Disney Genie and Genie+ at Walt Disney World

[Chip Chipperson]

People keep saying we have to be realistic, that talking about the need for more capacity is unrealistic and the focus needs to be on the situation that actually exists. Genie+ is just that with all of the problems of a virtual queue system exacerbated due to current operating conditions.

Definitely. Genie+ is the situation that exists now. Had Disney bothered asking for my opinion after my recent trip, I would have told them what I dislike about it. They don't seem interested in hearing what I think at the moment, but maybe one day they will again.

Perhaps there was a miscommunication in the beginning of the discussion, because I was comparing FP+ to G+ while others are simply trying to say, G+ is here now so it is what it is - but at least some people seemed to be trying to explain away FP+ with its flaws (whether they were real or imaginary like the need for online calendars and spreadsheets) as a defense of G+. To me, if you have 2 flawed systems, but one is free and one is an upcharge I'll prefer the free one unless it is so overwhelmingly worse than the upcharge - but even then, there's no excuse for knowingly creating a flawed system and charging for it. I'm not even opposed to upcharges. I gladly paid for the Very Merriest After Hours event and it was the most enjoyable park time I had all trip. Maybe G+ is just Step 1 in a plan to solve the issues that exist, but I'll believe it when I see it (and when they address some of the glaring flaws with G+ like putting Passholders at a disadvantage). For now, it seems like you can sum up their strategy with this Dilbert strip: https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-12-17

 

[el_super]

As I understand it, there were long lines before the introduction of Genie+, and that was during a pandemic when visitor numbers were lower than they would normally be. I’ve seen no evidence that getting rid of line-skipping systems results in significantly shorter standby waits.

So why do you think Disney felt they needed to ditch Fastpass+?

 

[mikejs78]

I'll

So why do you think Disney felt they needed to ditch Fastpass+?

Because they repurposed the code for park reservations.

 

[flynnibus]

Why do you keep trying to make that all seem so confusing? FP+ didn't require half of what you're suggesting. If you had an overlap between reservations, the system told you when you tried to select a return time. Who needs to write down, "I really want to ride Slinky Dog Dash," to remember to try to book a FP+ time for it? The most planning we ever did was write down the days of the week and which park we wanted to hit each day.

Hope you never booked france right after your mission space fp…. Or didn’t book that important avatar fp too close to your California grille ressie. It’s not just about direct time conflicts… which is the only thing the app knew.

the app had the data, but wasn’t a good trip planner.

 

[flynnibus]

I'll

Because they repurposed the code for park reservations.

That keeps getting brought up and makes zero sense from a software development perspective.

genie wasn’t in place before either. So any second system brought up could have been their old code base updated too

 

[Chi84]

Did people switch to only eating dinner now? And only visiting one day?

surd it’s simple in isolation- but that’s the crux.., it’s not in isolation. It is 3 fp plus up to three adr per day… and what you prioritize is also dependent on your other days.

lets say you want CRT for your daughter. You don’t get it when you first book and you make your fp+ reservations.

now sometime later, A CRT reservation opens up… but it is not the day you planned on being in MK. You take tge spot, but now have to shift what park you planned to vidit that day. Now thr whole house of cards comes crashing down as you gotta release your adr and FP bookings on likely multiple days and try again with today’s availability. Good luck…

You keep coming up with these worst case scenarios. All I can say is that this kind of thing never happened to us, and we visited very frequently. I think part of the issue here may be that - despite our being planners - we are pretty flexible and tend to take things in stride.

If CRT wasn't available when we first tried to book it, we would probably be okay with planning something else. If we really wanted to switch later, we would get the best fastpasses we could. After all, we weren't paying for them - sometimes when you get things free you end up making the best of it if things don't work out perfectly. I've never reached the level of anxiety where not getting a certain dinner reservation or a particular ride would make the whole vacation come "crashing down."

What I liked about FP+ was that it gave us the best chance of getting what we wanted at times convenient for us (usually late afternoons or evenings) and gave us a good idea of how to incorporate resort rest time, water parks, pool time, etc. into our day. But we never expected perfection and wouldn't reach the level of disappointment you're positing.

