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Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
DisneyDodo
Well-Known Member
Based on part 5 of this guide, the answers to my below questions appear to be “yes” and “no”:
“You ride Test Track at 1:30. This does not let you get a new Lightning Lane, as the latest LL reservation you made was for Living with the Land.”
mikejs78
Well-Known Member
The article is not correct.. as soon as you tap into an LL attraction, you can make another LL reservation. Latest doesn't matter. Once you stack you can keep your stacked attractions for the rest of the day. In the scenario above, the guest could get a new LL once they tapped into their LL at 12:30 and then again at 1.
DisneyDodo
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the clarification. Have you tested that personally?
mikejs78
Well-Known Member
I have not but I've seen numerous articles on the subject and know someone personally who did try this, and it's been mentioned previously in this thread by others who have done it.
Here's a sample article: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/tips-stacking-genie-plus-ride-reservations/
Basically, any "last action" triggers a new LL availability. A last action is either:
1. Tapping into a LL reservation
2. A LL expiring
3. 2 hours since your last reservation
*Any time* any one of these happen, you are eligible for a new LL.
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
I can see that "windfall" loophole getting closed.
mikejs78
Well-Known Member
Maybe not. I think it existed in MaxPass....
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
I hope not, but I don't have much faith. They aren't above having different rules for each park in regards to line skipping.
nickys
Premium Member
Touring Plans have.
SteveAZee
Premium Member
I'm curious... why decide so far ahead of time that you won't use Genie+? When you get there, if it seems like a good idea, will you 'stick to your guns' and not pay for it?
mergatroid
Well-Known Member
Mostly because FP was always free so it feels worse having to suddenly pay for it. Also you were able to get up to 3 at once, which makes it's replacement not only $15 but offers less than original free version. So our principal is to not use it as much as a protest as anything. I know it's probably futile as there'll be those paying to make it worthwhile for Disney to keep it, however we're going to try and not use it.
I suppose if it gets to the point where the holiday is significantly less enjoyable by not having it then we'd reluctantly perhaps use it on the odd day. My wife and I are Disney veterans (me even more so), meaning there's attractions we don't even bother with as we've ridden nearly everything. So we have in our heads the amount of time we're willing to wait for particular attractions. Having 14 reservations we have several days at each park so can always try on another day anything we're not willing to wait for if we deem it too long.
We are bringing a Disney 'virgin' along with a couple of friends who came with us last time, we don't want to force our values onto them though and they may pay for the odd day but are also keen not to if possible. I'm hoping that we can do it Genie+ free, we used to utilise FP a lot previously and we're pretty good at fitting in stand by lines based on our knowledge of the parks and average wait times.
If it were free, we'd use the heck out of it. As it's not we're prepared to wait longer and see how manageable it is without it. Our 'protest' may not work and if not it is what it is, at least we tried.
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SteveAZee
Premium Member
Thanks. I understand the sentiment. My next trip (not till 2023) will be with a few seasoned vets (i.e. my adult kids) but there will also be a few newbies, and none of them have a whole lot of discretionary income. There's what I would pay for, but then there's what the rest in my party are willing or able to pay for... so I'm not going to be LL'ing while they're on standby.
I understand the desire to not feed the beast, and the reality is Disney is probably hoping that people, after a few days without G+ or ILL purchases, will 'give in' to the LL luxury access.
We're going to have this dynamic too. It has made planning pretty interesting.
We have 3 groups of people on our trip, first group is wealthy but can be really cheap sometimes, second group is high earners not really worried about money but also not going to go crazy with spending, and last group doesn't have much extra income at all but view this as a once in a lifetime dream vacation and know they won't ever be back. They are also the only adult first timers in the group. We've had some real differing opinions on things in ways I wouldn't have predicted.
Luckily we all agree on Genie+. With two preschoolers we would pay way more than $15pp to be honest.
