Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[SirWillow]

So tried the Genie (no plus) today just to see what would happen. Not one of my selected choices came up... it kept trying to send me to M&Gs, food and low tier rides. Even worse, when I rode Rise today it was shocking - literally 30 LL people to 1 or 2 persons from standby each time. Thats like 90% ration of LL to Standby. Disney is REALLY making sure you don't buy, you suffer.

That sounds pretty similar to the old Fastpass+ ratios that they used to run. Which is one of the major reasons I hated it. Utterly killed the standby lines and made your waits overall longer.

 

[matt9112]

Ummmm. It’s called scale? Let’s say they sell 100 VIPs for $4k a pop, that’s $400k. Let’s say they sold 10,000 (20% of daily admission to MK) for $200 a pop that’s $2mm.

what would you prefer as a Disney executive?

I would perfer a stable long term growth plan. I also would never run a company if it meant crapping on ideals.

 

[danv3]

So tried the Genie (no plus) today just to see what would happen. Not one of my selected choices came up... it kept trying to send me to M&Gs, food and low tier rides.

Almost as though Genie was sending you to the things Disney wants you to go to, rather than things you want to go to? Hmm...

Even worse, when I rode Rise today it was shocking - literally 30 LL people to 1 or 2 persons from standby each time. Thats like 90% ration of LL to Standby. Disney is REALLY making sure you don't buy, you suffer.

90% ILL is about the expected ratio, at least at the busiest times. Disney doesn't care one bit about the non-ILL customers. If you're not willing to buy G+ and ILLs, you're not the customer Disney wants to have. What are you going to do? Not come back? Disney says "bye Felicia" and finds the next family willing to pay $120 pp to enter and another couple of hundred to ride the good rides.

 

[Muffinpants]

Almost as though Genie was sending you to the things Disney wants you to go to, rather than things you want to go to? Hmm...



90% ILL is about the expected ratio, at least at the busiest times. Disney doesn't care one bit about the non-ILL customers.

Even this they payed 140$+ to get into the park. ( Not counting multiday ticket prices) if over enough time it's known you can't ride the rides in the park you bought tickets to they will lose customers. And at that point they need to see if ILL makes up for it.

 

[Lirael]

It’s quite clear to me from all I’ve watched and read that Genie is utterly useless, at least right now. Some of this is likely due to it being new and Disney needing to iron out some kinks, but I think most of it is by design. Genie isn’t trying to minimize your waits for the attractions you want to ride. Rather, it tries to push you towards the least popular experiences so the popular ones have lower waits for everybody else. It also arbitrarily bakes in a bunch of downtime, presumably for you to spend shopping. I doubt a scenario exists in which following Genie would result in a more successful day than traversing the parks blind, let alone using personal knowledge and experience.

It doesn't sound like a problem, but purposeful design.

I think Genie was never designed to cater to the repeat disney fans, who've been to the parks enough times to know where and when to go after seeing wait times ad crowds.

Genie seems to be geared towards to new guests, or guests that go very rarely, where the guests have no idea where to go or what to do, because their idea of fun on vacation is to get there and and have fun, not spend days and months planning every detail (and please, I am not criticizing either type).

These guests don't now what to do, so they turn to the free "help" option on their device, and so disney can go and force them into the least popular rides, or to check out more stores. The guests with no knowledge come out, in general, happy because they did a ride really fast when compared to others, without realizing that ride is always fast.

Genie seems to be there to take advantage of the guests without prior knowledge: guest then leaves thinking they got good advice and lauds disney for doing so much for them, disney steers them wherever is better for disney('s pocket)

I've been telling any friend that plans to go soon to just ask me for help, don't wait for the app to have their best interests in mind.

 

[JohnD]

It's almost as if they should have thought things through before selling access to a ride with chronic downtime.

If it's down when your IA$ is called, it should be an automatic refund. If the IA$ line is ridiculous because of downtime prior to your ride, you should be able to request a refund in the app. A true refund! Not a Disney GC.

We shouldn't be forced to hang around in HS all day with the hopes one ride comes back online.

With G+ and an IA$ for ROTR, you should be able to knock out HS by early afternoon and hop to another park. Especially since HS has no true nighttime show right now.

