I'm looking forward to your impressions from your first trip. I trust you to give a fair evaluation of it. Please report back when you've had first-hand experience with it.
I will. Yes, we love Disney and we've been going non-stop since the parks open. I have trips booked in November, January, April and likely will add June. (normally do 4-6 weeks a year there) We lived for FP+, it was a true game changer for my son.
DAS is nice but we rely mostly on FP+ and learned how to work it quite well all day long. It was not a broken system and open to everyone.
Do I like they are charging? No. But what that does do is put the pressure on Disney that it must work, it must have value and their app must work, their IT system must work or they will need to add a Lightning Lane for Guest Relations. When you start charging for something that was free you better greatly improve the product.
I will be fair - pros and cons - because FP+ was a critical part of our ability to travel to Disney so often. This summer we got to experience no FP+ and only SB. I felt like the parks busy not packed, dining was a big issue, but it was entire family so we "hung out" on our SB waits. We also skipped DHS where there are some long lines. I feel like with this system we will experience something between what has been happening lately and what we used to have with FP+.
Speaking for myself, we used to ride almost everything with Fastpass+—many rides more than once—and rarely, if ever, waited in long lines. Now, there is no way to recreate that experience. The closest you can come is to pay an additional ~ $140 per day for a family of four (
Genie+ and two IA$), and even then you can’t ride anything twice without waiting in a long line.
Same. Rarely saw a SB line. I would love for it to stay free like it was, but the writing was on the wall watching the other parks. They could have gone the Universal route and we'd be paying $80 a person a day to enter each Lightning Lane just once. They have gone a much lower cost route with booking times. We don't know if we can get as much done because we haven't see it in operation. Honestly there will likely be many less using this than FP+ and with no inventory gone in advance like before it might be very workable.
I’m absolutely going to try it but here’s my concern:
You pay at 7am then select Jungle Cruise and the first available time is 8pm. Or, you get a ride at 8:30am when there’s no line anyway and then when you get off of it, the next available ride isn’t til 8pm.
I just don't think this will happen. It didn't happen with FP+ when people were booking 3 in advance and likely lots more were using it than will pay to use Genie+. And if this does happen they better expand GR because there will be lines looking for refunds.
And just like FP+ if you see a short line for something you had booked, you change it and get in the SB line.
At 7 AM, all guests who have purchased Genie+ can book their first LL reservation. You will be offered only "next available" time slots for each attraction.
I know people keep saying this but their recent information makes me wonder about this and even Disney says "next available time" (which is how we usually used FP+) but some of their wording makes me question this. "... lets you select arrival windows ...". Why would we be selecting windows if we are only offered one? It would read more like we select the attraction.
We will see soon, one thing I know is I don't think other than how to purchase it they have been very clear on the operation of it - maybe on purpose.