Genie Plus - Experiences and Reviews

[Critter3]

Thanks disneylover102! That's strange (no pun intended...well, maybe ) because I tried searching on the website but couldn't find anything. However, went looking in the app they popped up. Thanks!

 

[DLRExpert]

Side experience, helping friends with their trip at WDW from home in CA. Holy moly is their G+ and LL more stressful than what Disneyland offers. Main reason I see is that too many attractions have LL, when they do not need it. So there is a lot of What to Do next as you are forced to find something to do while waiting to use LL. If you do not know about how you can refresh or that LL times sometimes come back, you would maybe get 3-5 LLs on a busy day at the parks.

 

[DLNEWBIEWDWVETERAN]

Side experience, helping friends with their trip at WDW from home in CA. Holy moly is their G+ and LL more stressful than what Disneyland offers. Main reason I see is that too many attractions have LL, when they do not need it. So there is a lot of What to Do next as you are forced to find something to do while waiting to use LL. If you do not know about how you can refresh or that LL times sometimes come back, you would maybe get 3-5 LLs on a busy day at the parks.

We're doing DL for the first time ever (after 12 WDW trips) because of Genie+ and staffing issues. Orlando's 7 a.m reservation and no ILL until you enter the park for offsite guests can stick-it. DL looks fantastic and able to handle large crowds.

 

[DLRExpert]

We're doing DL for the first time ever (after 12 WDW trips) because of Genie+ and staffing issues. Orlando's 7 a.m reservation and no ILL until you enter the park for offsite guests can stick-it. DL looks fantastic and able to handle large crowds.

Yeah DL should really wow you on how much better G+ is.

 

[disneylover102]

Yeah I’m down here in Orlando for the DCP waiting to get my pass to the parks and I took a look at the tip board and wow it’s way worse here. Most ILLs are gone by the time you can get any unless you’re willing to pay a ridiculous amount to stay on site

 

[brianphill77]

Once you've entered a park, can you book LLs later that day even if you've left the park?

We plan to park hop and take afternoon breaks during our trip. Let's say we head back to the hotel at 1pm, and on our way out I grab a LL return for a ride in the park we'll hop to (so, have not used LL at that park yet) with a 5:30pm return. Can I grab another LL for a different ride at 3pm while at the hotel? Then another one for a different ride at 5pm as we're heading back in? Seems like that could be a good way of stacking up evening rides.

 

[disneylover102]

Once you've entered a park, can you book LLs later that day even if you've left the park?

We plan to park hop and take afternoon breaks during our trip. Let's say we head back to the hotel at 1pm, and on our way out I grab a LL return for a ride in the park we'll hop to (so, have not used LL at that park yet) with a 5:30pm return. Can I grab another LL for a different ride at 3pm while at the hotel? Then another one for a different ride at 5pm as we're heading back in? Seems like that could be a good way of stacking up evening rides.

Yes, you should be able to. I’ve never personally done that with genie+ but I did it with maxpass and it works the same. It doesn’t track your location, it just knows if you’ve scanned in or not. Most of the time though return times aren’t more than an hour or two ahead at the most with the exception of Soarin’ and Space

 

[Blondie58]

We are 60 somethings that loved our Fast passes. (Yes, we know they are NOT coming back.) We chose FPs prior to visits and then left technology behind. Two trips with G+ and LL. I am the only one of three couples that wishes to return. (One visit for 14 days in Oct. and one for 12 days over New Years.) We like to stay up and socialize, get up and walk, and then head to parks with our FPs. No leisure about it with the new system. We ended up doing rope drops and it was not enjoyable. We did a couple LL. Again, we were up so early and they were hours later. Had LL for Remy and went all the way to EPCOT and ride was down. LL was for 4:00 and yes we wished for it to be MUCH earlier in the day. Could not go back to do the ride as we had other dining reservations and evening plans.

 

[disneylover102]

We are 60 somethings that loved our Fast passes. (Yes, we know they are NOT coming back.) We chose FPs prior to visits and then left technology behind. Two trips with G+ and LL. I am the only one of three couples that wishes to return. (One visit for 14 days in Oct. and one for 12 days over New Years.) We like to stay up and socialize, get up and walk, and then head to parks with our FPs. No leisure about it with the new system. We ended up doing rope drops and it was not enjoyable. We did a couple LL. Again, we were up so early and they were hours later. Had LL for Remy and went all the way to EPCOT and ride was down. LL was for 4:00 and yes we wished for it to be MUCH earlier in the day. Could not go back to do the ride as we had other dining reservations and evening plans.

