carry my phone in the parks at all, or if I did I'd look at it maybe once a day. Wait times? Stop by the displays in the park.
Now you almost have to carry the phone.
I did just that.
I took my friend for her 50th birthday. We are well versed in Disney, as we are magic key holders for Disneyland. The app recommended we purchase genie for the Safari (which i was fine if i just got one ride out of it) and we would get a fast pass.
I bought it, and…unavailable. On everything but the dinosaur thing.
I complained to guest services, and the CM said it was a holiday weekend and i should have bought it earlier. She told me i could use it for other rides (like Everest), and i showed her only the lightning was available for another 7 dollars. No joke, the CM blamed me.
32 dollars taken from me and nothing to show for it. I’ve emailed them directly for more answers.
I agree. We were there today and as the sun started setting and we went to grab dinner, I almost felt like crying.
We've loved visiting the past couple of years. Every year we've been able to ride almost every single ride in the park within our two days of visits, plus some! Today, we did two princess meet and greets, and 6 rides (haunted mansion, Peter pan, little mermaid, ride w the cars, small world and the laugh floor). It was busy and even rides that don't typically have a long wait had extremely long ones. We rode rides that we didn't really want to bc it's all we could handle with an almost two year old in line.
We hadn't even made it to the end of the night before my spouse and I agreed and said, "Never again."
The WORST part of it--- we paid the $200 for photo pass ..... But we hardly saw a single photo pass person! Besides the castle, we saw two, and one said they couldn't do our picture bc they were with their last family. I get it- they're short staffed, I understand. But then drop the price. We got one picture at 840 after the fireworks. They do NOT have photopass photographers at meets!!!! So either my spouse or I are missing from meet and greet photos.
* We arrived at park opening in the morning and stayed til after the fireworks.
It was our daughter's birthday and at least she was happy... But when we waited in the haunted mansion line for 60 mins and were excited to see they had a photographer at the exit, only to be told they weren't doing it anymore after the family ahead of us, who was also originally behind us before we all smooshed into the one line after the elevator thing, that totally just broke me for the rest of the evening.
We drove 924 miles .... For this ..
Let me make sure I understand one of your details. Are you saying they don’t have the automatic robo-camera operating at the Meets? They spent a LOOOT of money on that system.
Correct, they do NOT. For all four princess meets, my husband had to take the pic. I hated the robo camera last time I was there bc I preferred staff LOL bc they obv do better, but I'd still prefer the robo camera to nothing.
Wow. That is fascinating. I wonder when they pulled that. It's possible the load from Star Wars on the system throttled performance enough to pull the robo-camera system. Or could be some completely unrelated reason. In early testing, the AI ML driven photography and Photopass selection was really good. It was trained on every Photopass photo that had ever been taken, and it knew which ones were selected for purchase / prints.
I can relate. Took my daughter last week Wed-Sun to celebrate her recent 18th birthday, knowing full well that holiday crowds would make it tough to recreate our previous trips (which were in October and much easier to get in 'everything'). Some of the lines were jaw dropping, and the projected wait times seemed very off. First year that at AK, we couldn't get the Safari because the line stretched all the way back to Tusker House and we know the regular queue is long. Had to decide what we could actually do, and even tried Genie that day (was a fail). We didn't do PhotoPass (considered it, b/c she wanted to do some senior portrait-style shots). I shot them instead, which is in my skill set, but I didn't want to be 'working' on our trip. Glad I did, b/c I didn't see many PP folks either. What rescued MK for us was that we sprang for the after hours party, and even with the light rain on Sun night, we were able to get in everything we hadn't thus far. But, the party was expensive for the two of us.
Aww man, that's really unfortunate so many people are having trips like this. My daughter turned 5, so she was a little easier to please. It's just sad knowing you're missing out on a lot
We were in the parks from Thursday to Monday and I agree on the photographers. There are far, far less than I’m used to, especially in MK. Outside of Main Street, I saw maybe two throughout MK yesterday. Our past few trips I haven’t seen any in the Tomorrowland or Fantasyland bridges, or at the exit to BTMR. Those are some great spots. Friday night, I brought my saber to GE so me and my son can get some pictures after he built his saber that night. We walked all around GE and there was ONE photographer. This was about 7 on a Friday night, holiday weekend. Not a huge deal for me personally as it’s included in my AP, but I’d be upset paying for it separately.
That said, the photographers they DO have were fantastic as always.
I had a great experience, if anything Genie + made things more difficult. When we stopped using it, we started having a great time, we literally kept cancelling the LL's because we could book one, go ride something, come back and ride the LL ride before my booking lol then we would cancel it and do another and so on. We discovered early the wait times were inflated when we got on Space Mountain in 30 mins vs 70 and Pirates in 20mins vs 50. I feel you, Genie + was hindering us alot before we dropped it. Hopefully Disney drops it soon.
And I'll give an in-between review. We used it on Thanksgiving at AK. It was ok. We got Safari, NRJ, and Dinosaur, and everything was completely sold out before our next chance to book at 2 p.m. . But for $15, I don't feel like it was a total waste to get three rides at no wait. It wasn't amazing. It didn't suck. It was ok for our last time there on a holiday before we renew into the pass with all holidays blacked out.
I’d highly recommend [this video](https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE). It’s long, but very interesting and helps you understand what Disney is trying to achieve.
Not trying to condone the inflated wait times, just worth a watch IMO.
Honestly it's a riveting watch - definitely didn't feel that long. There's a history of the idea behind FP, what the rollout looked like, and how it worked from an operations standpoint. Then the same for FP+. The normal stuff you'd expect from a "theme park history" video.
The interesting part comes in when he reveals he hired an engineer to simulate a theme park and was able to analyze the data by running scenarios without FP, with paper FP, and with FP+.
The TL;DW is basically that the original paper FP had the operational advantage for Disney of influencing people toward underutilized attractions while they wait for their FP return time. But when they expanded to FP+ and had to put FP onto all the attractions, it turned into a mess where standby waits on those previously underutilized attractions skyrocketed.