SteveAZee
Premium Member
LOL, yeah... we're probably not alone in this sort of group.
My guess is that we'll re-sort into little subgroups that may vary day to day depending on interests... and I think that works for those involved. We'll see. We did something similar in 2019 and as long as we did some things together on occasion, splitting off worked well as long as one person in each group knew how to navigate things.
To me, it's good to have the flexibility of getting G+ on a day by day basis for that reason.
Jeff4272
Well-Known Member
I think exact opposite. I would wake up once at my 60 day mark, have everything booked for my entire trip. That’s WAY easier than waking up every day at 7am, don’t think that’s even debatableIn all honestly, pre-planning fast passes 60 days before we arrived was more "complicated" to me. Not that I minded it, but a lot more thinking involved...
Genie + is more of a matter of deciding if you want it that day and being annoyed at paying for it. Once you make the decision to buy, I didn't find it complicated. Pretty straightforward in fact. Now you may not like the times presented to you, but the process of choosing the time wasn't hard for us.
FigmentsFangirl
Well-Known Member
Sio since its been introduced, whats the average use, is the lightning lane packed, or barely used ? What is the ratio ? {Did Peter Pans flight line finally move ??}
bubbles1812
Well-Known Member
Well… I don’t know if it’s a good way but this was my strategy for MK yesterday and Wednesday:
Book first ride at 7 am: On Wednesday, it was Mermaid. Yesterday, it was Jungle Cruise.
I effectively used Mermaid as a “burner” ride because as soon as it’s used, the system allows you to start getting other ones. Otherwise, you have to wait 2 freaking hours before being able to make another. Which is stupid. Because after you use that first one, you can just refresh the heck out of the app and pick up rides at times you prefer. I wasn’t going to wait and watch all those good/better times go by. And I knew if I wanted to re-ride Mermaid later in the day, that thing’s wait is never that bad.
JC was my hardest ride to get on Wednesday and so, for yesterday, I said well, I’ll try to pick up that first, otherwise I won’t worry about it and probably pick up a time later in the day like we did on Wednesday when we road it at 430ish. (I also don’t love JC that much so it was still a bit of a burner in my mind).
That being said, I picked JC up for 930… arrived at 925 (cause there’s still a five minute grace period prior to your technical start time) and wa laa, off we went. Soon as you go through the two LL stands in each ride, you can try for the next.
I ended up “saving” some GP+ rides for later in the day because standby waits were low until around 11. So we were able to ride HM, BT, Pirates, Pan, among others, between 4-9 with no problem after riding them standby in the am.
We wound up criss crossing the park a little bit but MK is a small park so it was no big deal.
We GP+ed 10 rides yesterday strategically, waited no more than 20-30 minutes for any one thing, and rode quite a few rides twice.
(Full disclosure, we had early entry as resort guests (Mine Train, Pan, HM were our rope drop rides), and did have Mine Train and Space Mountain purchased for later in the day too.)
(Full disclosure #2, you have to be willing to aggressively refresh. I was not on my phone the whole day but there were short 5-10 minute bursts of phone use before I’d get what I wanted when I wanted it. Sometimes I was looking at convenient times for multiple rides. People are always dropping their time slots, even for things like Pan. It felt very much like FP+ in that respect.)
EDIT:
For Epcot, honestly, with the exception of TT, you don’t really need GP+. We used it but it was much more casual as most of the rides had minimal waits. Think we ended up with TT around 11. The GP+ didn’t book that fast. I picked up a Soarin’ around 2 with ease. We rope dropped and rode Frozen twice, did a paid LL of Remy, did all of Future World, and by that time, it was time to enter the VQ for Remy (you can do VQ and paid LL on the same day to ride it twice).
For AK, similar to Epcot in that I didn’t feel I absolutely needed GP+ but it helped cut waits a bit. We rope dropped FOP and also had a paid LL for later. No one should ever purchase Everest… just do single rider if you wanna get on quick. Shot around and did all the rides including Safari twice, did use GP+ on the (sadly Covid modified) Festival of the Lion King, out of the park by 230.
