Rumor My Genie Conclusions - The Future of WDW’s Ticketing

Heelz2315

Well-Known Member
I've been navigating Disney since 1977, i will not pay additional to ride something after I've paid to park, eat and get in the door. Disney can shove it. If I don't ride it or don't want to wait in the line oh well it won't be the end of the world. Many an afternoon I left that place saying "we missed this so and so ride'. We'll catch it next time.

Or if you have been enough you know how to get around/get in early and knock out the long lines and spend the rest of the day waiting 20-30 min tops for things.
 

CastAStone

5th gate? Just build a new resort Bob.
Premium Member
You were making it seem like they would be calling up all the vloggers and givin them free Genie+ or whatever it will be called just to write favorable reviews. The site that shall not be named, as well as the guy that runs the DIS, and even Len Testa will tell you that they get little to nothin for free from Disney in relation to their coverage.
They absolutely do this. They don’t demand favorable reviews, they just stop inviting you if they don’t get them. That’s WHY Touringplans doesn’t get the special invites for most things.

Pete from the Dis has a direct access relationship with Disney Parks management, according to Pete from the Dis, he talks about it constantly and really wants us all to know about it. i won’t comment on Tom.
 

montyz81

Well-Known Member
"if it's good enough for six flags..."
BuT EveRY OthER TheMe PaRk In tHE WorLd hAs YoU pAY tO SkiP ThE LinE. WhY noT DisnEY?
Every other park does not charge the premium price Disney does. Without DME, and FP+, and a few years back free parking, and I am sure a few other things that have gone away that I am forgetting, the value of the park ticket has gone way down. I would feel better about this if Disney did not increase the park tickets prices. This is just another way for Cheapik to prove value to the shareholders.
 

scottieRoss

Well-Known Member
I've been navigating Disney since 1977, i will not pay additional to ride something after I've paid to park, eat and get in the door. Disney can shove it. If I don't ride it or don't want to wait in the line oh well it won't be the end of the world. Many an afternoon I left that place saying "we missed this so and so ride'. We'll catch it next time.

Or if you have been enough you know how to get around/get in early and knock out the long lines and spend the rest of the day waiting 20-30 min tops for things.
How did you do that in 1977?
From October of 71 till the summer that Epcot opened in 1981, Disney required you to purchase admission, purchase a ticket to ride the monorails and busses, then made you pay additionally for each attraction that you rode. The Disney model from 1955 to 1981 was pay for each attraction you want to ride.
 
Not sure if anyone else commented on this... but it was mentioned if you're plans change due to an unforeseen circumstance and you can't get on a specific ride... genie will change your plans and book the park later in your itinerary so you can get on the ride that you missed... ok sounds good... but it was also mentioned that if you had that reservation at O'hana that had to be cancelled that Genie would rebook it for you at a later time during your trip... uhhh... try doing that yourself now. Most of the popular restaurants are booked solid months in advance. How will Genie get around that... will these popular restaurants hold a certain number of tables in reserve to accomodate these last minute changes made by Geenie? Will that make the chances of you scoring a table even harder? I really do miss the days of waking up and deciding that day what park, rides and restaurants you want to visit. :(
 

Disney Dad 3000

Well-Known Member
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, but it’s time I let the Genie out of the bag. Genie was announced at the D23 Expo quite a while ago now. We never knew what exactly Genie meant other than it would really change the way you plan your vacation. Until now. Some of this is based on whispers from my peeps, some of this is based on my best logical guesses, and some of this just is so obvious I’m surprised no one has picked up on it yet. Let’s dive in.

First, the good news, annual passes won’t be going away, and neither will the monthly payment plans. The bad news is that WDW’s ticketing practices will get much more obscure overall. Genie will let you choose options that are important to you and spit out a price depending on what you select and when you want to do it. The price is determined by a variety of factors that probably won’t be explained to you directly, especially if you’re including the package deals. For example, you’ll be able to buy an AP, but it may not be good every day of the year, and Waterparks access or Premier Access could end up being an add-on. Oh, that reminds me. It’s clear to me that the company likes Disney+ and it’s naming conventions, so it’s likely that the Premier Access name from Disneyland Paris will carry over, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually launch Disney Genie as Genie+ or if Genie+ is some kind of upcharge version of regular Genie. I can’t confirm these names because these are just based on my gut, but the products seem real enough, so if I get some of this nomenclature wrong, don’t shoot the messenger.

