Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[allgiggles]

What's so funny to me is you refuse to accept that someone might have been able to use the system better than you.

Literally last night I showed the following screen shots:
At 6:08 a SDD for 8:25
At 7:16 a 730 mmrr and 7:35 rnrc
At 7:18 a 740 mfsr

Imagine a full 12 hour day of doing that. It's not hard to get a LL for everything in Epcot,DHS, or AK. Magic has so many attractions I would be impressed but I do think it's possible.

A month or so ago he refused to believe the success our group of 11 had with Genie+/ILL in late June. He insisted (even though he wasn't there) that there were low crowds that week and that's the only reason we had success with it. Crowds and standby times were *not* low -- they were very similar to what they've been in late June all the other years we've been there. We found that the actual wait times for the few standby lines we did were about 75-80% of the posted wait times....which were long. We were definitely lucky with some of the things we got with Genie+ but we were very flexible with times and we weren't trying to schedule around anything (and I understand how it can be more difficult to use Genie+ if trying to schedule around ADRs, naptimes, early bed times, etc.). My son seemed to have great luck with "Genie Slots" and we got some sold out rides later in the day by him playing that game. We didn't spend much time on our phones, either. We never spent entire days in the parks. We either did rope drop; afternoon break; evening in a park; or we slept in and got to the park around 10:00 and either stayed through dinner and then called it a day, or did a break late in the afternoon and headed to a park around 6:00. However, apparently I dreamt all of this because someone who wasn't there, has told me it wasn't possible to get that much accomplished under the conditions I described. Not sure how we got all those ride photos from my dream, though.

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

I will also say with the refreshing game (formerly known as the fastpass game in my house). The high demand low capacity rides are far less likely to pop up vs the higher capacity rides even if they are both sold out.

Hardest to get: Pan, SDD, Navi, frozen
Tier 2: JC, Remy, Tot, TT
Tier 3: oddly HM is hard to bring forward, MMRR, RNRC, MFSR, Splash and space

I think what happens on a lot of the thrill rides are people book for their whole family, but some people don't want to ride and let their pass expire so more open up

Huh, I've usually had pretty good luck getting HM passes.

 

[jpeden]

Would like to see if Epcot has the same success with refreshing for Frozen/Remy/Test Track

As much as I despise Genie+ and make sure to tell them this in every one of my surveys, we had decent results with it last week, including being able to pull a Remy LL at 7:00PM for a 7:45 ride. There were also frozen LL for the 7PM hour available when I looked that evening as well (this was a Sunday). We got decent utilization out of it but I hate three major things about it:

It costs
It's a downgrade from FP+ in that you can't choose your time
It's a major downgrade from FP+ in that there are no re-rides

The first time we used it I didn't even realize you couldn't pull a LL for the same ride twice - I just assumed it really was paid FP+ and it blew my mind when the app told me I had used my entitlement for LL for the day on POTC.

 

[TQQQ]

As much as I despise Genie+ and make sure to tell them this in every one of my surveys, we had decent results with it last week, including being able to pull a Remy LL at 7:00PM for a 7:45 ride. There were also frozen LL for the 7PM hour available when I looked that evening as well (this was a Sunday). We got decent utilization out of it but I hate three major things about it:

It costs
It's a downgrade from FP+ in that you can't choose your time
It's a major downgrade from FP+ in that there are no re-rides

The first time we used it I didn't even realize you couldn't pull a LL for the same ride twice - I just assumed it really was paid FP+ and it blew my mind when the app told me I had used my entitlement for LL for the day on POTC.

The real problem is, it was fine for you because the parks were not busy. 95% of the time it is ineffective because of the attendance.

 

[jpeden]

The real problem is, it was fine for you because the parks were not busy. 95% of the time it is ineffective because of the attendance.

I would disagree with that assessment. EPCOT was slammed on Sunday night and Rat had a 90 minute wait and I was still able to pull a LL at 7PM for a ride 45 minutes later. MK was pretty busy earlier that day as well. Unless you were there on 10/23 at 7PM then you can’t accurately comment on the crowd.

It may have been more effective on Sunday due to a lack of users in EPCOT that day, but it certainly wasn’t “not busy.” Once again, I despise G+ but I understand that if you want to be efficient it can be used to your advantage - I experienced it myself on this last trip.

