Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[peter11435]

If you wish to debate general park hours, then you should quote the person you wish to debate, not me.

I quoted a post of yours where you were discussing park hours and party night. And that post of yours was quoting and replying to my post about general park hours.

 

[BrianLo]

I think my biggest problem with Genie+ (besides having to pay) is this scenario

FP I book my 3 rides for each park. Approx 9AM, 11AM, 1PM. Ok for any park, inbetween those times I would wait standby after 1PM I could use FP for the rest of my day if available on a ride. No fuss no muss. We never really had huge issue doing this.

Now Genie+ 7AM try and get a LL for say Splash at around 9AM well genie offers me a 2:30 time and wont allow me to adjust it. So I then have to pick another ride say HM, well I want it for again early it offers me 1pm and again I cant change it. If its possible to just see available times and attractions for Genie+ LL attractions I have not seen that stated. So forgive me if I missed it in this mess of a thread LOL. But thats one of my biggest problems. I dont want to have to wait 2 hours from park open because Genie+ couldnt give me a morning LL attraction that fits our schedule.

Yes, when you go to book a FP it will show you all the available attractions and when their respective next available slot is.

If anything like MaxPass, half of those windows will be five minutes from now, not 120.

 

[BrianLo]

Genie+ simply doesn't appear complicated to those of us who have navigated the different versions of Fastpass over the years. There's a few quirks and rule changes but most of us will figure it out quickly. It's not rocket science and we're not idiots.

And we realize any software or system is a learning curve.

But this is really just a return to an older system, with a modern twist.

I think that's it. I'm noticing a subset of people whom have only ever navigated FP+. Which I actually believe was a more convoluted management system. It's the lack of ability to plan 60 days out (which I thought most people hated), that now everyone seems addicted to.

This is MaxPass (with a few attractions removed) AND no two-tier paper system, which was always less convoluted than FP+.

 

[Jeff4272]

I think my biggest problem with Genie+ (besides having to pay) is this scenario

FP I book my 3 rides for each park. Approx 9AM, 11AM, 1PM. Ok for any park, inbetween those times I would wait standby after 1PM I could use FP for the rest of my day if available on a ride. No fuss no muss. We never really had huge issue doing this.

Now Genie+ 7AM try and get a LL for say Splash at around 9AM well genie offers me a 2:30 time and wont allow me to adjust it. So I then have to pick another ride say HM, well I want it for again early it offers me 1pm and again I cant change it. If its possible to just see available times and attractions for Genie+ LL attractions I have not seen that stated. So forgive me if I missed it in this mess of a thread LOL. But thats one of my biggest problems. I dont want to have to wait 2 hours from park open because Genie+ couldnt give me a morning LL attraction that fits our schedule.

I agree 100% with this........But i think WDW thinks of it a bit differently

I think the way WDW is thinking about it is this:

you still get 2 of those 3 FP that you used to have (albeit now you have to pay for the 2 IAS ones per park) and pick your return time and not only that, they are the 2 most popular rides, there's no FP tier so you are not restricted to not getting one of them

then Genie+ is the bonus of the "unlimited" FP that you used to get after using your original 3 and the rules are basically the same (based on availability throughout the day)

so you give up one of the 3 but you gain no tier and still get to pick return time

 

[runnsally]

I think my biggest problem with Genie+ (besides having to pay) is this scenario

FP I book my 3 rides for each park. Approx 9AM, 11AM, 1PM. Ok for any park, inbetween those times I would wait standby after 1PM I could use FP for the rest of my day if available on a ride. No fuss no muss. We never really had huge issue doing this.

Now Genie+ 7AM try and get a LL for say Splash at around 9AM well genie offers me a 2:30 time and wont allow me to adjust it. So I then have to pick another ride say HM, well I want it for again early it offers me 1pm and again I cant change it. If its possible to just see available times and attractions for Genie+ LL attractions I have not seen that stated. So forgive me if I missed it in this mess of a thread LOL. But thats one of my biggest problems. I dont want to have to wait 2 hours from park open because Genie+ couldnt give me a morning LL attraction that fits our schedule.

You won’t be offered afternoon times at 7am for genie+ LLs. That’s not how the system works.

 

[Jeff4272]

You won’t be offered afternoon times at 7am for genie+ LLs. That’s not how the system works.

How does it work? From everything Ive read it is just like the old paper FP system and the popular rides would have late afternoon return times 15 mins after the park opened

What if i dont wake up until 7:15?

 

[runnsally]

How does it work? From everything Ive read it is just like the old paper FP system and the popular rides would have late afternoon return times 15 mins after the park opened

What if i dont wake up until 7:15?

The rides that may have (albeit unlikely) caused that scenario will be an IAS, so WDW has thoughtfully solved that problem for us.

With the current set up, the only ride I can see getting pushed late into the day quickly is SDD, but MFSR/ToT/RnRC are probably popular enough to prevent that.

 

[JAB]

then Genie+ is the bonus of the "unlimited" FP that you used to get after using your original 3 and the rules are basically the same (based on availability throughout the day)

But unlike FP, G+ limits you to one line skip per ride per day, so it's not "unlimited," and I'd say that's a pretty significant change from FP.