As I understand it, Genie the app will be a free planning product. It will help you plan and achieve an itinerary that will be right for you and your family. But to guarantee an itinerary, you’ll need to opt in for Genie+ or Premier Access or whatever they end up calling it. I’m sure what you can guarantee will depend on the resort you’re staying at and the ticket types you include in your itinerary. The name of the game will be up-selling, and boy oh boy will you be up-sold to. Premier Access? Check. Photopass? Check. Parking? Check. VIP experiences? Check. Pre-order food and Merch? Check. It’s actually quite amazing how much will be implemented with Genie. This engine will also re-arrange your itinerary on the fly if attractions or experiences aren’t available as planned. For example, if Space Mountain ends up being unexpectedly closed for the rest of the day, it will re-arrange a later day of your vacation to hop back to Magic Kingdom to ride Space Mountain, and it will re-arrange dining reservations so you don’t miss your dinner at Ohana. It’s THAT good. But you’ll be paying for it.

You don’t want to use Genie? No worries, but no guarantees that you’ll be able to do what you want. There will be a definite bias towards pleasing the visitors that use Genie, especially the premium version of Genie. And that Premier Access product Disneyland Paris is using? Yeah, that can be an option for you day guests that just want to ride something now without waiting. It could be worth $25 bucks to you to just ride Flight of Passage now instead of that 180 min wait. Or maybe not. But at least you’ll have the option.

Fastpass+ as you knew it isn’t coming back. The name might, but since the new product is a paid service for most (it could be included as part of your hotel rooms or pass types in some cases) using the same name would be unwise in my opinion. Plus, now that it’s paid, it has to be guaranteed. That wait time has to be guaranteed to be 10 minutes or less (or whatever they come up with) and the CMs at all attractions will need to be re-trained to make sure they understand that guests are now paying to ride an attraction with little to no wait, and they have never done that before. This should encourage attraction CMs to upsell the faster access to their attractions as well.

Now, in terms of tech, we know Genie is dependent on multiple hardware and software upgrades at WDW that are occurring right now. Assuming they go well, you should see Genie roll-out before Oct 1st. If you have a keen eye, walking around property you may have noticed that Disney World has moved to SnApp for ticketing and to Appetize for merchandise and Food & Beverage point of sales systems. I suspect these upgrades must be complete before Genie can be rolled out. That’s just a hunch.

So, my advice: If you have the option to buy or renew an AP right now, I would recommend you do so before the new products replace the current AP offerings. It is likely there will be some grandfathering for the remainder of an active pass (not beyond a year though), and if you really prefer the new offerings over the old, I’m sure they’ll allow you to convert or upgrade. Obviously we just saw DL’s new Magic Key product, so we sort of have an idea on how things could work. Either way, it is a completely different team that is working on WDW’s ticket options, so we don’t know for sure, but one would think it can’t be TOO different.

If you have more information on Genie or want to chime in, of course I’m sure all of us here would love to hear your thoughts and ideas. For me, I think this is a good step for the parks overall: it monetizes what we knew as FastPass, it keeps reservations, it normalizes the operations a bit, and it allows Disney to sell a product that guarantees you’ll be able to ride Space Mountain almost a year out ahead of time. But what do you think?

Whatever ticketing change is happening has already been implemented I believe, at least from my experience and the lengthy conversations I had with ticket agents and guest relations on a few separate occasions 2 weeks ago.

It took about 25 min to activate our new AP's at the park. Was talking to the agent while she was doing it and she was having a heck of a time. Had to make 2-3 phone calls for help with the system. Passes worked that day but unfortunately when we got to the gates at AK the next day we were blocked from going. Turns out she entered the expiration year as '21 instead of '22 so we had 1 day AP's. Had a lengthy discussion with Guest Relations, who was super nice about it though didn't help my mood, and she talked about how everyone was having to learn a new system that was causing a number of problems and they were working it out.
 

EPCOT-O.G.

Well-Known Member
Okay - am I wrong to hope for a really drastic humbling failure for the parks? I was happy to see how quickly they (appeared) to bounce back, but the vastly increased costs and reduced offerings makes me feel like they took the wrong lessons from the painful times of the pandemic and need to learn them again.
 