 

[flynnibus]

Because I was responding directly to a post that framed the argument as "optimal park operations" vs. "FP+ worked for me." There was an implication of selfishness on the part of the people preferring FP+ over G+.

Well when posters have outright said it worked for them and that’s all they cared about… what would you call it?

they literally defend the point that if you didn’t do the same work they did… that’s on you. Planning is essential…. And ignore thst not everyone had the same visitation pattern, or priorities. And when faced with these variations? ‘Well it worked for me’ — aka the whole wasn’t important as long as i got what i wanted.

 

[el_super]

Because they repurposed the code for park reservations.

But to what benefit? To save money on application coding?

Specifically with regard to eliminating the pre-booking windows, what is the benefit to Disney or the guest to do that? If there was a strong guest preference for booking things 60/30/7 days out, then why not incorporate that into the new system?

I think as far as the price goes, I think we all understand that raising prices should typically create a fall in demand. But if the goal was to have more people use the system, that would be counter to that no?

 

[flynnibus]

I genuinely don’t think anyone on these boards is advocating for or endorsing Genie.

I know… they keep coming back to ‘better than genie!’ When no one is pushing the current genie model as working but disney

 

[DisneyDodo]

It’s not an issue of repurposing code, but function. FP+ was used to gauge park attendance in advance. Now they have park passes to accomplish the same feat, so that feature of the line-skipping system is no longer needed for Disney (and wouldn’t have worked with a system that only a fraction of guests are using anyway)

 

[LittleBuford]

So why do you think Disney felt they needed to ditch Fastpass+?

I honestly don’t know. The decision clearly wasn’t set in stone until relatively recently given that Ratatouille was built with FP+ signs that had to be covered over.

Why do you think there were long lines even when no line-skipping system was in place?

 

[Chip Chipperson]

I'm surprised at this point, that no one has suggested going with the (almost always considered superior) Tokyo Disneyland method of just having a mad dash and a lottery at park opening. Physically working to attain park reservations is the only way to be fair.



As the person who may have made the spreadsheet/calendar remark, I can only really offer my personal experience using the system. And yes I had to do most of those things. I would book ADRs 100 days out, with a rough plan of which parks I wanted to vist based on the ADRs, but if Fastpasses for certain things (like FoP or Mine Train) were not available on those days, I would have to adjust things around. The Fastpasses ran out quickly, so I had to be able to adjust my plans based on what the priority was (and sometimes that was a specific restaurant, but most times it was specific attractions). Changing which park/ADR/Fastpass to change was, certainly to me, a complicated dance that required taking notes and making decisions based on those spreadsheets. It also, sometimes failed spectacularly, as was the case when I had a 6:00PM FOP Fastpass and an 8PM Ohana reservation. Thank goodness for grace periods.

I won't say it's better or worse than it is now (I haven't been to the parks since Genie+ rolled out). But I definitely don't think that Fastpass+ was the "normal" way of visiting the parks. I guess I'm just old enough to remember when the only real planning you needed to do was to rope drop King Stefans (or Blue Bayou at DLR) for a dining reservation, while sending the kids off to ride Peter Pan. Back then normal was walking thru the parks, looking at the wait time and deciding if it was worth it, right then and there. Not crisscrossing the park, skipping from land to land in the course of an hour, just to make sure you've hit all the big ones before lunch.

I'm not saying people didn't use spreadsheets, I'm just saying it wasn't necessary since you could view your plans on the website or app. If spreadsheets made it easier for you, that's what worked for you - but you'll still need to refer to your shceduled dining reservations with G+ because it's very possible that it will try to have you book a LL time that conflicts with dining plans or that the only return time for a popular ride will be later in the evening even when trying to book at 7 AM. I experienced this on my trip when I wanted to book a LL slot for Slinky and at 7:00 was already being told the next available time was 7:00 PM but we already had plans for dinner in Epcot so that wasn't going to work - and that was before the system even let me try to pay for G+ since I'm just a lowly Passholder who was staying in a 1-bedroom villa (cash for 2 nights and DVC points for 5) and had to wait until exactly 7:00 to even be allowed to try to purchase. It was annoying enough to make me not even bother buying it. We booked a Rat ILL instead and saved a few dollars per person. Had G+ not blocked us from paying until 7:00 then we likely would have bought G+, paid for Rat, and then tried G+ again the next day in Magic Kingdom to compare how it worked in 2 different parks. Instead of $39/person for 2 days of G+ and 1 ILL, they got $9/person for 1 ILL.