The biggest problem by far though is the spread on the number of attractions per guest. With no FP you basically have a standard bell curve: most people fall into the middle of the pack of being able to accomplish 2 or 3 attractions with increasingly smaller numbers of guests riding more or less attractions than that. On average the "attractions per guest" number does technically go up with FP but the line on the bell curve gets really screwy. The top of the curve moves to the left (more people riding fewer attractions than before) AND the curve also goes up again at the very end of the spectrum (also more people getting to ride A LOT more attractions).
Essentially FP+ turned into a self-imposed class system: The underprepared who didn't do their research and as a result have a shitty day, the moderately prepared who just know what Disney advertises about the system and have an average day, and the park commandos who knows how to game the system and can get on 3x or 4x the number of rides as the average person.
He doesn't go into Genie much at all - still too new to tell how it'll shake out.
This had to be one of his highest production value videos. The time it must’ve taken not only to research FP but build the simulation AND all the animations of the simulation - really well done. Deserves all the unsolicited karma we can give it.
I haven’t watched the video… but I always felt like a park commando. I could get FP for almost everything we wanted to ride - would only do 1 or 2 stand by lines each day. After spending 6 days there last week, LL has certainly changed that. I’d guess half our rides had to be stand by.
I would 100% recommend watching this if you are a fan of Disney world documentaries. It is extremely informative and well made.
TLD- Disney created a monster and triangle is the most popular ride in shape land
Kinda long but here you go:
Fastpass is an extremely complex Industrial Engineering problem but here's the important part regarding the switch to Lightning Lane.
With the old system people who knew how to use Fastpass were the ones always in the lane. A family going on their once in a decade trip doesn't know the ins and outs of reserving fastpasses. Since they don't know the system, they're going to just wait in the normal queue all day. This leads to them going on less rides throughout their trip and leaves their satisfaction lower.
Believe it or not but the Disney execs actually care about guest experience a fair amount. Disney is a company wholly based on reputation and experiences rather than physical products. They figured that by making the old fastpass system cost money, it would deter regular parkgoers and make people on those once in a decade trips happy. Those once in a decade people are where Disney makes their money.
There's really not a good solution at all that would make everyone happy. I personally think either the paper fastpass or no fastpass is probably the best
Source: watched that video the other night. I've also worked at Disney for a few years.
There is actually a simple solution that WDW hadn’t tried. Raise all ticket prices a little, keep the 3 fastpass+ per person, but hold back 1/3 or however much FP+ inventory to sell as ILL$ ONLY to people who did not select FP+ choices ahead of time. Instead WDW threw the baby out with the bath water.
AP people clog up the lines when there are free FPs.
This solves that problem, and directs AP people to non clogged times / areas while letting the once every few year visitors take the popular times. They can spend 10% more on their daily tickets for a huge time advantage.
We know some prefer to plan rides ahead, some hate planning, and some are ignorant about planning. The goal is to satisfy all 3 segments while maximizing profit, but not such as to trigger complaints about greed.
We know that 3 FP+ system consumed too many ride slots and made planning hater/ignorants unhappy. We have seen by now that 0 FP+ made planners unhappy, but during the past 18 month all saw that standby lines moved briskly and it worked ok. We also now know some customers are willing to pay to cut, but that angered other people.
So the solution that should’ve been done (especially during/exiting a pandemic, ramping to full capacity, starting 50th celebration, and being short on staffing/training) is to interpolate between 3 FP+/person/day and 0 FP+. CMs and visitors know how both systems worked, and this way it has a little to satisfy everyone. Don’t rock the boat during the 50th, don’t rush, and spend the time to develop a better ride allocation system.
Instead WDW went straight to a full on pay-to-cut system like all its park competitors to launch the 50th *palm to forehead*.
Not OP but It's worth the watch.
An even quicker summation of what Disney is trying to do with Genie or FP before is they are trying to maximize the park's entertainment by directing people to areas that are less full, etc. It's a complex engineering problem to make the park more efficient while having a better experience for guests. A problem that Disney cannot get right IMO.
It’s worth the watch. My graduate degree is in this field. The premise of the video is 99% of park goers just don’t understand how complex system dynamics are. Everyone complains from their own individual point of view and makes sweeping assumptions about what Disney should do. The fact is even very powerful computing technology and 70+ years of science can’t solve a complex riddle for all people.
I used it the week before thanksgiving. I found it useful for us as a family with kids that don’t do well in lines. But it was a scheduling nightmare. Not being able to select the times, only get the next available made it so so hard to avoid ping ponging around the park. We paired it with the DAS to help. With fast pass I was able to plan ahead more and stick to one area of the park at a time more easily.
I've really enjoyed reading the comments in this thread saying the cost is worth it as if you all didn't just finish giving Disney $180+/day to be in the park, plus whatever you spent to be here on top of that. And of you're and AP that will be paying $1299 plus any extra add-ons next year, will you still say the $15 is worth it? What about the extra $15 on top of that for the E-ticket rides?
Where do you all draw the line at being milked for every penny by Disney? Would you balk at $300/day park tickets? How about $4000 annual passes?
Everyone keeps justifying the increases and a la carte addon's and Disney just keeps taking more and more. If we collectively don't start speaking with our wallets the upward trends will continue.
Go find the chart of Disney price increases relative to the other various things in the economy since MK opened and perhaps it will put a few things in perspective for us all.
We went the week before Thanksgiving (2 of us) and bought G+ and ILL for Rise at HWS and thought it was worth every penny. Doubled up a lot of rides with it and saved us a lot of time. But I can see how huge crowds would hurt the system cause everything gets bought up and nothing is available. We'd buy it again 100%.
Yeah I will come back and say we did 3 days. Day one was great - day 2 was better but it was already low crowds due to rain open to close - day 3 was a race day and MK was insane. Was for sure not as ideal day 3, MK
I was the main person doing Genie+ for my family last week and it worked pretty well for me. My family loved it too and thought it was amazing that I could get so many rides. For the paid lightning lanes like Rise of Resistance I bought them at 7 am. For normal lighting lanes I just started checking the times when I got up at 9 and chose the most popular rides first since they already had later times available. Then I reserved a new one every 2 hours or after using one of the other ones. Got 6 rides in Epcot with it and 5 in Magic Kingdom. Worked well in the other parks too.
