DCLcruiser
Well-Known Member
At the time it wasn't bad, but on your phone is easier. You can get a pass while in line.
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Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
I didn't love FP+, but only having to get up at 7 AM once for the whole trip was 10000x better than having to get up at 7 AM every single day of the trip. Plus, with FP+, I was basically guaranteed to get on the rides I wanted and that's definitely not the case with Genie+.
I understand how Genie+ is better for some people than FP+, but it's also significantly worse for some people.
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nickys
Premium Member
The big deal was that with FP+ I could make sure we could ride / see everyone’s must-do attractions at least once during our trip. Which when you know you won’t be back for 3 years (or 6 as it turns out) is important to us.
mikejs78
Well-Known Member
Much easier to get up once when you're not on vacation then to get up every day when on your vacation. No comparison.
Hell I'd be happy if you could select your LL's on the first day of your trip so you only had to do it once.
nickys
Premium Member
And I should add I could book them for a time that suited us. And where we didn’t have to be in the parks from morning to night.
crazy4disney
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Definitely not the same & honestly i would go during Thanksgiving week most times, was there Columbus day week & was also there during the February break & never had an issue getting FP+ times for anything i wanted and at perfect times as well.... maybe FoP would end up being around noonish (big deal) 7DMT maybe would be early afternoon on the earlier part of trip worse case scenario but always in the AM after day 2 or 3.... Frozen when it opened was the only time i couldnt get a FP for a ride my entire trip and an polite Email to GS resolved that. then once in the park there were plenty of times where i was able to push my 3rd FP up earlier after riding my 1st 2.... Lets not talk about being able to modify vs this new disaster of cancelling and hoping the time is still available if not you lose your ride and the time into the 2 hour window awful.... and to me between easily being able to check on a computer at work during down times being bored or on the bus to and from work to check and see if anything else may have popped up was a simple short task. So maybe i been lucky for alllllll these years getting whatever top tier ride i wanted but ive booked and helped others and had the same success so to compare the 2 is not even close and this is NOT even factoring in the fact you are now paying for an inferior product.
DCLcruiser
Well-Known Member
I dunno guys. 30 day window guest didn't have access to the #1 attractions on FP+. Now we all have the same chance, day of. I'd bet, most people going probably had no idea they could pick a FP that far in advance and would get shut out. They also won't know about the 7 AM window either. But we all get to benefit day of.
If you are rope dropping everyday, 7 AM isn't an issue. WDW is not for relaxation.
I didn't dislike FP+, I just don't see Genie+ as a horrible thing.
If it's true you can't swap LL w/o losing the initial, that does suck.
If you are rope dropping everyday, 7 AM isn't an issue. WDW is not for relaxation.
I didn't dislike FP+, I just don't see Genie+ as a horrible thing.
If it's true you can't swap LL w/o losing the initial, that does suck.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
Maybe for you, but that's not true for everyone. I've never rope dropped and I don't plan to start -- I like having breakfast somewhere with a leisurely start to the day. With FP+ (and before) that was not an issue; I could still do the things I wanted to do. The current system is trying to force everyone to be a rope dropper.
I think if they kept this system in place long-term (which they apparently aren't going to do), it would end up making the experience worse for almost everyone, because even the people who like rope dropping would lose the advantage of it. It's no longer beneficial if most of the guests are showing up for rope drop.
DCLcruiser
Well-Known Member
I'd love to try that someday. Maybe even go back to the pool half way through the day. For us, one day per park (3 days w/ Hopper in the past), in/out, see it all. Rope drop the #1 ride and FP the rest.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
I'm not a pool person so never really do that, but we did like hopping to EPCOT just to eat lunch (which is not currently possible) or even to Disney Springs for it.
Of course, we usually go for 7 days with a hopper, and there are multiple attractions (including some of the bigger ones) that don't really interest me. I like spending time just walking the animal trails at AK, wandering the World Showcase at EPCOT, etc. If you're only going for three, then yeah, you'd basically have to rope drop and stay in the parks the entire day.
As a former CM back when they had FP+, I only had a seven day window, and even then, I was almost always a last minute visitor. I was usually picking my fast passes the day of, or at earliest, the day before. With enough refreshing from the comfort of my own couch, I was often able to get fast passes even for 7DMT and Frozen, although it wasn’t every single time. But aside from those (and FOP, wish I didn’t try for very often only because I don’t do good on simulators), I never had any issues booking the fast passes that I wanted - I even got the TIMES that worked for us. I’ve tried genie+ exactly twice now, just so I could give a fair comparison, and it definitely doesn’t compare. No convenient times available, and no amount of refreshing day of got me any of the top-tier rides. Granted, I didn’t wake at 7 AM to get my first selections. But I also never woke up at 7 AM to book anything with the old system either, and yet, I still had far more luck with that one. And refreshing the app from the comfort of my own home will always be far superior to refreshing day of in the park when I’m trying to enjoy time with my family.
