Disney Genie and Genie+ at Walt Disney World

Casper Gutman

Well-Known Member
They don't have enough capacity with their popular attractions.

To beat the dead horse yet again, this is their fault for failing to invest in expansion over what is now approaching the last 20 years while continuing to market heavily and push to increase year-round attendance.

It was a problem with FP+ that you could do the same things over and over when they may have had enough TOTAL capacity* but not enough capacity for the things people wanted to do.

I'm sure this part of the change with G+ is their attempt at "correcting" since they're almost impossibly behind now and have apparently lost their institutional knowledge on how to build appealing high-capacity attractions.

Yeah, it's galling that they put this guest limit on the new service they charge for when they didn't on the free service it replaces but isn't that pretty much in line with modern Disney's managements idea of the Disney Difference™ - pay more and get less?


*COP, I love you but most people don't pay $125 a day to sit in a musty smelling theater and watch a show with failing animatronics and a horribly outdated ending that needs to be retooled to represent the end of the 20th century with an optimistic look forward rather than pretending to be the near-term future it isn't. Don't act like this attraction that's gotten no love in 20 years (like CBJ) going 4/5 empty all the time somehow offsets the frequent modern waits for just about everything else in the park including other attractions just as old which have gotten real refurbishments and updates.
This is the key to it all. Wall Street may hate it, but theme parks with climbing attendance (or which want to encourage climbing attendance) need regular, even yearly, new attractions.

A tale of two resorts in the pandemic:

Disney looked at the pandemic as an opportunity to avoid opening rides. They dragged out construction of two major attractions announced in 2017, delayaing opening until 2022 at the earliest, in part to spread out costs even more and in part to avoid announcing and building new rides.

Universal saw the pandemic as a problem that disrupted their plan to open new rides every year or so that needed to be overcome. The crisis pushed back the opening of their massive new park and thus created a gap of one or two years with no new attractions at the resort, which management viewed as unacceptable. So a Potter ride planned for the new park was moved to Studios and fast tracked while another, long gestating stopgap attraction was green lit to replace Shrek. Rather then leave the new park one ride short, according to multiple reports they have greenlit and fast tracked another, more elaborate ride to be ready for the new park at or near opening.

One of these resorts has spent billions on crowd management systems to try and cover inadequate capacity.
 

Andrew M

Well-Known Member
This was my experience with it last week:

First of all, having a large party sucks, I ended up paying $193 after taxes for a party of 9. I went to MK on Tuesday (10/19) afternoon and decided to try it out. It worked well and we were able to knock out Pirates, BTMR, HM, Jungle Cruise, Winnie The Pooh & Buzz in less than 3 hours. There were no issues getting the next pass and the availability was pretty good in terms of no waiting for a return time.

I did it again on Thursday, and this time it wasn't so good. Not sure if this was a result of my strategy, bad luck, or the system or some combination thereof. As of 7:02, Splash Mtn wasn't available until the 10:30-11:30 window. That was one of our must-do's that day and I didn't want to worry about the availability slipping later in the day (some rides dropped back a couple hours for a return time in a matter of 15 minutes). So we get that, by the time we get there at 10:45, it breaks down and they won't let us on. Now our next ride, Haunted Mansion, doesn't have availability until 12:30-1:30. We go to head over there and that breaks down. Next availability for Peter Pan now isn't until 3:40-4:40. So now we've wasted 6 hours with only 3 LL selections. We were given the multi-experience LL passes as compensation that helped, but my concern is more with the Top Tier rides availability. You run the risk of either waiting 3 hours for a ride to become available, or using other LL's first and possibly having the top tier ride run out of availability. I guess we also should have used the standby line on more attractions to fill the gaps in.

I also noticed some of the paid LL selections go very quickly. As of 8:09 on Friday 10/22, FoP didn't have a return time until 12:20.

I'm sure my strategy needs tweaking, but as an avid FP+ user, this system was much more stress-inducing. I get rides break down, but when you're paying $15 for a pass ontop of park admission, it gets a little more annoying. I'm hoping they tweak it to maybe have more of an advanced selection, and maybe 2 or 3 to start your day. I also personally hate the 7am selection time each day. I get some people wake up early, but when we're in Epcot til midnight the day before and I'm not getting back to my room until 1am, the last thing I want to do is wake up at 7am for both a virtual queue and LL selection.
 
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dovetail65

Well-Known Member
Today in Magic Kingdom is a great example of why you shouldn't waste your money on Genie+ and IA$ (and it looks like people are not doing it)

Theres only 2 rides with an actual standby wait of 30 mins or more
1) Peter Pan is currently 40 (Note that it was down for some time today)
2) Seven Dwarfs currently 33

Every Genie+ return time is within 10 mins except Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion and Peter Pan

IA$ for Seven D and Space return times are both within 5 mins if you want to spend the $....


People are not paying for this and good for them


You dont need to pay for it
Yeah that because today is a slow day anyhow.

October other than Halloween is near as good as February for line waits. We have gone 4 different years in October and pulled our kids out of school in October all 4 years they were in HS for that exact reason. For the most part in October we didn't even need FP back then. So Genie needs be compared in busier months.

Genie has it plus and minus, today ran into minus though it probably is not going to be an issue moving forward. There is "potential" for it not to be good for us in our upcoming Dec trip though, I will find out soon enough.
 
