Disney Genie+ and ILL$ Details & FAQ - Launches 10/19 at WDW, Paid "FastPass" at WDW and Disneyland (date TBD)

[Liquidice]

I guess you could look at it that way but there is no assurance that the stand by wait times will align with the other plans and reservations that I have. I think the biggest drawback that I see is not having control over my day beforehand. I enjoyed having the anxiety of ride selections over and done with and a plan in place to achieve what I felt my family’s best vacation experience would be.. I could then relax and enjoy the trip. Now, that anxiety will be shifted to 7:00 am every day of vacation. I worry about not being able to enjoy the trip as much, which is just stressful in and of itself with the amount of $$ being spent.

I've been to Disney World 5 times since the re-opened in July 2020 - and we didn't have FP+ at all, no pre-planning other than ADRs. We always managed to make it work in terms of reservations that we had (and we often had lunch or dinner reservations). There was always a rope drop strategy that we had going in, and maybe the first 2 or 3 rides planned out - and after that, we used the posted wait times to determine if we had time to do something before a reservation.

It isn't really that stressful to me to look and say - we have an 11am reservation, its currently 10:30am, the wait time is 60 minutes - we should wait until later to ride.

I'm not saying I don't miss FP+, I agree it was nice to know you had the 3 guaranteed short waits in line, but the last 5 trips we've done since WDW re-opened were not terrible either - we definitely enjoyed all of those trips.

If you buy G+ and make your first selection at 7am - you should have a first and second choice planned out and pick a ride - not too stressful, and then you can map out your must-do rides and once you scan in, or your 2 hours (after park open) are up to select the next ride - know what you want to select.

Other than Slinky Dog Dash, for the most part I haven't seen G+ ride selection times "run out", so if you have your 3 FP+ must do's and you know them ahead of time, you should be able to get them without a huge issue. Yes, there is the added obligation of needing to know when your ADRs are - and if the G+ selection time conflicts, you'll need to select a different ride or wait ... so it isn't all perfect (one would think Genie, which knows your plan for the day would intervene and tell you there's a conflict, but right now I don't believe it does that).

I know change is hard, I get it - but I think you'll still enjoy yourself, and you'll still be able to do most of what you want - even if you don't pay for G+.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

How are you no longer guaranteed a ride on your favourite attractions without FP+?

I think you mean to say without FP+ you are not guaranteed a shorter wait for all your favourite attractions. You can still go and ride every attraction you want, you just might be spending more time in line now.

Well, yeah you're not wrong. For us, though, we have three little kids in our party. Two under 2 and one 5 year old. Where longer lines would've just been a bit of an inconvenience when it was me and my husband kid-free, long lines with little kids are fairly prohibitive. Of course we COULD do it, but it sounds stressful (potentially freaking miserable lol), which isn't how I want to spend my vacation....and also why I don't have a problem paying for Genie+ for the ability to skip those lines. I just would have liked the option to book ahead of time so that I would know for sure we'd have certain bases covered, instead of having to spend all day on my phone booking LL and crossing our fingers that we can fit it all in. That would have been a valuable feature of a service I'm PAYING for.

Previously, I would do extensive planning, and it made things seamless. There are a whole lot of variables traveling with a large group and with little kiddos. So I planned so that we weren't bouncing all over the parks and backtracking, I planned so that my kids could be exposed to certain rides in a certain order to avoid them absolutely freaking out over something they found "scary." I planned to make sure we hit all of our must-do attractions. And I was able to do it all ahead of time, so that I could relax on vacation. Now I am actually PAYING for a service that let me do less and relax less. I don't mind paying, but I wish we were paying more to GET more.

 

[ZeeWP]

Well, yeah you're not wrong. For us, though, we have three little kids in our party. Two under 2 and one 5 year old. Where longer lines would've just been a bit of an inconvenience when it was me and my husband kid-free, long lines with little kids are fairly prohibitive. Of course we COULD do it, but it sounds stressful (potentially freaking miserable lol), which isn't how I want to spend my vacation....and also why I don't have a problem paying for Genie+ for the ability to skip those lines. I just would have liked the option to book ahead of time so that I would know for sure we'd have certain bases covered, instead of having to spend all day on my phone booking LL and crossing our fingers that we can fit it all in. That would have been a valuable feature of a service I'm PAYING for.

Previously, I would do extensive planning, and it made things seamless. There are a whole lot of variables traveling with a large group and with little kiddos. So I planned so that we weren't bouncing all over the parks and backtracking, I planned so that my kids could be exposed to certain rides in a certain order to avoid them absolutely freaking out over something they found "scary." I planned to make sure we hit all of our must-do attractions. And I was able to do it all ahead of time, so that I could relax on vacation. Now I am actually PAYING for a service that let me do less and relax less. I don't mind paying, but I wish we were paying more to GET more.

I think that is what is so frustrating also regards to cost. The ones who "need" it the "most" are the ones who will find it the most cost-prohibitive.

I am curious to see what the breaking point will be, especially to the family of four. Maybe cause I'm the family of four lol

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

I think that is what is so frustrating also regards to cost. The ones who "need" it the "most" are the ones who will find it the most cost-prohibitive.

I am curious to see what the breaking point will be, especially to the family of four. Maybe cause I'm the family of four lol

I agree - we're a family of 4 too. Genie+ and ILL's WILL add up. While I'm okay budgeting for that, I'm not okay sacrificing my own relaxation on vacation. I think it's a shame because the ones who "need" these services the most, as you said, are the families with young kids. And arguably, Disney is largely targeted towards those families with young kids. It feels a little exploitative to me, and while I get it and I'm willing to pay for an *enhanced* experience, I don't love the feeling of being pigeon-holed into an extra expense when that experience doesn't seem all that enhanced after all.