I'm not sure what an "online calendar" is, but I just set a reminder on my phone, which isn't complicated at all. Someone who is bad with technology and/or doesn't have a phone with that feature probably has a wall calendar or desk calendar they could use to note the day they could book their FP+ choices.

Using FP+ wisely prevented criss-crossing the park because you could choose your rides/shows in advance. G+ takes that certainty away because you could end up with a LL in Adventureland, then Tomorrowland, then Frontier Land, then Fantasy Land, and back to Adventureland - or roll the dice and hope that the ride across the park has another time available later that works better. It also has the technological burden of all users accessing it at the same time where FP+ staggered out the demand by a month or more due to the different booking windows for resort guests vs. off-site guests/locals.

 

[el_super]

I honestly don’t know. The decision clearly wasn’t set in stone until relatively recently given that Ratatouille was built with FP+ signs that had to be covered over.

Why do you think there were long lines even when no line-skipping system was in place?

There have always been long lines and there will always be long lines.

They implemented a line-skipping system back in the 1990s, because one of the top complaints of the overall experience was waiting in line. They know that guest preference is to wait in no line at all. But since they are still waiting in lines, and still complaining about it, maybe the answer is that no line skip system is needed at all? It's a lot of overhead that ultimately doesn't resolve anything.

The tin foil hat part of me though, is assuming that Genie+ is actually a transition into a pay-per-line-skip system where all rides will essentially be ILL. The only thing holding them back is guest satisfaction.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

Hope you never booked france right after your mission space fp…. Or didn’t book that important avatar fp too close to your California grille ressie. It’s not just about direct time conflicts… which is the only thing the app knew.

the app had the data, but wasn’t a good trip planner.

I never did either of those things. And G+ doesn't even block you from overlapping LL with a dining reservation, from what I've seen. Maybe that's changed or I read something that was wrong, though.

The only time I really made a mistake with FP+ was the first trip we booked when it was in use back in 2015. We went full park commando because it was our first trip since either of us were kids and we brought our niece with us. We didn't know when any of us would be back, so we wanted to hit everything. We rope dropped MK and stayed until close. I failed to look at a map of the park before booking our reservations so we ended up backtracking a couple times. At the end of the day when re finally realized that we booked ourselves some extra walking, we said, "Next time we'll book our rides in a loop to we're not so tired," and never made that mistake again. We still enjoyed our day and rode everything we wanted to at least once. We had so much fun that my wife and I returned by ourselves later that year after booking the first tip thinking it might be our only visit for a while. Not knowing the layout of the park before our visit wasn't something G+ will solve for other first-timers. If they buy it and the app tells them what's available next, people will book it even if they don't know how far of a walk it is.

 

[el_super]

I'm not saying people didn't use spreadsheets, I'm just saying it wasn't necessary

But it was for some people.

Using FP+ wisely prevented criss-crossing the park because you could choose your rides/shows in advance.

You could... but did you? If you are booking the most popular rides/shows in advance, rather than prioritizing by location, you're probably getting Mine Train, Space Mountain and maybe Thunder Mountain as your top three. You're not getting Big Thunder, Splash and Pirates and hoping Mine Train will be available later in the day.

The availability of the Fastpass dictated the priority, not the physical location. That's not different between Genie+ and Fastpass+.

 

[flynnibus]

You keep coming up with these worst case scenarios. All I can say is that this kind of thing never happened to us, and we visited very frequently.