Just so you know you’re in the Disneyland thread, not Disney World

It’s much better at Disneyland

 

[Squinty]

We arrived today. Landed at SNA at 8:30 and were in the parks an hour later.

Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.

 

[austinelsa]

We arrived today. Landed at SNA at 8:30 and were in the parks an hour later.

Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.

oh no thats not promising. Im following your trip since we aligned on the mask thing. hope it goes better tomorrow!

 

[Squinty]

oh no thats not promising. Im following your trip since we aligned on the mask thing. hope it goes better tomorrow!

FYI, very very very few people are masking indoors. I am not as freaked out as I thought I’d be!

From what I experienced today, the app is not allowing stacking. I could book a new reservation after tapping in, but if I already had one for less than two hours out, it would not let me book another. It happened to me at least four times today. That was not my understanding of how it was supposed to work.

After the first one, I went to guest services and got a pass for a specific ride but not set to a specific time. After the others, I didn’t even bother. Guest services is reimbursing us for Genie + today at least.

 

[Lisa24jks]

Does anyone know how LLs work with return times for people with a wheelchair? Can you hold a Lightning Lane AND a return time for one of the rides that don't have a wheelchair line at the same time? Sorry if this is answered somewhere else, but there are just... so many posts.

(For example, if I have a LL for Space Mountain, can I also hold a return time for Peter Pan at the same time? Just thought about this because I"m traveling with my mom who uses a scooter in the parks, but does not qualify for DAS.)

 

[disneycat321]

I was in the parks solo this past week, Tues-Thurs, Feb 22-24. Tues I didn't enter the parks until 1pm (travel day). I had G+ all 3 days, as well as PH. I'm a DLR vet and was an experienced fast pass/max pass user and loved both those systems, especially MP. I tried to go into this with an open mind.

It was very crowded this week due to the Feb break many districts (including mine - I'm a teacher) had this week, so my experience with G+ was very different than what some others have posted about. There was almost never an immediate return for anything other than Small World outside of 8-9am or so. Rides like SM, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soarin, Toy Story, and GOTG were always several hours in the future, necessitating the 2 hour wait time between booking attractions. In my experience, 2 hours vs. the old 90 minutes feels like a big difference. I think far more people are buying G+ now than there were at the beginning. I noticed that most park goers this week were family groups, and I saw a lot of First Time Visitor buttons and heard a lot of conversations indicating that people were there for the first time or at least were not DLR regulars. It felt more like WDW vacation crowds than I've ever experienced at DLR before.

I went to WDW during the FP+ era and was stunned by how long their standbys were, seemingly as a direct result of the FP+ system. Well, those long standbys have come to DLR now during the Genie+ era. I've been going to DLR for many years, often during very crowded times (again, I'm a teacher), but I've never seen lines this consistently bad for the G+ attractions. 75-120 basically always for Space, 50 being the low end for Big Thunder, 120 for TSMM, 45+ regularly for Incredicoaster, 80 (yes, not a typo) for Monsters Inc, etc. And then, if you're in a standby line for those (which I never was outside of the 8-9am hour when it was tolerable because less LL returns), you're barely moving as the LL people just go streaming by you. I know Disneyland; know how to gauge line lengths based on what the line looks like...or I used to. The 120 TSMM line looks like the 45 minute line before G+, but that's because those people are barely moving while LL just keeps going past. I know this is probably by design - people will want to buy G+ if they are stuck in horrible lines watching all those LL people go past. So, it's working the way Disney intended, I think.

I miss MP and I am not a fan of G+. I liked it in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to ride any of my favorites without massive lines unless I had it, but I didn't like it at all in comparison to FP or MP. The inability to repeat ride is frustrating, and would have been even more frustrating on a shorter trip. The 2 hour space between bookings is too long. The standby lines G+ is creating are ridiculous. And, though I broke down and paid $20 for ROTR ILL, I was so annoyed that I felt I had to either do that, stand in line for an hour and a half at least, or be part of the crazy rope drop stampede that might not even pay off anyway. I can't even imagine how much Disney is making per day just off that one attraction.