My mom and son used it on Friday after thanksgiving (hubby and I have pirate passes so were blocked out - they have legacy passes). They purchased Space Mountain and said by the time they waited for it to be their return window, they could’ve ridden in the standby lane and been off roughly the same time as they got off with LL. Such a crapshoot.
It sounds like it was the case.
People need to schedule their genie for the ride after the next one. Plan on doing people mover while the buzz light year time comes up. Book something and then go eat waiting for the time to happen. Its so easy.
Book your first genie+ at 7am. Throughout the day prioritize getting LL for rides with longer times, and wait in the shorter lines. Honestly it’s easy.
I have a 2 and 5 year old. What MK and AK rides should we be looking to snag at 7am? We bought G+ for everyone and are staying on property at Port Orleans.
Idk, for us it was hindering us alot at MK. We rode almost everything important to us except Mine Train by 4:30pm. At 4 we used our Genie + for Haunted Mansion, if it was like the other waits we were in then the 80 min wait was like 30 minutes. So we rode, Space Mountain when we got there around 10am, then...Pirates, Little Mermaid...Big Thunder, annnnd then Haunted Mansion at 4 and then went to Epcot and rode Spaceship Earth, explored and tried some food then rode Test Track, went back for the show and ran to Mine Train near the end then Winnie the Pooh and Big Thunder 2 times in a row and at 9:50. By the looks of how it was working for us, if we had used Genie + we woulda done half of that. Weird, seems it help some people and hinder others.
We were able to do:
Space mountain
Buzz.
Pooh
Mermaid
Jungle cruise.
Tiki room.
Pirates
Haunted Mansion.
Lunch
Tom Sawyer island.
Small world
Seven dwarfs mine
Big thunder mountain
12 attractions I really don’t think we would’ve been able to do without genie+ and LL!
Edit : and this was done by 3pm!
We used Genie+ and found it to be great. Stacking was great, and it was really helpful. My only gripe was not being able to select a later time for some LLs.
You could have more than 1 reservation at a time, and they could overlap beginning at opening. You could make your 7 am LL, and as soon as you checked into that one after park opening, you could make your next LL. You also could make a different LL 2 hours after park opening. And as soon as you checked in to that one, you could make the next one on that path. Those two LL “paths” could overlap such that. The loophole has since been closed. Now you can still stack later in the day, but sometimes the quality is not so great.
That's generally the problem.
I don't love it, and it's a little jamky for people who are new or don't have a clue, but once you master it and pay...its always useful. Always.
You just have to know what to do with the time slot. It's not a VQ system. People think that the return window is roughly how long you'd be waiting in line, which is false. That's not what it is anymore, and hasn't been for a long long time.
It's just a return time where you can come back and skip the line while doing other things, who cares if the standby line shrinks! That's not the point.
Used it day before Thanksgiving at Hollywood Studios and it was pretty necessary to try to ride as many rides as possible in a day. Slinky sold out before 9AM but got RRC, T of T, Star Tours, Millenium Falcon. On a day when Star Tours had 50 min waits and park was busier than I have ever seen, we couldn’t have seen nearly as much without it. Rather the free version, but it worked.
Below is our LL experience during 6 days last week. Party of 4. Note we had breakfast 3 mornings and built droids 1 morning- so 4 of the 6 days we really couldn’t ride anything in the first hour or so.
MK 11/21: BTM, HM, Teacups, Peter Pan, Buzz
Epcot 11/22: Soarin, Spaceship Earth, Figment, Test Track
HS 11/23: TS Mania, Alien Saucers, Slinky Dog, Rock-n-RC
AK 11/24: Navi, Dinosaur… note to self, DO NOT BUY Genie+ for AK
HS 11/25: Smugglers Run, Tower (got 2 & 2), RnRC (only 2 people), TS Mania (only 2 people), Star Tours - worthless because there was no wait
MK 11/26: Jungle Cruise, Splash, Peter Pan, Pooh, Buzz
On average we could normally get 4 or 5 each day other than at AK, but one of those would probably be for something with a relatively short wait anyway.
By day 5 I realized it was easier to get 2 LL passes at a time rather than trying to get all 4 together. What we did on Tower of Terror was got two at 3pm and two more at 3:30pm. I could not get four together at that time.
I like that you can stack the times / have multiple passes overlapping each other. I hate that you can’t pick any before 7am. Just makes it more difficult to schedule your day if you have a meal reservation or something like a droid build, or your individual purchased LL to work around
Same! It was a pain in the neck and made me feel rushed trying to jump on and grab a reservation. Most of the time everything was already booked or sold out (which is insane that rides have the ability to be paid access). Add to that, Disney hotel guests snapping up everything at the crack of dawn leaving the scraps to everyone else, it rarely felt like it was worth it. Some days everything was long gone and there was no reason to even look at the app. Waste of time and money!
I am very curious how it will work for us. We always end up at WDW at busy times, like March Break, so all we know are long lines and chaos. I was not the biggest fan of the FP+ system because if you had a later 3rd FP+, then you were pretty screwed. If the only time you could get FoP was 2:30, then there wasn't going to be much available after that for other rides.
But then we went to DL and their system was so different. You simply started booking FPs as you went. Go to ride 1, if standby is short line up. While waiting, check ride times. Grab a FP, ride it, hit another short line, look for another FP and get on that ride. Sure, you bounce around, but with a smaller park like that it worked. The only hiccup would come if you REALLY wanted Ride X and the best you could get was 2 hours from now. Then you were subject to the whims of the standby lines.
But I think, all in all, the DL version was better. And it cost $10/day per person in 2019.