 

[Andy_0410]

Ultimately if genie plus works for you or not there is no advantage to staying on site. From now on I’ll stay somewhere cheaper off property spend more time in other park and local restaurants so I can afford the add ons at Disney
Disney just lost a loyal guest for the past ten years because they priced me out and removed the benefits. But I guess I don’t have enough money for them anymore.

 

[Patcheslee]

Is it a known thing for Genie+ to change prices even after midnight? 4:11am was $15, then when looked again at 7:08am $22.

 

[vikescaper]

We are currently in the Lightning Lane for Toy Story Mania. The Standby line has a 65 minute wait.

 

[TQQQ]

I would disagree with that assessment. EPCOT was slammed on Sunday night and Rat had a 90 minute wait and I was still able to pull a LL at 7PM for a ride 45 minutes later. MK was pretty busy earlier that day as well. Unless you were there on 10/23 at 7PM then you can’t accurately comment on the crowd.

It may have been more effective on Sunday due to a lack of users in EPCOT that day, but it certainly wasn’t “not busy.” Once again, I despise G+ but I understand that if you want to be efficient it can be used to your advantage - I experienced it myself on this last trip.

Touring plans had it ranked a 3 out of 10. It wasn’t busy.

 

[nickys]

Touring plans had it ranked a 3 out of 10. It wasn’t busy.

The crowd calendar is a measure of wait times between 1am & 3pm (or 11-4).
It can still be very busy. There are other factors that affect wait times.
And @jpeden was there in the evening, which is outwith the time frame that the crowd calendar applies to.

 

[TQQQ]

The crowd calendar is a measure of wait times between 1am & 3pm (or 11-4).
It can still be very busy. There are other factors that affect wait times.
And @jpeden was there in the evening, which is outwith the time frame that the crowd calendar applies to.

Doesn’t matter. It’s was still one of the slower days of the year no matter how you look at it

 

[nickys]

Doesn’t matter. It’s was still one of the slower days of the year no matter how you look at it

Oh, I didn’t realise you were there the same day. Or that you had access to the visitor numbers at the parks. So which day so far in 2022 has had the lowest number of guests at each of the four parks? And which day had the highest?

 

[TQQQ]

Oh, I didn’t realise you were there the same day. Or that you had access to the visitor numbers at the parks. So which day so far in 2022 has had the lowest number of guests at each of the four parks? And which day had the highest?

I’m here every day chief.

 

[TQQQ]

Oh, I didn’t realise you were there the same day. Or that you had access to the visitor numbers at the parks. So which day so far in 2022 has had the lowest number of guests at each of the four parks? And which day had the highest?

Tuesdays are busy. Wednesdays are slow

 

[Patcheslee]

2nd time I've seen this now in less than a week. Price at 3:58am $18, 6:37am $15. What the heck is going on?

 

[Chi84]

We used Genie+/ILL three times now (October 2021, April 2022 and last week) and it seems to be working quite a bit better now.

Buying Genie+ and scheduling rides was pretty easy on 3 of the 4 days we used it. The 4th had something strange going on - we kept getting the "something's not right, please try again" message (on both of our phones) and at one point it told us we had to schedule during park hopper hours even though we had a park reservation for the park we were scheduling. On the next try, I was able to get through and get what we wanted, but the entire process took nearly a half-hour.

We were ultimately able to ride everything we wanted, although we had to make some adjustments to our schedule based on the times Disney was giving us. The difference between what we booked and what we got was minimal compared to what happened the last time we used it. The Lightning Lanes were all walk-ons with the exception of SDD, which was a 15-minute wait - posted was 60 minutes, with a few minutes less on Touring Lines.

Essentially, we paid just under $220 for the two of us to get what we received free with FP+, which was much better for the way we vacation at WDW. But I can understand why people who do things differently would get much more value from it.

 

[Jrb1979]

I'm curious to what changes happen tomorrow. They did say that pricing was just for October.

 

[JD80]

First time I used G+ I easily had 10 LL for a DHS/MK day.

Luckily in my trip coming up I pre-purchase G+ and I'm locked in at 15.

 

[marni1971]

On top of pricing changes, there may also be some changes to obtaining the paid fast pass. It’s likely to be available before day-of, and more tweakable once purchased.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

On top of pricing changes, there may also be some changes to obtaining the paid fast pass. It’s likely to be available before day-of, and more tweakable once purchased.

By “paid fast pass” do you mean the ILL$? Or do you mean the Genie+ Fast passes?