Also, I don't know why, but I felt like I was on my phone a lot more for G+ than I ever was for MP, and that annoyed me, too.

I do think G+ is far worse at WDW because of the fewer attractions per park (minus MK). This trip solidified my thought that I don't want to go to WDW for the foreseeable future (and I love WDW).

I am going to DLR again during spring break (ack) with a friend, and I'm sure it will be a fun trip, just like this one was. But I'm not going to be super eager to go again for awhile, because I just feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death for a lesser experience than before. Since I can't go during less crowded times because I'm a teacher, this is the experience I'm left with, and it just doesn't feel great to me.

 

[Squinty]

Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.

Wanted to follow back up on this - G+ did start working right for me the next 3 days of our trip. Than goodness for these message boards so I knew kinda what I was doing! I can’t image how hard it would’ve been to come to it cold. We ended up being able to be much more efficient and never again waited longer than 20 mins for anything. Nonetheless, I was on my phone waaay more than I would’ve wanted to be, and it took a lot more planning and strategizing to create the kind of days we wanted then it did before, back in the FP/Maxpass days. I definitely think G+ is contributing to long standby queues. Was G+ worth it? Yes, for the infrequent visitor, which I think we will be from here on out.

 

[Renarr]

I was there the same week (Monday - Saturday) for the same reason (also a teacher here). I don't know Disneyland as well (we usually do WDW annually), but here were my takeaways:

One thing that I feel would help some of the Lightning Lane issues would be to expand the number of rides that it could be used for. Right now, it seemed like it was good for mostly the rides you wanted to bypass the lines for anyway. If they made it available for The Little Mermaid, should you use it on that? Almost certainly not. (Although I did see a stunning 45 minute wait for it while we were there.) But could you, and might that spread out some of the Genie+ crowd? Perhaps.

We did use Genie+ for most of our days there (not Saturday, since we were only there for a few hours), mostly because my wife is DAS-eligible (we've used it twice at WDW) but doesn't want to use DAS. We would routinely spend a couple hours in the park, back to the room for a few hours for a nap, followed by another 3-4 hours in the park and call it a day. With that, we ended up roughly on par with what we could have gotten at WDW with the Fastpass+ system. In paying $20 each for the privilege, that didn't strike us as a good deal.

One major frustration with the Individual Lightning Lane (it was there to a lesser degree with Genie+) is that there were certain times of day we wanted to ride these rides (we wanted to try Rise, in particular, at night), and so having to watch the app to see the progress for how quickly the paid passes were going was a bit annoying.

One tip I noticed for the Photopass aspect: we didn't look at the app super carefully before riding a Photopass ride. If you take a photo of the picture you want, you'll have the code you need, and can insert the code and navigate the app at your convenience.

I was in the parks solo this past week, Tues-Thurs, Feb 22-24. Tues I didn't enter the parks until 1pm (travel day). I had G+ all 3 days, as well as PH. I'm a DLR vet and was an experienced fast pass/max pass user and loved both those systems, especially MP. I tried to go into this with an open mind.

It was very crowded this week due to the Feb break many districts (including mine - I'm a teacher) had this week, so my experience with G+ was very different than what some others have posted about. There was almost never an immediate return for anything other than Small World outside of 8-9am or so. Rides like SM, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soarin, Toy Story, and GOTG were always several hours in the future, necessitating the 2 hour wait time between booking attractions. In my experience, 2 hours vs. the old 90 minutes feels like a big difference. I think far more people are buying G+ now than there were at the beginning. I noticed that most park goers this week were family groups, and I saw a lot of First Time Visitor buttons and heard a lot of conversations indicating that people were there for the first time or at least were not DLR regulars. It felt more like WDW vacation crowds than I've ever experienced at DLR before.

I went to WDW during the FP+ era and was stunned by how long their standbys were, seemingly as a direct result of the FP+ system. Well, those long standbys have come to DLR now during the Genie+ era. I've been going to DLR for many years, often during very crowded times (again, I'm a teacher), but I've never seen lines this consistently bad for the G+ attractions. 75-120 basically always for Space, 50 being the low end for Big Thunder, 120 for TSMM, 45+ regularly for Incredicoaster, 80 (yes, not a typo) for Monsters Inc, etc. And then, if you're in a standby line for those (which I never was outside of the 8-9am hour when it was tolerable because less LL returns), you're barely moving as the LL people just go streaming by you. I know Disneyland; know how to gauge line lengths based on what the line looks like...or I used to. The 120 TSMM line looks like the 45 minute line before G+, but that's because those people are barely moving while LL just keeps going past. I know this is probably by design - people will want to buy G+ if they are stuck in horrible lines watching all those LL people go past. So, it's working the way Disney intended, I think.