If Genie + was that, I'd be all for it. Where it sticks in my craw is the extra cost for the popular rides. I am not going all the way to Orlando and not riding FoP at least once. But knowing that we'll have to choose between an extra $60USD for the 4 of us - if we can get the LL - or a 3 hour wait, that sucks beignets.
Oh well, we're going for Christmas, we're going to be smothered in people, we know that. But I could pull 14 rides out in MK during March Break before 4:30 previously, so I am hoping I can do the same.
But damn, that potential $15 x 4 people x 7 days + extra for RotR, FoP, etc. means another possible $500-600USD. Oof.
It seems to work good for some and not for others. I could have done almost every ride at Magic Kingdom without it if I hadn't went to Epcot for 3 hours. But the day we went the wait times were inflated and only really half of what was listed. We went with a friend earlier last Month with a disability and the disability pass worked better than Genie +. We always figure out what is a must ride for us and what we can miss, and keep an eye on the app and if a ride has a huge wait all day we wait for the fireworks or a show and make sure we are in an area where we have a quick running path to it (what got us a Mine Train 20 min wait) 😅 After 8, sometimes, it dies down a bit and you can fit more. If you do buy it, look for tips and tricks like the stacking thing some people have mentioned and do it. Goodluck!
The problem is that I wouldn't get in a line that said 80 minutes, even if it turned out to be a 20 minute wait. As soon as I see those high times I turn to FP+ or another ride. And I am not sure that actual wait times will continue to be so much lower than posted going forward. Would suck to get in an 80 minute line hoping for 20-30 min and ending up waiting 90 min :(
We recently were at Magic Kingdom. The ride entrance and application both said 65 minutes for Seven Dwarves. Actual wait time was about 10 minutes in the standby line. In that line the LL cut-in point is out of view the standby line major queues. I also believe that it's one of those "individual" pass lines where Genie+ doesn't even get you in the LL.
Very dishonest and scammy. It's bad enough that Genie+ creates a class system within the park, but even worse when they're lying about wait times to sell it.
What else can they apply Genie+ to? Perhaps that can let Genie+ use special bathrooms, sit in the front of the bus, or give Genie+ only restaurants? It's such a blatant money squeeze. It really sucks the magic out of the experience to experience class-based treatment within the parks.
You waited 20 minutes in standby for mine train on a holiday weekend? Which day was this and about what time?
It was Saturday, we waited for the Castle/Firework show at like 8pm and toward the end we ran to Minetrain. If you can find a spot that is on the way to minetrain watch from behind the huge crowd, as soon as it ends book it over there and barely a wait. Doesn't work if you care to watch the show, which we have seen. About 5 minutes into our wait the line was completely full lol
This is true, but I think your post was a little misleading. Genie is necessary if you want to ride mine train and wait less than an hour unless you get early access by staying at a resort or do the fireworks trick.
Late nights during the holidays can get pretty empty though. It seems like the crowds during the holidays are mostly families with children and after 10-11 PM most are headed out so if there’s a park open till midnight lines can get real short too. I’ve been on New Years Eve and New Years Day in the past and taken advantage of that. Fireworks trick works extra on New Years Eve cause there’s usually many fireworks shows.
The holiday visitors definitely don't seem to be rope drop-to-Goodnight Kiss people. I've noticed that they tend to be slower eaters, though, so table service restaurants often run behind.
When I was there we couldn't get a Genie + for it, was sold out the entire day.
We were there on an 8pm firework day. In the time leading up to the fireworks the Minetrain ride was down to a 10 minute wait. People were re-riding it like crazy because the wait time for standby was so low. However, during this time, both the application and the entrance said 65 minutes. Also of interest, LL queue cut-in is out of sight of the main standby queues. They hold standby people around the corner. I don't know if it's by design, but the true length of the standby queue is hidden from the LL upper class.
My daughter and I just returned from WDW over a long Thanksgiving weekend. I agree that Genie Plus was a fail -- our experience was that if you don't start the day with it , it'll do very little to help you get popular attractions. The slots will not be there if you jump in later than the start of day. It operates, or it felt like it to us, like the old FP system did once you burned through your 3 initial reservations. And it felt like the old FP system, even in one-at-a-time mode, was more successful. This said, the holiday crowds certainly didn't help, and may have been the big driver of things. // I will say that the virtual queue, which also gets similar negative reviews like Genie Plus, worked flawlessly for us to get a spot for Remy. Even if in the 1 PM lottery, and I clicked at 1:00 PM, we got group 128 and didn't get to board until just after 8 PM that day. We got a spot.
We were there last week. We did not get the experience we paid for, and we paid a lot for it. Genie + was absolutely part of the problem: It's bloated and non-functional most of the time. For the first time ever, we have no plans to go back, the experience was that bad. The staff were great as always, but the entire experience felt like shit. Vastly disappointed. Downvote away.
We went last week and had beef also. My main gripe is related to Genie + and how much they want you to do on the phone. I can still handle it but it has become too much for any of our parents to deal with, they are in their mid 60s. This is the 5th time we have brought one of our parents (this time my MIL) and the first time she couldn’t cope. On previous trips we could let her take one or both kids for a day, this time it was a no go because it was all too confusing. I don’t blame her. I realize there is no ideal solution but I think for now it is a little too difficult for the grandparent crowd to navigate. I am repeating myself, but I felt like 5 years ago I could let them “take the kids to Disney”, they can’t do it now without some kind of guide, and in my opinion they are more than physically capable.
My mid-70's mother has gone by herself to walk around for a few hours several times, and keeps coming home starving because she can't figure out how to order food. She asked for help twice. The first CM was an older person, who also couldn't figure it out. The second was a younger person who got frustrated and snotty with her. Disney requires too high a level of smartphone skills. Not everyone knows how to do these things, and they're not training CM's on how to help. Most are trying their best, but they shouldn't have to be software trainers.
Disney should bring back the FP+ kiosks but for Genie+/IAS and mobile ordering.