It seems to me they should treat it like a downed FP+ attraction but with refund added into the programming. If the ride goes down, offer a LL to all LL and ILL attractions. If you choose one that isn't an ILL, as soon as you tap your band or whatever, a refund is automatically generated to your account for the ILL that went down. If you choose the other ILL, you're refunded or pay the difference depending on the cost of the ILL that went down. If you choose the same ILL later in the day, your payment is retained. If you leave the park without visiting another LL then a refund is generated after park close. This could be automatically programmed into the system. No visits to GR needed.

 

[mysto]

Disney has that, it's the VIP guided tour.

The problem for me is that it's guided. How much do I have to pay to NOT hang around with a stranger all day?

I know the guides are super, I just don't want one.

 

[jpinkc]

Anyone else feel all this reporting on Genie+ and how its working currently is a bit deceptive. I mean the parks have been very low crowds. I think we really need to see how it does on bigger crowd days, to make any kind of informed decision. I think it needs to be covered but very few of the reports I have read or seen mention that the crowds have been low. Anyone else think this or am I just nuts.

 

[Ayla]

It’s quite clear to me from all I’ve watched and read that Genie is utterly useless, at least right now. Some of this is likely due to it being new and Disney needing to iron out some kinks, but I think most of it is by design. Genie isn’t trying to minimize your waits for the attractions you want to ride. Rather, it tries to push you towards the least popular experiences so the popular ones have lower waits for everybody else. It also arbitrarily bakes in a bunch of downtime, presumably for you to spend shopping. I doubt a scenario exists in which following Genie would result in a more successful day than traversing the parks blind, let alone using personal knowledge and experience.

I believe a lot of us predicted this exact thing, but were poo-pooed when it was brought up.

 

[jpeden]

Another thing that I really despise about Genie+ is the once a day per ride restriction on its use. If you are paying for it you should be able to use your LL+ to ride the same ride multiple times if it is available. You were always able to do that with FP+.

 

[awoogala]

Disney has that, it's the VIP guided tour.

Universal Orlando

Universal Orlando Resort

www.universalorlando.com

Universal has VIP tours as well- group and private. It even includes some meals and backstage "experiences"

 

[Patcheslee]

Another thing that I really despise about Genie+ is the once a day per ride restriction on its use. If you are paying for it you should be able to use your LL+ to ride the same ride multiple times if it is available. You were always able to do that with FP+.

Everything they've dropped that use to have a FP makes it more difficult.
AK doesn't offer Primeval Whirl, Finding-Nemo, Rivers of Light, and Adventures Outpost M&G.
HS lost Fantasmic, Indy, and Little Mermaid.
EP lost nothing, gained Remy
MK lost Enchanted Tales, 5 M&G that were FP+ eligible, and Philarmagic.
I'm not sure they could even support a 5 crowd level if they went unlimited.

 

[DisneyDodo]

It doesn't sound like a problem, but purposeful design.

I think Genie was never designed to cater to the repeat disney fans, who've been to the parks enough times to know where and when to go after seeing wait times ad crowds.

Genie seems to be geared towards to new guests, or guests that go very rarely, where the guests have no idea where to go or what to do, because their idea of fun on vacation is to get there and and have fun, not spend days and months planning every detail (and please, I am not criticizing either type).

These guests don't now what to do, so they turn to the free "help" option on their device, and so disney can go and force them into the least popular rides, or to check out more stores. The guests with no knowledge come out, in general, happy because they did a ride really fast when compared to others, without realizing that ride is always fast.

Genie seems to be there to take advantage of the guests without prior knowledge: guest then leaves thinking they got good advice and lauds disney for doing so much for them, disney steers them wherever is better for disney('s pocket)

I've been telling any friend that plans to go soon to just ask me for help, don't wait for the app to have their best interests in mind.

I agree with that description, but the key here is that Genie isn't trying to help the uninformed guest, but to take advantage of them. It essentially tries to hide the good stuff from the people who don't know it exists. Yes, I think these guests will still have a good time because there's very little at any Disney park that's actively unenjoyable. However, I think many such guests will come out wondering why Disney is so expensive - "We had a good time on the teacups, carousel, and Magic Carpets, but we have basically the same rides at our local kiddie park, and admission is $20."

 

[Cesar R M]

next Disney will issue all discounts in the form of paper coupons that are difficult to redeem and they hope you lose

Make things even more evil.