It is not a worst case. it illustrates how reality is not ‘just three fp’ or ‘free fp and a dinner adr’. There is interlock between multiple systems and it creates issues that are greatly exaggerated when dealing with items that are highly desirable.

just because your group would just roll with whatever you got and not sweat missing something does not invalidate the situation or diminish its probability. Just because you would happily accept the trades/consequences doesn’t mean they aren’t there… nor that others would not stress over it more.

when people are scrambling to get something because it is so scarce - they are going to sweat if you tell them you should give it up and ‘be happy to get what you get’ on a re-roll.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

Well when posters have outright said it worked for them and that’s all they cared about… what would you call it?

they literally defend the point that if you didn’t do the same work they did… that’s on you. Planning is essential…. And ignore thst not everyone had the same visitation pattern, or priorities. And when faced with these variations? ‘Well it worked for me’ — aka the whole wasn’t important as long as i got what i wanted.

Who goes on vacation to WDW thinking, "I shouldn't use the free line-skipping system the parks have because someone else might not understand it or like it as much as I do?" I'm sure there were people who got even more out of FP+ than I did, but I got enough out of it to make it enjoyable. It reduces stress to know that I've got a return time for a popular ride rather than wondering, "When I pay this $15/person will I even get to spot for that?" or (in the absence of any line-skipping system), "Will the line for that be so long that I won't want to waste the time waiting for it?"

 

[lazyboy97o]

Perhaps there was a miscommunication in the beginning of the discussion, because I was comparing FP+ to G+ while others are simply trying to say, G+ is here now so it is what it is - but at least some people seemed to be trying to explain away FP+ with its flaws (whether they were real or imaginary like the need for online calendars and spreadsheets) as a defense of G+. To me, if you have 2 flawed systems, but one is free and one is an upcharge I'll prefer the free one unless it is so overwhelmingly worse than the upcharge - but even then, there's no excuse for knowingly creating a flawed system and charging for it.

Very few people are defending Genie+. What you keep skipping over is that the big problem with Genie+ (availability) would exist if FastPass+ were being offered right now. There’s also a good chance it would be worse if Disney had to resort to cancelling FastPass+ reservations on people.

Because they repurposed the code for park reservations.

Code isn’t some finite resource. It can be duplicated and forked. You’re whole argument is that they had to use a derivative (MaxPass) because they needed another derivative (park reservations) but this time didn’t save the original.

I honestly don’t know. The decision clearly wasn’t set in stone until relatively recently given that Ratatouille was built with FP+ signs that had to be covered over.

Why do you think there were long lines even when no line-skipping system was in place?

Walt Disney Imagineering doesn’t operate the parks. That they had a sign fabricated is meaningless. The park wasn’t going to keep the ride out of FastPass+ even if they had planned on ditching the switch a month after the ride opened.

There have been a ton of reports that Stand-By wait times have been inflated since reopening. I provided the math for why a shorter wait can create a physically longer longer queue. And there’s still the issue that the parks lack adequate capacity.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Who goes on vacation to WDW thinking, "I shouldn't use the free line-skipping system the parks have because someone else might not understand it or like it as much as I do?"

Nobody is saying you should. But if you’re discussing the system as a whole that is what needs to be considered.

 

[Chi84]

It is not a worst case. it illustrates how reality is not ‘just three fp’ or ‘free fp and a dinner adr’. There is interlock between multiple systems and it creates issues that are greatly exaggerated when dealing with items that are highly desirable.

just because your group would just roll with whatever you got and not sweat missing something does not invalidate the situation or diminish its probability. Just because you would happily accept the trades/consequences doesn’t mean they aren’t there… nor that others would not stress over it more.

when people are scrambling to get something because it is so scarce - they are going to sweat if you tell them you should give it up and ‘be happy to get what you get’ on a re-roll.

In my opinion you dramatically and vastly overstate the amount of stress/anxiety involved in both planning and changing plans when necessary. Most people have those life skills. Disney does not need to concern itself with the hypothetical people described in your posts because they’d be dead of a heart attack before they ever got to the park.