To say nothing of the cost of this inferior product…
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
If I was forced to say one thing good about Genie, it would be its more of a level playing field now that everyone must pick same day and since it’s it’s done in the app it’s sort of the paperless version of the paper Fastpass; today, no running to the FastPass machines and hoping they don’t run out before your turn, the bad thing today, all the good return times are gone by 7:03 AM.
If you sleep late, and get on the app at 9AM your return times are like 6:35PM
JAB
Well-Known Member
We just got back from 10 days in the parks, and Genie+ was a success for us. My wife mentioned several times during the trip how impressed she was with how well it worked. Only once were we not able to get the LL we preferred. With an understanding park touring strategy, and some basic info on which LL go quickest, we never waited more than 12 min. for any ride. We used Genie+ in various way depending on our plans for the day - stacking a few LLs for our late arrival days, booking as we went for our full park days, and booking across parks for our hopping days. We also had no trouble booking popular LL like Slinky Dog, or Rise/Resistance. Depending on what we planned on doing that day, we usually pulled 4 or 5 G+ LL per day (our max was 8), and could have booked more, but they weren't necessary because they were for attractions we weren't interested in (or had already ridden multiple times).
That being said, I feel people are focusing too much on how many LL you can get per day, when the real metric should be how much time you save. Getting one LL that saves you 75 min is better than getting 5 that save you 10 min. We were able to tour the parks in a much more relaxed manner because we weren't wasting time in line, so we could go a a more relaxed pace, sit, rest and people watch, take time for photos, and still have more than enough time to get in everything we wanted to do and more.
Obviously paying for it is not ideal, and we're planners, so we liked being able to book FP+ 60 days in advance and we were good at using that system to our advantage, but were able to easily adapt our touring strategy to use Genie+ efficiently. And no, we weren't "glued to our phones;" we took them out at most every 2 hours for a minute to grab the next LL at the top of our priority list, then put them away and went on with our day. It's really not as involved as some are making it out to be.
Re: the crowds... Honestly we were pleasantly surprised with the crowd levels. The parks were definitely busy at times, but never felt "crowded" to us. We've been there when it was shoulder-to-shoulder people and you couldn't move, and getting a table at quick service was a contentious waiting game. By contrast, not once this trip were we stuck in an unmoving mass of people, and we never had trouble finding a table at QS restaurants.
That being said, I feel people are focusing too much on how many LL you can get per day, when the real metric should be how much time you save. Getting one LL that saves you 75 min is better than getting 5 that save you 10 min. We were able to tour the parks in a much more relaxed manner because we weren't wasting time in line, so we could go a a more relaxed pace, sit, rest and people watch, take time for photos, and still have more than enough time to get in everything we wanted to do and more.
Obviously paying for it is not ideal, and we're planners, so we liked being able to book FP+ 60 days in advance and we were good at using that system to our advantage, but were able to easily adapt our touring strategy to use Genie+ efficiently. And no, we weren't "glued to our phones;" we took them out at most every 2 hours for a minute to grab the next LL at the top of our priority list, then put them away and went on with our day. It's really not as involved as some are making it out to be.
Re: the crowds... Honestly we were pleasantly surprised with the crowd levels. The parks were definitely busy at times, but never felt "crowded" to us. We've been there when it was shoulder-to-shoulder people and you couldn't move, and getting a table at quick service was a contentious waiting game. By contrast, not once this trip were we stuck in an unmoving mass of people, and we never had trouble finding a table at QS restaurants.
Jeff4272
Well-Known Member
Hotel bookings will 100% go down. There’s no incentive to stay at all. Zero
Jeff4272
Well-Known Member
Ha. You’ve obviously never used it. And booking all at once vs waking up early every morning day if is a huge difference
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
This wasn’t my experience, for what it’s worth. With a bit of refreshing, I usually ended up with my top choices, even when making day-of selection.
What I find hard to understand is....there is now significantly less people paying for G+ than used FP+ for free.. so how can G+ be so bad compared to FP+ when it's being used by less people?
It's also worse becasue you can't swap to a different G+ like you could with FP+ - you have to cancel your current G+ and by the time you've gone back it to snap up the G+ it's gone....and so is the G+ ypu just gave up to swap.
To be fair, you went during one of the few remaining “slow” seasons. Easter and spring break ended right before your trip, and summer vacation is right around the corner. It’s that sweet spot in between two of the busiest times of year where very few are pulling their kids out of school.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
IMO it's due to lack of availability on purpose. From what many have said that used the LL waits are short. In the FP days you sometimes had waits of 30 minutes or more.
IMO the only way to fix Genie+ is charge more for it so less people buy it.