I am a first-time senior going to Florida, with my partner, in February of 2024. We will be visiting the Park for 9 days. I have read books, and blogs, and watched numerous youtube videos on all manner of topics. Given that Genie+ has sold out for the past number of days, the continued increases in price, and the fact that Genie+ is no guarantee of riding your rides, I am looking for advice on how to make these days magical.
When in February are you planning to visit? If you avoid the week of President's Day, crowds shouldn't be too terrible. If you are staying onsite, you'll have extra time in the morning, and if you're at a deluxe, you may have extra evening hours at the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT.
Of course, a lot may change between now and then, in terms of perks, crowds, policies, etc. I certainly wouldn't sweat it too much this far out. A good touring plan can overcome a lot, no matter what the circumstances, and it sounds like you're doing your homework.
To illustrate the point, my family is planning a 6-night, 5-day visit near the end of August, when crowds are projected to be moderate. I've been playing around with personalized touring plans on the touringplans.com website (I'm a subscriber of many years and a very happy customer - while I have no stake in the company, my first suggestion about how to make your visit magical would be to subscribe to touringplans and before you visit, download their Lines app). In tinkering with my touring plans, I've found that if I plan our visits intelligently and make use of rope drop arrivals for early entry and extra evening hours at MK and EPCOT on the nights they're offered (we're staying at two deluxe hotels, one at 35% off with the current Disney VISA promo, and the other at 50% off on rented DVC points), even with NO GENIE+ and NO INDIVIDUAL LIGHTNING LANE PURCHASES, we can cover practically everything in each park, including all headliners, with no waits over 25 minutes (and most under 15 minutes) and a 3-hour nap/swim break every afternoon. That's with a half day at AK, 2 half-days at HS, 2 half-days at EPCOT (plus an extra half-day to spend browsing the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival and doing the "Behind The Seeds" Tour), and 3 half-days at MK. At the end of that, we'll still have two half days to spend spontaneously on whatever we want to revisit!
As far as Genie+, there are no guarantees that it won't change significantly before your visit, but if it's similar to now and you know what you're doing, you'll be able to maximize your ROI. In our case, for example, if I were to purchase Genie+ on our AK/HS day (reserving 3-4 valuable selections for HS, one at 7am and then every two hours after that park opens until the good ones are gone, to stack up and use in the evening), and on our MK day (using either the stacking or a first-available approach), we'd theoretically be able to shave an extra 2-3 hours off our total wait times in those two parks, although I'm not sure that will be necessary, as I suspect we'll end up ahead of schedule, as we often do, just by touring things in the best order.
While planning it all out ahead of time can be a pain in the rear, it takes the stress out of the vacation once we're actually on it.