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Waters Back Side

Well-Known Member
Today in Magic Kingdom is a great example of why you shouldn't waste your money on Genie+ and IA$ (and it looks like people are not doing it)

Theres only 2 rides with an actual standby wait of 30 mins or more
1) Peter Pan is currently 40 (Note that it was down for some time today)
2) Seven Dwarfs currently 33

Every Genie+ return time is within 10 mins except Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion and Peter Pan

IA$ for Seven D and Space return times are both within 5 mins if you want to spend the $....


People are not paying for this and good for them


You dont need to pay for it

And you do not think this is slightly misleading for those who will be in WDW on Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years? You are basing this on a slow day and declaring Genie + a waste of money? Talk to me when Small World is 65 minutes on Christmas week. And Jungle Cruise is 85 minutes and SDMT is 100 minute wait.

We mostly all agree Genie + is not as good as FP+ but to say it's useless based in a slow day is a pretty bold statement. Let's see how it is on the pending holidays.
 
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GhostHost1000

Premium Member
I know this is in here somewhere but question about stacking LLs.

if you book one at 7am and it’s not until say 10:30, you can still book another at 9am for another time that day correct and then keep booking another as soon as you can in for any of them?

I saw a video from another site today saying because they booked their first LL at 11:40am (at 7am) they can’t book another until then. I didn’t think that was the case?
 

James J

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
I know this is in here somewhere but question about stacking LLs.

if you book one at 7am and it’s not until say 10:30, you can still book another at 9am for another time that day correct and then keep booking another as soon as you can in for any of them?

I saw a video from another site today saying because they booked their first LL at 11:40am (at 7am) they can’t book another until then. I didn’t think that was the case?
The countdown doesn't start until the park you're going to opens. So say it's MK and it opens at 9am, the 2 hour countdown starts then rather that at 7am. However if your LL is at 10:30am, you'd then be able to book your next one when you touch in for it. If it was later, you'd be able to make the next selection at 11am.
 

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Indeed.

The old MDE/FP system showed guests on their main screen the FP wait times. Which meant that all the attractions without a FP lane sometimes never got people's attention.

So, TTA, CoP, Tike, Country Bears, SFRobinson got continually ignored by some.

It's about time there's a lengthy line to walk through the tree house!!
When I was a kid, the tree house was part of the lengthy line.

That's how I remember it - waiting in line from the moment you pas the turnstile to the moment you were out the exit.
 
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Waters Back Side

Well-Known Member
I know this is in here somewhere but question about stacking LLs.

if you book one at 7am and it’s not until say 10:30, you can still book another at 9am for another time that day correct and then keep booking another as soon as you can in for any of them?

I saw a video from another site today saying because they booked their first LL at 11:40am (at 7am) they can’t book another until then. I didn’t think that was the case?

No. If you book your FP at 7 AM at Epcot you cannot book your next one until 1 PM (park opens at 11), at MK you cannot book one until 11 AM (park opens at 9 AM) and HS at 11 AM as well (park opens at 9 AM). The clock starts when the park opens. You do not have to be in the park however to book the 2nd one. As long as its 120 minutes after the park opens. You can get a LL at 11, 1, 3, 5, 7 at MK for example after your 7 AM booking OR once you redeem the previous one you booked.
 

GhostHost1000

Premium Member
No. If you book your FP at 7 AM at Epcot you cannot book your next one until 1 PM (park opens at 11), at MK you cannot book one until 11 AM (park opens at 9 AM) and HS at 11 AM as well (park opens at 9 AM). The clock starts when the park opens. You do not have to be in the park however to book the 2nd one. As long as its 120 minutes after the park opens. You can get a LL at 11, 1, 3, 5, 7 at MK for example after your 7 AM booking OR once you redeem the previous one you booked.
Ah ok. My opinion the 2hr clock should start whenever you can book (7am) which would make this a little better to LL more in the morning hours.
 

wdwmagic

Administrator
Moderator
Premium Member
Original Poster
I know this is in here somewhere but question about stacking LLs.

if you book one at 7am and it’s not until say 10:30, you can still book another at 9am for another time that day correct and then keep booking another as soon as you can in for any of them?

I saw a video from another site today saying because they booked their first LL at 11:40am (at 7am) they can’t book another until then. I didn’t think that was the case?
This should help https://www.wdwmagic.com/other/disn...election-at-walt-disney-world-theme-parks.htm
 

dovetail65

Well-Known Member
When was the last time you visited in October, pre-covid? Because October was one of the busiest months of the year.
Nope

October 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Walk on lines for us ever year.

I literally have pictures of lines with the queues empty. We pulled the kids each of those year form high school and had great trip adn other than FOP(it just opened one of those years I think) the line waits were fantastic. Fop has a 4 hour line one time, I remember that it went al the way over the bridge to the lion king show and beyond, but everything else was great.

I dont care what any historical numbers might say, I was actually there.

Look at the calendar that first week where the kids in most school districts get a long weekend that varies 1st or 2nd Monday of the month for us from like Oct 5 to 11th is always the time we took off. As the month got closer to Halloween it got busier so we usually went the front end of October and headed home around 3rd week October, Great lines and great weather for us, four years in a row.

The nice thing about it is everything was open they seemed to have full staff unlike in Feb the lines are great too but a lot of stuff is down for maintenance and there was always notable lack of staff in my mind.

Al I can say is the days we were there were great, if it was hit or miss for us it was always a hit in October.
 
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