Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World

[flynnibus]

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.

This makes no sense. If you didn’t have anything booked you still had the system “open to you” for your first booking as soon as a ride had an opening

 

[bubbles1812]

This makes no sense. If you didn’t have anything booked you still had the system “open to you” for your first booking as soon as a ride had an opening

*shrug* Hard to explain my thought process/use of the system then. I tried. Lo Siento.

Guess my point I was trying to make was… I used GP+ on a few rides I cared less about earlier in the day, saving my GP+ for my favorite rides for later, when their wait times were higher, doing as much as we could standby first. That overall saved us time and allowed us to enjoy more attractions. Using my first GP+ very early gave me a lot of control in how I went about the day, as it allowed me to refresh for ride times repeatedly from the get go, and minimize my waits as a whole.

That’s about all I can do to summarize it. I’ll stay out of the thread now.

 

[JAB]

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.

You didn't need to book and use a LL to "'open up' the system," though. You could have just waited until you were in the park if you wanted to start refreshing right away. Booking a "burner" LL just adds unnecessary steps.

Your Process with "burner":
7 am - Book "burner" LL
8:30 am (or 9 am if offsite) - Enter Park & rope drop some rides
9-9:30 am - Tap into "burner" LL and start refreshing for next LL

vs

Without "burner":
8:30 am (or 9 am if offsite) - Enter Park & rope drop some rides
9 am - Start refreshing for first LL


Simply waiting until after park open to begin looking for LL reservations gets you exactly the same result without the time or hassle of booking and using a "burner" LL.

 

[bubbles1812]

You didn't need to book and use a LL to "'open up' the system," though. You could have just waited until you were in the park if you wanted to start refreshing right away. Booking a "burner" LL just adds unnecessary steps.

Your Process with "burner":
7 am - Book "burner" LL
8:30 am (or 9 am if offsite) - Enter Park & rope drop some rides
9-9:30 am - Tap into "burner" LL and start refreshing for next LL

vs

Without "burner":
8:30 am (or 9 am if offsite) - Enter Park & rope drop some rides
9 am - Start refreshing for first LL


Simply waiting until after park open to begin looking for LL reservations gets you exactly the same result without the time or hassle of booking and using a "burner" LL.

I suppose you are right. But it’s not exactly a hassle to choose at 7 am. I was up anyways to select times for the purchased rides and to get ready for the day. So why would I wait until 9 am? I liked feeling set for the day and without having to worry about having my phone out for at least a little while.

And for Saturday, JC was the ride I wanted to do first with GP+ since I had trouble getting it Wednesday. If I’d used your suggestion, the GP+ availability would have already been past noon. Wednesday with Mermaid was a bit of an experiment since I hadn’t used GP+ before.

As I said, this is just what worked for me and made me feel comfortable. No obligation for anyone to do what I did. Maybe I added more steps, I can recognize that from your post, but regardless, I never felt “hassled.”

 

[Waters Back Side]

I suppose you are right. But it’s not exactly a hassle to choose at 7 am. I was up anyways to select times for the purchased rides and to get ready for the day. So why would I wait until 9 am?

The rides at 7am might have too EARLY of am availability time other then a couple of high demand rides. Waiting till 9 could get you on a ride an hour or so later when you enter the park. On my MK day I'll be waking up at 9 or later and try to score my first LL for around noon.

 

[Ayla]

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.

I'm not working this hard to have a good vacation. Period.

I've decided my next week-long vacation will be resort only, renting DVC points. No park tickets. My food will be covered by Disney Reward points and my plane ticket will be covered using points, too.

 

[corsairk09]

Trip Report:

I thought I would share my experience with Genie +.
So we were at WDW for 3 days. Two in MK and 1 in Epcot.
I used the Genie+ on our first day in Disney and it was extremly simple. I don't feel like I looked at my phone more than normal.... checked wait times and made sure to stay on top of our reservations.
I had NO intention of ever paying for a single pay LL.... However, we rope dropped Epcot on Day 2 and by 10:02 the line for frozen (the only one my girls were excited to ride) was at an hour wait. So to my surprise, I found myself paying $48 for my party of 5 to use the LL. And you know..... no regrets. We enjoyed the rest of the park, rode what we wanted, and didn't worry about getting on the one ride that was important.

 

[DisneyCane]

How does Genie+ work with park hopping?

 

[RSoxNo1]

How does Genie+ work with park hopping?

The Individual Lightning Lane Selections can be made regardless of whether you're in the park that you're hopping to. I'm not sure if the same is true of the attractions included as part of Genie+.

 

[bubbles1812]

I'm not working this hard to have a good vacation. Period.

I've decided my next week-long vacation will be resort only, renting DVC points. No park tickets. My food will be covered by Disney Reward points and my plane ticket will be covered using points, too.

I’ll honestly say the process of getting GP+ felt very similar to FP+, so it didn’t really feel like I was working hard or that I was completely out of my element. It’s a fun puzzle to me. I just personally can’t sit at a resort all day as I’ve always been a do-er. But to each their own! (I mean that sincerely).