I miss MP and I am not a fan of G+. I liked it in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to ride any of my favorites without massive lines unless I had it, but I didn't like it at all in comparison to FP or MP. The inability to repeat ride is frustrating, and would have been even more frustrating on a shorter trip. The 2 hour space between bookings is too long. The standby lines G+ is creating are ridiculous. And, though I broke down and paid $20 for ROTR ILL, I was so annoyed that I felt I had to either do that, stand in line for an hour and a half at least, or be part of the crazy rope drop stampede that might not even pay off anyway. I can't even imagine how much Disney is making per day just off that one attraction.

Also, I don't know why, but I felt like I was on my phone a lot more for G+ than I ever was for MP, and that annoyed me, too.

I do think G+ is far worse at WDW because of the fewer attractions per park (minus MK). This trip solidified my thought that I don't want to go to WDW for the foreseeable future (and I love WDW).

I am going to DLR again during spring break (ack) with a friend, and I'm sure it will be a fun trip, just like this one was. But I'm not going to be super eager to go again for awhile, because I just feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death for a lesser experience than before. Since I can't go during less crowded times because I'm a teacher, this is the experience I'm left with, and it just doesn't feel great to me.

 

[disneycat321]

I was there the same week (Monday - Saturday) for the same reason (also a teacher here). I don't know Disneyland as well (we usually do WDW annually), but here were my takeaways:

One thing that I feel would help some of the Lightning Lane issues would be to expand the number of rides that it could be used for. Right now, it seemed like it was good for mostly the rides you wanted to bypass the lines for anyway. If they made it available for The Little Mermaid, should you use it on that? Almost certainly not. (Although I did see a stunning 45 minute wait for it while we were there.) But could you, and might that spread out some of the Genie+ crowd? Perhaps.

We did use Genie+ for most of our days there (not Saturday, since we were only there for a few hours), mostly because my wife is DAS-eligible (we've used it twice at WDW) but doesn't want to use DAS. We would routinely spend a couple hours in the park, back to the room for a few hours for a nap, followed by another 3-4 hours in the park and call it a day. With that, we ended up roughly on par with what we could have gotten at WDW with the Fastpass+ system. In paying $20 each for the privilege, that didn't strike us as a good deal.

One major frustration with the Individual Lightning Lane (it was there to a lesser degree with Genie+) is that there were certain times of day we wanted to ride these rides (we wanted to try Rise, in particular, at night), and so having to watch the app to see the progress for how quickly the paid passes were going was a bit annoying.

One tip I noticed for the Photopass aspect: we didn't look at the app super carefully before riding a Photopass ride. If you take a photo of the picture you want, you'll have the code you need, and can insert the code and navigate the app at your convenience.

Back in the regular FP/MP days, having them for less attractions at DLR was actually a huge benefit vs. WDW. There have always been rides at DLR with standbys that are at least relatively manageable (which to me means 30 min or less), especially in Fantasyland. I didn't find that to be the case at WDW in the summer of 2019 - standbys were nuts for everything, presumably because everything had FP+. I totally get what you're saying though, because theoretically it would spread people out more if more attractions were included with G+.

100% agree with your ILL frustration! I feel like if we're paying for the ride, we should at least be able to choose when we ride it! I found myself playing that waiting game with a few different rides for LL, like when I wanted to ride Big Thunder at night. Technically I did that back in the days of FP/MP too....but we could repeat rides back then, so it was very different.

 

[LizzyS]

I was in the parks this past Sunday and Monday and I would never not buy Genie+ and also ILLs for RotR and RSR. Racers was only $7 a pop on Monday, so that was a no brainer. It was $15/pp on Sunday, which we also did. Rise was non-negotiable and we spent $80 total using the LL there. I found the Genie+ and ILL windows to be more immediate on most attractions than they used to be with Maxpass. I think I've seen others say the same. I do like that because if you hop off a ride using one, it's easy to move right on to the next attraction because the windows are immediate or very soon and ready to redeem by the time you arrive at the next attraction. ymmv with this depending on crowds, of course.