DisneyDodo

Well-Known Member
I've been navigating Disney since 1977, i will not pay additional to ride something after I've paid to park, eat and get in the door. Disney can shove it. If I don't ride it or don't want to wait in the line oh well it won't be the end of the world. Many an afternoon I left that place saying "we missed this so and so ride'. We'll catch it next time.

Or if you have been enough you know how to get around/get in early and knock out the long lines and spend the rest of the day waiting 20-30 min tops for things.
This will not cause Disney to "shove it" - this just means you'll be paying the same as you did before for less. Disney loses nothing if guests decide not to pay for fastpasses. The only way they can lose is if people decide to stop going.
 

WDW Pro

Well-Known Member
All of this aligns with a former colleague's testimony that Disney is after the international $400k annual gross income and above crowd. The problem is going to be that the uber wealthy can use the Genie app and the new paid FastPass system to purchase line skip after line skip after line skip. While that is unlikely to affect the length of current lines very much (because Disney is going to soft cap physical queue lines), it very much could slow down the pace of queues on some attractions to a degree not seen before. This may actually impact Disneyland more than Disney World, but both will be lesser for those who only purchase the base ticket.
 

Disstevefan1

Well-Known Member
I think they're purposely moving away from nostalgia as well. Until the chips are down. Then it's all nostalgia. Just watch the 50th anniversary commercial featuring Cinderella and her carriage.

They could serve up golden dog crap this year and people will line up to buy it. But that's not a long term plan that will work.
I used to think TWDC needed a long term plan. I am now thinking they just look a quarter ahead. Funny thing, ITS WORKING….
 

Sir_Cliff

Well-Known Member
This is where I'm at. I *genuinely* don't care about price increases. It's their bizarre fetish for making things impossibly complicated that I don't understand.
I do care about the price increases + cutbacks, but people keep streaming through the gates so 🤷‍♂️

This drive to overcomplicate everything is something I really don't get, though. I'm sure there is a subset of WDW guests who are super planners, but surely this increasing need to plan, strategise, select from ever-growing lists of options, etc. is off-putting for most people? Independently planning a trip through Europe will likely require a lot of research and planning, but visiting a theme park resort in Florida really shouldn't.

It strikes me that it probably all makes sense on paper, though, and the people who design and sign off on these things only ever experience the parks as a series of financial reports and business strategies, so the gust experience of these initiatives never really enters their mind.
 

lentesta

Premium Member
These are people in a transactional relationship. InsideEars and Moms Panel more or less work for Disney, and the other person said she wanted to write an article about something and wanted tickets in order to do her background work. You were making it seem like they would be calling up all the vloggers and givin them free Genie+ or whatever it will be called just to write favorable reviews. The site that shall not be named, as well as the guy that runs the DIS, and even Len Testa will tell you that they get little to nothin for free from Disney in relation to their coverage. Sometimes they have to fight for press badges because they aren't traditional media outlets.
We don’t get anything at all. And we’d decline it if it was offered.
 

monothingie

Proxy War 2024: Never Forget
Premium Member
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DisneyDodo

Well-Known Member
I do care about the price increases + cutbacks, but people keep streaming through the gates so 🤷‍♂️

This drive to overcomplicate everything is something I really don't get, though. I'm sure there is a subset of WDW guests who are super planners, but surely this increasing need to plan, strategise, select from ever-growing lists of options, etc. is off-putting for most people? Independently planning a trip through Europe will likely require a lot of research and planning, but visiting a theme park resort in Florida really shouldn't.

It strikes me that it probably all makes sense on paper, though, and the people who design and sign off on these things only ever experience the parks as a series of financial reports and business strategies, so the gust experience of these initiatives never really enters their mind.
I think a lot of the complication is designed to make it harder for guests to compare prices and stay on a budget. If they raise the price of the hotel rooms, people may stay somewhere cheaper, but if they keep the price the same and add a parking fee, many people won't take that into account. The same applies for park tickets and fastpasses. People can compare the price of the Disney ticket to Universal's, but they can't account for dynamically generated FP prices that they don't even anticipate buying, but ultimately will when all the standby lines are too long and the Genie is pushing it down their throats.
 

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