We had an overall great time

 

[mikejs78]

The Individual Lightning Lane Selections can be made regardless of whether you're in the park that you're hopping to. I'm not sure if the same is true of the attractions included as part of Genie+.

If you have a park hopper you can select any attraction at any park, but it will only show return times later thkn 2:00 p.m. for the parks which you do not have a reservation for.

 

[TimeTrip]

I’ll honestly say the process of getting GP+ felt very similar to FP+, so it didn’t really feel like I was working hard or that I was completely out of my element. It’s a fun puzzle to me. I just personally can’t sit at a resort all day as I’ve always been a do-er. But to each their own! (I mean that sincerely).

We had an overall great time

You keep saying "GP+" do you mean Genie Plus, aka "G+" ? I just want to make sure I'm not missing something new..

 

[dirtnap101]

How does Genie+ work with park hopping?

the system pretty much treats all 4 parks as one big park, with the controlling factors being which park you have a reservation for, and the rule that no one can hop until 2pm. So at 7am you can start using G+ in your reserved park, and you can also start using G+ for whatever park(s) you'd like to hop to - it just won't show you return times before 2pm in any park except the one you have a reservation for that day. And of course, it will force you to follow all the normal G+ rules: one at a time, can't get another one until you tap in to the G+ ride or 2 hours has passed, can't use more than once at any ride, etc.

So maybe you want to rope drop AK, and feel like you don't need G+ there, but want it for hopping to MK later. You can start making G+ selections in MK (first one at 7am or at least before 9am, second at 11am - assuming MK opens at 9am), all while you are getting ready for and enjoying AK that morning. Theoretically you could have 4 MK G+ selections (made at 7-9am, 11am, 1pm, and 3pm or thereabouts) waiting for you after hopping there.

Of course you could use G+ in both parks, it's just a matter of how busy the parks are, what rides you care about, if they have wait times that actually require G+, and which parks you're planning to visit that day. Just as an example, you could rope drop MK and use G+ on Jungle Cruise and BTMRR, and once you tap into the LL at BTMRR you could start looking for G+ availability after 2pm for rides in HS like ToT or RnRC.

 

[DisneyDodo]

So maybe you want to rope drop AK, and feel like you don't need G+ there, but want it for hopping to MK later. You can start making G+ selections in MK (first one at 7am or at least before 9am, second at 11am - assuming MK opens at 9am), all while you are getting ready for and enjoying AK that morning.

Minor correction: the 120-minute clock starts ticking for your second G+ LL selection when the park you have a reservation for opens (so AK, in this example), regardless of which park the ride you booked first is in.

 

[Redhawk]

I'm not working this hard to have a good vacation. Period.

I've decided my next week-long vacation will be resort only, renting DVC points. No park tickets. My food will be covered by Disney Reward points and my plane ticket will be covered using points, too.

I feel much the same. My husband and I are making a short mid-week trip in early December. I could almost skip the parks and just enjoy the resort, pools, spa, restaurants, Boardwalk, and Disney Springs. I did that once on a solo trip and went only to DHS for one afternoon and evening of my 3-day stay. But it's been a few years since we both visited WDW so it would be a bit sad if we didn't go to the parks.

I'd love to not have to look at my phone except for on lunch and dinner breaks. We loved FP and used it well, now I hate everything being pushed to be on the darn phone. Not excited to have to figure out the new Genie and LL system. I'm also reading that the MDE app isn't that great, so yeah, even less fun. The one good thing is that we're going at a traditionally "light" time for crowds as we always do, but now I'm worried that the international travelers who haven't been allowed to visit for 20 months will jump to schedule vacations asap.

 

[bubbles1812]

You keep saying "GP+" do you mean Genie Plus, aka "G+" ? I just want to make sure I'm not missing something new..

Lol. Yes. Sorry. I suppose the P isn’t needed.

 

[dirtnap101]

Minor correction: the 120-minute clock starts ticking for your second G+ LL selection when the park you have a reservation for opens (so AK, in this example), regardless of which park the ride you booked first is in.

thanks for the clarification

 

[G00fyDad]

You keep saying "GP+" do you mean Genie Plus, aka "G+" ? I just want to make sure I'm not missing something new..

The "P" stands for Pickpocketing.

 

[Ayla]

I’ll honestly say the process of getting GP+ felt very similar to FP+, so it didn’t really feel like I was working hard or that I was completely out of my element. It’s a fun puzzle to me. I just personally can’t sit at a resort all day as I’ve always been a do-er. But to each their own! (I mean that sincerely).

We had an overall great time

I won't be sitting at the resort all day. I'll be spending money all over Central Fl, just not at Disney.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Lol. Yes. Sorry. I suppose the P isn’t needed.

I have seen DG+ (for Disney Genie +) and of course LL ( for Lighting Lane)
I have also the seen overall system called CR@P