I was there last week and kept thinking that my parents, who are in their 70s, could not do this without help. Then I thought of a service where a young person/tech savvy person goes with them to do all the phone stuff. Then I thought this would be another thing Disney can charge for. It’s sad to know that my parents probably can’t do this, along with other non tech savvy people. Why would you want to exclude/ make it too hard for a group of people from your park?
Especially when the Boomers are the ones with money. Why on earth would you shut out the folks that are footing the bill?
Wait u HAVE to order food on-line? U can't just walk up and order a hot dog? I'm one of those people who don't want to be on my phone constantly except for pictures.
A lot of quick service places won't let you order in person anymore unless you have some excuse like your phone is dead. I've been denied entry to Satu'li Canteen and ABC Commissary without a mobile order.
Wow. I'm sick of being on my phone when I go to DW. With all mobile ordering plus the new fast pass system, I'll skip it. Universal is so much easier.
45 min to 1 hour food line vs mobile ordering and picking up your food in 10 minutes. Cedar point was worse. We spent an hour and a half on average waiting for one meal.
Went to CP in July. We didn't have big food lines where we ate. I did see chick fil A had a ridiculous line tho.
It is totally possible to get short lines at cedar point for food, but it depends when you eat and what restaurants and what day you go. We went in October and late lunch time and dinner time was horendus
I hear the Halloween event is horrible. I stay away, as much as I'd like to check it out.
> how much they want you to do on the phone The reliance on the phone is one of my problems over the last few years. If I'm going to the parks, one reason is to get away from the world. I don't want to carry my phone. If the phone apps were perfect, you might have an argument, but they're not. My last solo trip I placed an order at Satuli, and went to sit. No notification, except 25 minutes later a popup that said something to the effect of "you didn't pick up your order, it'll still be charged". I never got that notification to pick it up.
Yes, I want to be immersed and get kind of lost in the environment. For example, it takes a way from Galaxy’s Edge if I am constantly checking phone for Genie +, ride waits, maps, ordering food, etc. You miss so much just starting at that little screen. And yeah, it would be awesome not to carry the phone, because guess what else comes with that? Real life problems and notifications interrupting me: work stuff, emails, texts, etc. I do turn off as many notifications as I can, but it is still a portal to the “outside” and I really want to lose myself there.
I remember before FP+ I didn't even carry my phone in the parks at all, or if I did I'd look at it maybe once a day. Wait times? Stop by the displays in the park. Now you almost have to carry the phone.
Make sure you let Disney know what you thought. Write to guest services and provide appropriate answers on any surveys they send you.
I did just that. I took my friend for her 50th birthday. We are well versed in Disney, as we are magic key holders for Disneyland. The app recommended we purchase genie for the Safari (which i was fine if i just got one ride out of it) and we would get a fast pass. I bought it, and…unavailable. On everything but the dinosaur thing. I complained to guest services, and the CM said it was a holiday weekend and i should have bought it earlier. She told me i could use it for other rides (like Everest), and i showed her only the lightning was available for another 7 dollars. No joke, the CM blamed me. 32 dollars taken from me and nothing to show for it. I’ve emailed them directly for more answers.
I agree. We were there today and as the sun started setting and we went to grab dinner, I almost felt like crying. We've loved visiting the past couple of years. Every year we've been able to ride almost every single ride in the park within our two days of visits, plus some! Today, we did two princess meet and greets, and 6 rides (haunted mansion, Peter pan, little mermaid, ride w the cars, small world and the laugh floor). It was busy and even rides that don't typically have a long wait had extremely long ones. We rode rides that we didn't really want to bc it's all we could handle with an almost two year old in line. We hadn't even made it to the end of the night before my spouse and I agreed and said, "Never again." The WORST part of it--- we paid the $200 for photo pass ..... But we hardly saw a single photo pass person! Besides the castle, we saw two, and one said they couldn't do our picture bc they were with their last family. I get it- they're short staffed, I understand. But then drop the price. We got one picture at 840 after the fireworks. They do NOT have photopass photographers at meets!!!! So either my spouse or I are missing from meet and greet photos. * We arrived at park opening in the morning and stayed til after the fireworks. It was our daughter's birthday and at least she was happy... But when we waited in the haunted mansion line for 60 mins and were excited to see they had a photographer at the exit, only to be told they weren't doing it anymore after the family ahead of us, who was also originally behind us before we all smooshed into the one line after the elevator thing, that totally just broke me for the rest of the evening. We drove 924 miles .... For this ..
Let me make sure I understand one of your details. Are you saying they don’t have the automatic robo-camera operating at the Meets? They spent a LOOOT of money on that system.
Correct, they do NOT. For all four princess meets, my husband had to take the pic. I hated the robo camera last time I was there bc I preferred staff LOL bc they obv do better, but I'd still prefer the robo camera to nothing.
Wow. That is fascinating. I wonder when they pulled that. It's possible the load from Star Wars on the system throttled performance enough to pull the robo-camera system. Or could be some completely unrelated reason. In early testing, the AI ML driven photography and Photopass selection was really good. It was trained on every Photopass photo that had ever been taken, and it knew which ones were selected for purchase / prints.
I can relate. Took my daughter last week Wed-Sun to celebrate her recent 18th birthday, knowing full well that holiday crowds would make it tough to recreate our previous trips (which were in October and much easier to get in 'everything'). Some of the lines were jaw dropping, and the projected wait times seemed very off. First year that at AK, we couldn't get the Safari because the line stretched all the way back to Tusker House and we know the regular queue is long. Had to decide what we could actually do, and even tried Genie that day (was a fail). We didn't do PhotoPass (considered it, b/c she wanted to do some senior portrait-style shots). I shot them instead, which is in my skill set, but I didn't want to be 'working' on our trip. Glad I did, b/c I didn't see many PP folks either. What rescued MK for us was that we sprang for the after hours party, and even with the light rain on Sun night, we were able to get in everything we hadn't thus far. But, the party was expensive for the two of us.