 

[superdeluxe]

Just returned. The genie plus and ILL were not…bad? I was terrified with all the grumbling, but genie plus saved us between 60-80% of the time from standby. We implemented a ton of strategies (don’t use LL if standby is less than 30 minutes, cancel a LL, if there is another LL with a earlier window etc).

also many of the return times for the LL were 20-25 minutes later. I want to say we used pretty much all the LL we wanted over the course of 3-4 hours, it moved very quickly.

we did utilize ILL for the big rides (ROTR, Radiator springs, web slingers). But we felt it was worth It.

 

[Absinthe]

I was in the parks solo this past week, Tues-Thurs, Feb 22-24. Tues I didn't enter the parks until 1pm (travel day). I had G+ all 3 days, as well as PH. I'm a DLR vet and was an experienced fast pass/max pass user and loved both those systems, especially MP. I tried to go into this with an open mind.

It was very crowded this week due to the Feb break many districts (including mine - I'm a teacher) had this week, so my experience with G+ was very different than what some others have posted about. There was almost never an immediate return for anything other than Small World outside of 8-9am or so. Rides like SM, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soarin, Toy Story, and GOTG were always several hours in the future, necessitating the 2 hour wait time between booking attractions. In my experience, 2 hours vs. the old 90 minutes feels like a big difference. I think far more people are buying G+ now than there were at the beginning. I noticed that most park goers this week were family groups, and I saw a lot of First Time Visitor buttons and heard a lot of conversations indicating that people were there for the first time or at least were not DLR regulars. It felt more like WDW vacation crowds than I've ever experienced at DLR before.

I went to WDW during the FP+ era and was stunned by how long their standbys were, seemingly as a direct result of the FP+ system. Well, those long standbys have come to DLR now during the Genie+ era. I've been going to DLR for many years, often during very crowded times (again, I'm a teacher), but I've never seen lines this consistently bad for the G+ attractions. 75-120 basically always for Space, 50 being the low end for Big Thunder, 120 for TSMM, 45+ regularly for Incredicoaster, 80 (yes, not a typo) for Monsters Inc, etc. And then, if you're in a standby line for those (which I never was outside of the 8-9am hour when it was tolerable because less LL returns), you're barely moving as the LL people just go streaming by you. I know Disneyland; know how to gauge line lengths based on what the line looks like...or I used to. The 120 TSMM line looks like the 45 minute line before G+, but that's because those people are barely moving while LL just keeps going past. I know this is probably by design - people will want to buy G+ if they are stuck in horrible lines watching all those LL people go past. So, it's working the way Disney intended, I think.

I miss MP and I am not a fan of G+. I liked it in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to ride any of my favorites without massive lines unless I had it, but I didn't like it at all in comparison to FP or MP. The inability to repeat ride is frustrating, and would have been even more frustrating on a shorter trip. The 2 hour space between bookings is too long. The standby lines G+ is creating are ridiculous. And, though I broke down and paid $20 for ROTR ILL, I was so annoyed that I felt I had to either do that, stand in line for an hour and a half at least, or be part of the crazy rope drop stampede that might not even pay off anyway. I can't even imagine how much Disney is making per day just off that one attraction.

Also, I don't know why, but I felt like I was on my phone a lot more for G+ than I ever was for MP, and that annoyed me, too.

I do think G+ is far worse at WDW because of the fewer attractions per park (minus MK). This trip solidified my thought that I don't want to go to WDW for the foreseeable future (and I love WDW).

I am going to DLR again during spring break (ack) with a friend, and I'm sure it will be a fun trip, just like this one was. But I'm not going to be super eager to go again for awhile, because I just feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death for a lesser experience than before. Since I can't go during less crowded times because I'm a teacher, this is the experience I'm left with, and it just doesn't feel great to me.

This has been our experience as well. Being here now for the past 4 days in the park; you see just how poor an experience Genie+ creates for anyone not using Genie+.

Astronomical wait times on any ride with LL and normal/acceptable wait times on every other ride across both parks.

Guess it’s working as intended to make Disney more money; just sad to see the park turn into this after all these years.