For DHS, it was the only place I felt I had to have strategy again. If you can pick up an early time for Slinky, do it, as GP+ go fast! I could not get it early the first day and so hoped to pick it up later (I was indeed successful. Thanks refresh! On Day 2 at DHS, I had a free GP+ Slinky Dog from Guest Services due to MDE shenanigans, so that was a load off. And I never feel a desperate need to ride it twice).
Rope dropped ROTR, also paid for an LL later in the day. MMRR doesn’t really need to be paid for, line moves faster than the wait says. TSM was my “burner” both days we started at DHS. (Though I love the ride, there’s just less to GP+ in DHS). Picked up TOT, Rockin’, Smuggler’s as able. TOT was hardest to get but that’s mainly because one side is down right now or at least was the past week. Didn’t GP+ any of the shows. No reason to.
Any questions, just DM me. Happy to explain in more detail but I’m sure people don’t want to read any more of this novel.
EDIT #2: Just to clarify on the waiting 2 hours thing. It’s not 2 hours from when you made your first reservation at 7 am… it’s 2 hours from when the park first opens. So if MK opened at 9, then your next window wouldn’t open until 11, 4 hours after making your first reservation at 7 am. So picking Pan at 1230 is dumb for your first GP+ of the day. Try for it later after using GP+ on some other things. That’s why I found it so aggravating and developed the burner strategy.
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granfiesta
Active Member
Actually, that was quite informative, especially the part about trying out a 'burner'. Thanks! Hadn't thought of that. We leave on Tuesday for our trip and will be in the parks Wed of this week -Tues of next week. In looking at things for the past few weeks, I think the only parks that need G+ are MK/DHS. We will be in MK on Wed. with early park admission (hopefully for 7DMT), but we've got a 10,8 and 16month old, so not sure how much criss-crossing we will do.
JAB
Well-Known Member
Why would you need a "burner?" You could have achieved the same thing without a "burner" by just waiting until park open to pick your first LL, and then used the time you would've spent on Mermaid to ride something else that wouldn't still be a walk-on later in the day.
bubbles1812
Well-Known Member
Well, see the second day… we did use it for JC, which was far more useful than Mermaid. JC just isn’t my favorite ride so it wouldn’t have broken my heart if I hadn’t gotten the early pass cause I know I likely would have gotten it later in the day anyways. (Wednesday was my first real day with GP+ at MK, so it was a bit of a learning curve. We were at Boo Bash Sunday and so I didn’t have it then.)
From my perspective, I still wanted something in the system booked at 7 am, because it wasn’t really about the ride, but being able to use GP+ quickly once in the park so as to “open up” the system to me, rather than having to wait until potentially 11 am to make another.
I didn’t want to use the GP+ on my favorite rides right away, knowing I could potentially get on standby quickly in the am. I decided I’d rather “save” those until the wait times started to creep. So when I wanted to ride Pan (again) but the wait time was 90 minutes, well, I banked that I could get a GP+ at a reasonable time… and did. Using Pan in the morning when it was a 15 minute wait would have been a pointless waste of money.
And I’d like to think we did just fine each day prior to starting the use of our GP+ pass … Yesterday, we did Mine Train, Pan, HM, Big Thunder, and Pirates before using our JC pass.
We did Mine Train, Pan, Pooh before Mermaid, which took all of 10 minutes total to ride…And it’s a fine ride. I like it. I sing Under the Sea, ect.
I’m not using the term burner to say I hate the rides. I’m just using the term in the context to say they are not really needed for GP+. So using it up early was fine with me. But I didn’t want to say use my Pirates GP+ before the lines were long enough to justify using it. You only get to use each once, unlike FP+.
YMMV. This is just what worked for me. It probably works best for smaller groups… we were a group of 2.
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