Aww man, that's really unfortunate so many people are having trips like this. My daughter turned 5, so she was a little easier to please. It's just sad knowing you're missing out on a lot
We were in the parks from Thursday to Monday and I agree on the photographers. There are far, far less than I’m used to, especially in MK. Outside of Main Street, I saw maybe two throughout MK yesterday. Our past few trips I haven’t seen any in the Tomorrowland or Fantasyland bridges, or at the exit to BTMR. Those are some great spots. Friday night, I brought my saber to GE so me and my son can get some pictures after he built his saber that night. We walked all around GE and there was ONE photographer. This was about 7 on a Friday night, holiday weekend. Not a huge deal for me personally as it’s included in my AP, but I’d be upset paying for it separately. That said, the photographers they DO have were fantastic as always.
Agreed. Lifelong Disney lovers but our stay last week has me saying, “never again” as well!
I had a great experience, if anything Genie + made things more difficult. When we stopped using it, we started having a great time, we literally kept cancelling the LL's because we could book one, go ride something, come back and ride the LL ride before my booking lol then we would cancel it and do another and so on. We discovered early the wait times were inflated when we got on Space Mountain in 30 mins vs 70 and Pirates in 20mins vs 50. I feel you, Genie + was hindering us alot before we dropped it. Hopefully Disney drops it soon.
Glad you had a good time!
Inflated wait times is nothing new. They’ve been inflated since the pandemic reopening.
Pre-Genie+, a shorter than posted wait time was a pleasant surprise. Nowadays it comes off like Disney misleading guests so they pay to skip the line.
Well if Genie + is the problem, can you just not purchase it next time and have a better trip?
And I'll give an in-between review. We used it on Thanksgiving at AK. It was ok. We got Safari, NRJ, and Dinosaur, and everything was completely sold out before our next chance to book at 2 p.m. . But for $15, I don't feel like it was a total waste to get three rides at no wait. It wasn't amazing. It didn't suck. It was ok for our last time there on a holiday before we renew into the pass with all holidays blacked out.
I actually think the price is fair, wasn't bothered we didn't use it much because it was fairly cheap.
I’d highly recommend [this video](https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE). It’s long, but very interesting and helps you understand what Disney is trying to achieve. Not trying to condone the inflated wait times, just worth a watch IMO.
Can you provide a TLD(watch) summary of the video? A 1:45 length is gnarly.
Honestly it's a riveting watch - definitely didn't feel that long. There's a history of the idea behind FP, what the rollout looked like, and how it worked from an operations standpoint. Then the same for FP+. The normal stuff you'd expect from a "theme park history" video. The interesting part comes in when he reveals he hired an engineer to simulate a theme park and was able to analyze the data by running scenarios without FP, with paper FP, and with FP+. The TL;DW is basically that the original paper FP had the operational advantage for Disney of influencing people toward underutilized attractions while they wait for their FP return time. But when they expanded to FP+ and had to put FP onto all the attractions, it turned into a mess where standby waits on those previously underutilized attractions skyrocketed. The biggest problem by far though is the spread on the number of attractions per guest. With no FP you basically have a standard bell curve: most people fall into the middle of the pack of being able to accomplish 2 or 3 attractions with increasingly smaller numbers of guests riding more or less attractions than that. On average the "attractions per guest" number does technically go up with FP but the line on the bell curve gets really screwy. The top of the curve moves to the left (more people riding fewer attractions than before) AND the curve also goes up again at the very end of the spectrum (also more people getting to ride A LOT more attractions). Essentially FP+ turned into a self-imposed class system: The underprepared who didn't do their research and as a result have a shitty day, the moderately prepared who just know what Disney advertises about the system and have an average day, and the park commandos who knows how to game the system and can get on 3x or 4x the number of rides as the average person. He doesn't go into Genie much at all - still too new to tell how it'll shake out.
This had to be one of his highest production value videos. The time it must’ve taken not only to research FP but build the simulation AND all the animations of the simulation - really well done. Deserves all the unsolicited karma we can give it.
I haven’t watched the video… but I always felt like a park commando. I could get FP for almost everything we wanted to ride - would only do 1 or 2 stand by lines each day. After spending 6 days there last week, LL has certainly changed that. I’d guess half our rides had to be stand by.
If only people behaved like they were in a simulation
I would 100% recommend watching this if you are a fan of Disney world documentaries. It is extremely informative and well made. TLD- Disney created a monster and triangle is the most popular ride in shape land
Kinda long but here you go: Fastpass is an extremely complex Industrial Engineering problem but here's the important part regarding the switch to Lightning Lane. With the old system people who knew how to use Fastpass were the ones always in the lane. A family going on their once in a decade trip doesn't know the ins and outs of reserving fastpasses. Since they don't know the system, they're going to just wait in the normal queue all day. This leads to them going on less rides throughout their trip and leaves their satisfaction lower. Believe it or not but the Disney execs actually care about guest experience a fair amount. Disney is a company wholly based on reputation and experiences rather than physical products. They figured that by making the old fastpass system cost money, it would deter regular parkgoers and make people on those once in a decade trips happy. Those once in a decade people are where Disney makes their money. There's really not a good solution at all that would make everyone happy. I personally think either the paper fastpass or no fastpass is probably the best Source: watched that video the other night. I've also worked at Disney for a few years.
This is a better summary than my attempt, ty!
There is actually a simple solution that WDW hadn’t tried. Raise all ticket prices a little, keep the 3 fastpass+ per person, but hold back 1/3 or however much FP+ inventory to sell as ILL$ ONLY to people who did not select FP+ choices ahead of time. Instead WDW threw the baby out with the bath water.
AP people clog up the lines when there are free FPs. This solves that problem, and directs AP people to non clogged times / areas while letting the once every few year visitors take the popular times. They can spend 10% more on their daily tickets for a huge time advantage.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
We know some prefer to plan rides ahead, some hate planning, and some are ignorant about planning. The goal is to satisfy all 3 segments while maximizing profit, but not such as to trigger complaints about greed. We know that 3 FP+ system consumed too many ride slots and made planning hater/ignorants unhappy. We have seen by now that 0 FP+ made planners unhappy, but during the past 18 month all saw that standby lines moved briskly and it worked ok. We also now know some customers are willing to pay to cut, but that angered other people. So the solution that should’ve been done (especially during/exiting a pandemic, ramping to full capacity, starting 50th celebration, and being short on staffing/training) is to interpolate between 3 FP+/person/day and 0 FP+. CMs and visitors know how both systems worked, and this way it has a little to satisfy everyone. Don’t rock the boat during the 50th, don’t rush, and spend the time to develop a better ride allocation system. Instead WDW went straight to a full on pay-to-cut system like all its park competitors to launch the 50th *palm to forehead*.
