I wouldn't feel too sorry for us.I’m older and hopefully wiser, I paid for Genie+, last December when it was included as an add on when I first booked our trip. To me, it was a waste of $15 per day per person (30). It coast is then 300 extra. I can not imagine a family planning a trip and not only paying the money (more now), picking a park, get up early to stage rides and running around all vacation. My next trip is more of a resort trip however if I do go into parks, I will walk around, if something is available so be it if not, keep walking. Unfortunately I remember the days not to long ago, where you could just hit a park, go on rides, go on the monorail hit another park, go to the pool, come back at night go somewhere else with it all this planning. Now you’re planning parks, rides, food, genie, it’s nuts. Sorry for all the families out there.
When my wife went to WDW in the 90's she had to wait in line over 2 hours each to ride any of the mountains in MK. That was before anyone ever heard of Fast Pass.
Thanks to Fast Pass, FP+ and now Genie Plus, our kids have never had to experience waiting in line for more than 30 minutes for any of those rides and most trips those services have allowed us to essentially walk on ride after ride.
We were at WDW last week and while my daughters were having a great time in the pool I was able to keep booking rides for that night at Hollywood Studios. We walked into DHS at 5:30 PM and we rode Slinky Dog, Toy Story Mania, Star Wars Smugglers Run, Rock 'N Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror all without waiting in line for more than 5 minutes.
You sure couldn't do that prior to FP/Genie. Yes - we did pay more than the old days but what doesn't cost significantly more than the old days?
I gave this example in another thread: in 2008 we rented a house for 3 families in the Outer Banks for $3K for an entire week. Over the years we returned to that house the very same week 3-4 more times. We rented it again in the summer of 2021 (same week) and the price had gone up to almost $9,000 for the week. That price almost killed us but we split it with the in-laws to make it work. I looked at the price for the same week this year and it is now $12,000 for that same week. The price went up 400% in 15 years. The craziest part was it was booked for the entire summer with some weeks going for $15K