 

[Jeff4272]

But unlike FP, G+ limits you to one line skip per ride per day, so it's not "unlimited," and I'd say that's a pretty significant change from FP.

Correct and I agree........What I meant by unlimited was you can continue booking all day for every ride


probably a bad choice of words, but meant you werent limited to 3 Genie+ rides

 

[Jeff4272]

The rides that may have (albeit unlikely) caused that scenario will be an IAS, so WDW has thoughtfully solved that problem for you.

With the current set up, the only ride I can see getting pushed late into the day quickly is SDD, but MFSR/ToT/RnRC are probably popular enough to prevent that.

I dont think its unrealistic to expect that for any of those rides

 

[Jeff4272]

The rides that may have (albeit unlikely) caused that scenario will be an IAS, so WDW has thoughtfully solved that problem for you.

With the current set up, the only ride I can see getting pushed late into the day quickly is SDD, but MFSR/ToT/RnRC are probably popular enough to prevent that.

And they haven't announced whether or not they were going to stagger availability or have "drops" ever couple of hours

 

[Patcheslee]

The rides that may have (albeit unlikely) caused that scenario will be an IAS, so WDW has thoughtfully solved that problem for you.

With the current set up, the only ride I can see getting pushed late into the day quickly is SDD, but MFSR/ToT/RnRC are probably popular enough to prevent that.

I wonder how many people will choose shows as their 7am pick to get the time they want. Didn't Frozen usually run out of time slots pretty quickly day of?
I remember an old Touring Plans excel sheet where they broke down the common times day of FP ran out.

 

[Waters Back Side]

You won’t be offered afternoon times at 7am for genie+ LLs. That’s not how the system works.

The people who arrive at the park at say 10 or 11 am or even later and decide to wait until 10am then to book their first Genie ride might find they are not going to find the next available to be 1030 either either. So in some way shape or form some rides will always be available later in the day as the only option.

At 7am we do not know what will show as a time for next available for any of the rides on the Genie + tier. At 7am technically the next available for all of them is park opening at 9am. So the best option might be to wait a few hours to book rides to arrive later.

 

[runnsally]

The people who arrive at the park at say 10 or 11 am or even later and decide to wait until 10am then to book their first Genie ride might find they are not going to find the next available to be 1030 either either. So in some way shape or form some rides will always be available later in the day as the only option.

At 7am we do not know what will show as a time for next available for any of the rides on the Genie + tier. At 7am technically the next available for all of them is park opening at 9am. So the best option might be to wait a few hours to book rides to arrive later.

Won’t be that hard. If you’re going to use genie+ and plan to arrive at 10am, take a quick glance at your phone at 8:30 to see where things stand and book accordingly.

 

[Waters Back Side]

Won’t be that hard. If you’re going to use genie+ and plan to arrive at 10am, take a quick glance at your phone at 8:30 to see where things stand and book accordingly.

That's the plan. With the assumption my first choice is still available for sometime during the day. That's how anyone who arrives later will have to do it.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Do you really believe that Disney has no interest whatsoever in providing a good customer experience for its guests?

I mean, they aren’t running parking lot trams and the only way to change the date of a ticket on the day of is to wait for 90 minutes to three hours on the phone. Both of those are more egregious violations of the guest experience then longer wait times that are avoidable (for a small fee) and that even savvy guests will be unsure can be blamed on Genie.

What was WDWs last major improvement in the guest experience?

 

[Casper Gutman]

So, as folks have mentioned, posted wait times the last several weeks have been 2.5 to 3 times the actual wait. This was very noticeable in-park. Is this standard? Are we pretty sure it’s just a coincidence that they are this inflated right before a paid line-skipping system rolls out?

 

[Goofyernmost]

There is no reason to think they'd go beyond the 80-20 merge for LL to standby, so there is a limit based on hours as there always would have been. The difference here is that for G+ LL if the ride is down they can stop giving people passes to it rather than have them already given and stacking the LL queue in other attratcions. Here the times would increase quicker on other attractions but not spike and make standby intolerable.

Also, typically people just leave the park later in the day so I wouldn't expect a huge chunk sticking around just for re-rides later in the day and make standby longer than they were early on. That would be a big change to guest behavior that we'd have to see to believe.

They went beyond that when Fastpass was free. If they are going to get a minimum of $15.00 now for a Lightning Lane pass you can bet everything you have that they will not refuse anyone. It wouldn't surprise me based on the greed factor of Disney that they would go to 100% LL along with $100.00+ to just get in the park. Then it would be just like when they opened except they charge admission and more also to actually do anything once you are inside.

 

[Disney Glimpses]

I think the biggest goal achieved by Disney re: G+ is it removes local APs from the FP queues. That alone will keep things light. Unless we believe that locals are likely to cough up 15 bucks every time they visit the parks (and that's after the insane price hikes).

 

[Disstevefan1]

Do you really believe that Disney has no interest whatsoever in providing a good customer experience for its guests?

"no interest whatsoever" is extreme, but the primary focus is on making MONEY with a passive eye on guest experience..