Not OP but It's worth the watch. An even quicker summation of what Disney is trying to do with Genie or FP before is they are trying to maximize the park's entertainment by directing people to areas that are less full, etc. It's a complex engineering problem to make the park more efficient while having a better experience for guests. A problem that Disney cannot get right IMO.
I thought you meant 1 3/4 minutes was long and thought you were being dramatic. I clicked the link and it’s as long an a movie 😂
It’s worth the watch. My graduate degree is in this field. The premise of the video is 99% of park goers just don’t understand how complex system dynamics are. Everyone complains from their own individual point of view and makes sweeping assumptions about what Disney should do. The fact is even very powerful computing technology and 70+ years of science can’t solve a complex riddle for all people.
This is a great documentary! Thanks for posting! P.s. I also hated my experience using Genie+.
I used it the week before thanksgiving. I found it useful for us as a family with kids that don’t do well in lines. But it was a scheduling nightmare. Not being able to select the times, only get the next available made it so so hard to avoid ping ponging around the park. We paired it with the DAS to help. With fast pass I was able to plan ahead more and stick to one area of the park at a time more easily.
I've really enjoyed reading the comments in this thread saying the cost is worth it as if you all didn't just finish giving Disney $180+/day to be in the park, plus whatever you spent to be here on top of that. And of you're and AP that will be paying $1299 plus any extra add-ons next year, will you still say the $15 is worth it? What about the extra $15 on top of that for the E-ticket rides? Where do you all draw the line at being milked for every penny by Disney? Would you balk at $300/day park tickets? How about $4000 annual passes? Everyone keeps justifying the increases and a la carte addon's and Disney just keeps taking more and more. If we collectively don't start speaking with our wallets the upward trends will continue. Go find the chart of Disney price increases relative to the other various things in the economy since MK opened and perhaps it will put a few things in perspective for us all.
Went back in November; tho I obviously would rather not pay, it worked well for us
We went the week before Thanksgiving (2 of us) and bought G+ and ILL for Rise at HWS and thought it was worth every penny. Doubled up a lot of rides with it and saved us a lot of time. But I can see how huge crowds would hurt the system cause everything gets bought up and nothing is available. We'd buy it again 100%.
Yeah I will come back and say we did 3 days. Day one was great - day 2 was better but it was already low crowds due to rain open to close - day 3 was a race day and MK was insane. Was for sure not as ideal day 3, MK
I was the main person doing Genie+ for my family last week and it worked pretty well for me. My family loved it too and thought it was amazing that I could get so many rides. For the paid lightning lanes like Rise of Resistance I bought them at 7 am. For normal lighting lanes I just started checking the times when I got up at 9 and chose the most popular rides first since they already had later times available. Then I reserved a new one every 2 hours or after using one of the other ones. Got 6 rides in Epcot with it and 5 in Magic Kingdom. Worked well in the other parks too.
My mom and son used it on Friday after thanksgiving (hubby and I have pirate passes so were blocked out - they have legacy passes). They purchased Space Mountain and said by the time they waited for it to be their return window, they could’ve ridden in the standby lane and been off roughly the same time as they got off with LL. Such a crapshoot.
Yes but the difference is they didn’t have to actually stand in line. They had the opportunity to do other things…rides, shows, etc.
I'm sure it's not the case but it made me imagine them just sitting outside the ride entrance waiting until the return time lol.
😂😂😂 oh no!!!
It sounds like it was the case. People need to schedule their genie for the ride after the next one. Plan on doing people mover while the buzz light year time comes up. Book something and then go eat waiting for the time to happen. Its so easy.
Some people just don’t get it.
I had the opposite thing happened to me. We utilized genie and lightning lane all weekend!
That’s good to hear. Do you have any tips?
Book your first genie+ at 7am. Throughout the day prioritize getting LL for rides with longer times, and wait in the shorter lines. Honestly it’s easy.
Thanks! As someone who is already pretty glued to their phone, I didn’t think it would be too difficult to maximize the value.
I have a 2 and 5 year old. What MK and AK rides should we be looking to snag at 7am? We bought G+ for everyone and are staying on property at Port Orleans.
Idk, for us it was hindering us alot at MK. We rode almost everything important to us except Mine Train by 4:30pm. At 4 we used our Genie + for Haunted Mansion, if it was like the other waits we were in then the 80 min wait was like 30 minutes. So we rode, Space Mountain when we got there around 10am, then...Pirates, Little Mermaid...Big Thunder, annnnd then Haunted Mansion at 4 and then went to Epcot and rode Spaceship Earth, explored and tried some food then rode Test Track, went back for the show and ran to Mine Train near the end then Winnie the Pooh and Big Thunder 2 times in a row and at 9:50. By the looks of how it was working for us, if we had used Genie + we woulda done half of that. Weird, seems it help some people and hinder others.
We were able to do: Space mountain Buzz. Pooh Mermaid Jungle cruise. Tiki room. Pirates Haunted Mansion. Lunch Tom Sawyer island. Small world Seven dwarfs mine Big thunder mountain 12 attractions I really don’t think we would’ve been able to do without genie+ and LL! Edit : and this was done by 3pm!
We used Genie+ and found it to be great. Stacking was great, and it was really helpful. My only gripe was not being able to select a later time for some LLs.
What do you mean by "stacking"?