You get alerts of supposed coupons on genie, where you have to pay for Genie+ to get them.
But the coupons expire in 5 minutes and you do not get full alerts once you pay. So you only get silent ads.

Coupon+ will cost an additional 5$ per day, and it will make coupons validity last 5 additional minutes

 

[Cesar R M]

The amount of corporate bootlicking in the reddit thread on price increases is so sad and why Disney feels confident on raising the price. People have just given up on corporations actually investing or caring about guests as a means to increase profits long term. At least universal is at least trying or realize the hole Disney has given them for easy money.

The whole reason for the "labor shortage" is people finally knew they could and should have better options for work. People need to be willing to change habits on vacations and not reward bad behavior. If the economy tanks Disney is going to get real screwed.

Aren't some states with very corporate paid politicians wanting to open the borders to cheap labour to "counter the shortage"?
Aka they are doing everything to NOT raise the salaries while they raise prices left and right?

 

[jpeden]

Everything they've dropped that use to have a FP makes it more difficult.
AK doesn't offer Primeval Whirl, Finding-Nemo, Rivers of Light, and Adventures Outpost M&G.
HS lost Fantasmic, Indy, and Little Mermaid.
EP lost nothing, gained Remy
MK lost Enchanted Tales, 5 M&G that were FP+ eligible, and Philarmagic.
I'm not sure they could even support a 5 crowd level if they went unlimited.

However that isn’t the guests fault. It’s the company’s fault for removing capacity and relying on a rationing system for which guests have to pay. It’s 100x worse than FP+ ever was - and unfortunately this is the new Disney, pay more and get less.

 

[dirtnap101]

Anyone else feel all this reporting on Genie+ and how its working currently is a bit deceptive. I mean the parks have been very low crowds. I think we really need to see how it does on bigger crowd days, to make any kind of informed decision. I think it needs to be covered but very few of the reports I have read or seen mention that the crowds have been low. Anyone else think this or am I just nuts.

For sure...based on what we've seen so far, on Thanksgiving week I expect Rise to likely sell out to WDW resort guests, SDD G+ will probably become unavailable before park open and PPF and JC will be in danger of G+ unavailability before Noon, and other G+ rides that haven't sold out yet but are still popular (ToT, RnRC, Test Track, etc) will likely sell out sometime in the afternoon.

 

[UNCgolf]

Another thing that I really despise about Genie+ is the once a day per ride restriction on its use.

This is something that will likely prevent me from buying it, because there are multiple attractions I don't care about in every park. I'm not going to pay $15 to ride NRJ and the Safari once, but I probably would if I could ride the Safari 3 or 4 times. I have the same issue at DHS and EPCOT (and at EPCOT the rides I care about the most don't usually have long lines anyways).

Magic Kingdom is probably the only one with an attraction lineup robust enough to make Genie+ worth it for me without the ability to re-ride.

 

[jpinkc]

For sure...based on what we've seen so far, on Thanksgiving week I expect Rise to likely sell out to WDW resort guests, SDD G+ will probably become unavailable before park open and PPF and JC will be in danger of G+ unavailability before Noon, and other G+ rides that haven't sold out yet but are still popular (ToT, RnRC, Test Track, etc) will likely sell out sometime in the afternoon.

I agree with your thoughts. We will be there over Thanksgiving for my DW's birthday and I am sooooooo worried that this will be a Disney Genie trainwreck of epic proportions. I hope someone someplace when they hit a few of the 8,9,10 crowd days leading up to this gives us a fair accounting of how Genie (blood sucking cash grab that it is) a true and actual how it worked accounting. To me all this early reporting is Fluff until we see a crowded day.

 

[doctornick]

This is something that will likely prevent me from buying it, because there are multiple attractions I don't care about in every park. I'm not going to pay $15 to ride NRJ and the Safari once, but I probably would if I could ride the Safari 3 or 4 times. I have the same issue at DHS and EPCOT (and at EPCOT the rides I care about the most don't usually have long lines anyways).

Magic Kingdom is probably the only one with an attraction lineup robust enough to make Genie+ worth it for me without the ability to re-ride.

I agree and think the no re-ride aspect stinks. It makes me feel like G+ really would work best with park hoppers so you can split days and have enough rides in multiple parks to warrant it.