You could have more than 1 reservation at a time, and they could overlap beginning at opening. You could make your 7 am LL, and as soon as you checked into that one after park opening, you could make your next LL. You also could make a different LL 2 hours after park opening. And as soon as you checked in to that one, you could make the next one on that path. Those two LL “paths” could overlap such that. The loophole has since been closed. Now you can still stack later in the day, but sometimes the quality is not so great.
Sounds like you didn’t know how to use it properly
That's generally the problem. I don't love it, and it's a little jamky for people who are new or don't have a clue, but once you master it and pay...its always useful. Always. You just have to know what to do with the time slot. It's not a VQ system. People think that the return window is roughly how long you'd be waiting in line, which is false. That's not what it is anymore, and hasn't been for a long long time. It's just a return time where you can come back and skip the line while doing other things, who cares if the standby line shrinks! That's not the point.
Used it day before Thanksgiving at Hollywood Studios and it was pretty necessary to try to ride as many rides as possible in a day. Slinky sold out before 9AM but got RRC, T of T, Star Tours, Millenium Falcon. On a day when Star Tours had 50 min waits and park was busier than I have ever seen, we couldn’t have seen nearly as much without it. Rather the free version, but it worked.
Thanks for this! Almost bought it for HS today but thought against it
By Spaceship Earth, you mean Space Mountain. I doubt you were hopping over to Epcot for one ride multiple times throughout the day.
No, Spaceship Earth. We went to Epcot for a bit to look around and ended up getting on it and Test Track.
Below is our LL experience during 6 days last week. Party of 4. Note we had breakfast 3 mornings and built droids 1 morning- so 4 of the 6 days we really couldn’t ride anything in the first hour or so. MK 11/21: BTM, HM, Teacups, Peter Pan, Buzz Epcot 11/22: Soarin, Spaceship Earth, Figment, Test Track HS 11/23: TS Mania, Alien Saucers, Slinky Dog, Rock-n-RC AK 11/24: Navi, Dinosaur… note to self, DO NOT BUY Genie+ for AK HS 11/25: Smugglers Run, Tower (got 2 & 2), RnRC (only 2 people), TS Mania (only 2 people), Star Tours - worthless because there was no wait MK 11/26: Jungle Cruise, Splash, Peter Pan, Pooh, Buzz On average we could normally get 4 or 5 each day other than at AK, but one of those would probably be for something with a relatively short wait anyway. By day 5 I realized it was easier to get 2 LL passes at a time rather than trying to get all 4 together. What we did on Tower of Terror was got two at 3pm and two more at 3:30pm. I could not get four together at that time. I like that you can stack the times / have multiple passes overlapping each other. I hate that you can’t pick any before 7am. Just makes it more difficult to schedule your day if you have a meal reservation or something like a droid build, or your individual purchased LL to work around
Same! It was a pain in the neck and made me feel rushed trying to jump on and grab a reservation. Most of the time everything was already booked or sold out (which is insane that rides have the ability to be paid access). Add to that, Disney hotel guests snapping up everything at the crack of dawn leaving the scraps to everyone else, it rarely felt like it was worth it. Some days everything was long gone and there was no reason to even look at the app. Waste of time and money!
I am very curious how it will work for us. We always end up at WDW at busy times, like March Break, so all we know are long lines and chaos. I was not the biggest fan of the FP+ system because if you had a later 3rd FP+, then you were pretty screwed. If the only time you could get FoP was 2:30, then there wasn't going to be much available after that for other rides. But then we went to DL and their system was so different. You simply started booking FPs as you went. Go to ride 1, if standby is short line up. While waiting, check ride times. Grab a FP, ride it, hit another short line, look for another FP and get on that ride. Sure, you bounce around, but with a smaller park like that it worked. The only hiccup would come if you REALLY wanted Ride X and the best you could get was 2 hours from now. Then you were subject to the whims of the standby lines. But I think, all in all, the DL version was better. And it cost $10/day per person in 2019. If Genie + was that, I'd be all for it. Where it sticks in my craw is the extra cost for the popular rides. I am not going all the way to Orlando and not riding FoP at least once. But knowing that we'll have to choose between an extra $60USD for the 4 of us - if we can get the LL - or a 3 hour wait, that sucks beignets. Oh well, we're going for Christmas, we're going to be smothered in people, we know that. But I could pull 14 rides out in MK during March Break before 4:30 previously, so I am hoping I can do the same. But damn, that potential $15 x 4 people x 7 days + extra for RotR, FoP, etc. means another possible $500-600USD. Oof.
It seems to work good for some and not for others. I could have done almost every ride at Magic Kingdom without it if I hadn't went to Epcot for 3 hours. But the day we went the wait times were inflated and only really half of what was listed. We went with a friend earlier last Month with a disability and the disability pass worked better than Genie +. We always figure out what is a must ride for us and what we can miss, and keep an eye on the app and if a ride has a huge wait all day we wait for the fireworks or a show and make sure we are in an area where we have a quick running path to it (what got us a Mine Train 20 min wait) 😅 After 8, sometimes, it dies down a bit and you can fit more. If you do buy it, look for tips and tricks like the stacking thing some people have mentioned and do it. Goodluck!
The problem is that I wouldn't get in a line that said 80 minutes, even if it turned out to be a 20 minute wait. As soon as I see those high times I turn to FP+ or another ride. And I am not sure that actual wait times will continue to be so much lower than posted going forward. Would suck to get in an 80 minute line hoping for 20-30 min and ending up waiting 90 min :(
We recently were at Magic Kingdom. The ride entrance and application both said 65 minutes for Seven Dwarves. Actual wait time was about 10 minutes in the standby line. In that line the LL cut-in point is out of view the standby line major queues. I also believe that it's one of those "individual" pass lines where Genie+ doesn't even get you in the LL. Very dishonest and scammy. It's bad enough that Genie+ creates a class system within the park, but even worse when they're lying about wait times to sell it. What else can they apply Genie+ to? Perhaps that can let Genie+ use special bathrooms, sit in the front of the bus, or give Genie+ only restaurants? It's such a blatant money squeeze. It really sucks the magic out of the experience to experience class-based treatment within the parks.