It feels like I am paying for something that is going to make my trip more complicated and stressful. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm crossing my fingers that I am. My hope is that the system winds up being far easier and better in practice than I'm expecting. I LOVE Disney, I want to go back again and again and again. But I don't go on vacation to feel like I'm doing work or stressing out. Disney is a lot of money (and a lot of money I've been more than happy to spend in the past, because with the proper planning, the vacation felt easy and relaxing). We will be there in the spring, we will try Genie+ and give it a chance, and depending on how it works out we will decide whether we'll be going back anytime soon. So yeah, for us, this upcoming trip may be the breaking point for us.

 

[TommyJK]

Well, yeah you're not wrong. For us, though, we have three little kids in our party. Two under 2 and one 5 year old. Where longer lines would've just been a bit of an inconvenience when it was me and my husband kid-free, long lines with little kids are fairly prohibitive. Of course we COULD do it, but it sounds stressful (potentially freaking miserable lol), which isn't how I want to spend my vacation....and also why I don't have a problem paying for Genie+ for the ability to skip those lines. I just would have liked the option to book ahead of time so that I would know for sure we'd have certain bases covered, instead of having to spend all day on my phone booking LL and crossing our fingers that we can fit it all in. That would have been a valuable feature of a service I'm PAYING for.

Previously, I would do extensive planning, and it made things seamless. There are a whole lot of variables traveling with a large group and with little kiddos. So I planned so that we weren't bouncing all over the parks and backtracking, I planned so that my kids could be exposed to certain rides in a certain order to avoid them absolutely freaking out over something they found "scary." I planned to make sure we hit all of our must-do attractions. And I was able to do it all ahead of time, so that I could relax on vacation. Now I am actually PAYING for a service that let me do less and relax less. I don't mind paying, but I wish we were paying more to GET more.

But what did those who are in the same situation as you (those with littles who don't like waiting in line) do prior to FP+? Prior to FP+ there was no booking rides in advance. There was just Paper FP that you had to go manually get day of, physically at the ride entrance, and everyone made it work somehow. Everyone just had to construct their touring plan accordingly based on what you have at your disposal to help make that plan.

I get the popularity of FP+ on this board becasue FP+ as it was implemented heavily benefitted the on-site, staying longer than a week visitors the most. But it made things more detrimental to 70+% of a given day's park visitors who couldn't get an Advanced FP+ for the best attractions and bloated the standby lines longer for those couldn't get an FP+

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

But what did those who are in the same situation as you (those with littles who don't like waiting in line) do prior to FP+?

Well, I can say when my parents took me in the 80s/90s, obviously pre-FP+, we always went in September to avoid the crowds and long lines. It's actually the same thing my husband and I did pre-kids and pre-FP+. That was back when there WERE down times at Disney, which is not so much the case anymore. Regardless, I'm not particularly concerned with what other people did "before." What I am concerned with is how I spend my vacation now. I get that FP+ wasn't a perfect system and needed to be reworked, but my point remains that if I'm PAYING for a service, I'd like it to be a service that serves me and my family better than what we had *included* in the past. It's not actually even about the cost - skipping lines IS a privilege and one I'm willing to pay for under my family's circumstances. But if I'm paying, I want it to work for me and my situation. Maybe Genie+ will surprise me and be great! I hope it is! But if it isn't, and my options become either don't buy Genie+ and do long standbys with kids, or buy Genie+ and still feel like we didn't get to do our vacation in a way that felt relaxing and stress-free to us....then we just may not be back for awhile. It's not an attack on Genie+ or the people who it will serve well, it's just that if Disney's available systems don't meet my needs, then I'll be going somewhere else that does.

 

[ChipnDale79]

I agree - we're a family of 4 too. Genie+ and ILL's WILL add up. While I'm okay budgeting for that, I'm not okay sacrificing my own relaxation on vacation. I think it's a shame because the ones who "need" these services the most, as you said, are the families with young kids. And arguably, Disney is largely targeted towards those families with young kids. It feels a little exploitative to me, and while I get it and I'm willing to pay for an *enhanced* experience, I don't love the feeling of being pigeon-holed into an extra expense when that experience doesn't seem all that enhanced after all.

It feels like I am paying for something that is going to make my trip more complicated and stressful. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm crossing my fingers that I am. My hope is that the system winds up being far easier and better in practice than I'm expecting. I LOVE Disney, I want to go back again and again and again. But I don't go on vacation to feel like I'm doing work or stressing out. Disney is a lot of money (and a lot of money I've been more than happy to spend in the past, because with the proper planning, the vacation felt easy and relaxing). We will be there in the spring, we will try Genie+ and give it a chance, and depending on how it works out we will decide whether we'll be going back anytime soon. So yeah, for us, this upcoming trip may be the breaking point for us.

we've been on the trips when we had kids in daycare and we really stretched it to make those trips happen, we did it because we needed a break from real life and we loved disney. we stretched it to the max then to afford those trips, and im not sure it would be worth it now if we still had kids in daycare. Our kids are in 4th and 5th grade now, so we have the financial freedom that we didnt have 5 year ago.

I feel for the younger families now that are paying a crazy amount in daycare and are trying to do what we did. the paid fast pass is almost a must for them, but it'll come at a huge costs, and i wonder if many will just skip those trips now, or if it'll leave a sour taste in their mouths.

Its not only the cost, but the level of planning for these trips is through the roof. I've joked that you almost need a college level disney planning class to really prepare yourself.

 

[Liquidice]

But what did those who are in the same situation as you (those with littles who don't like waiting in line) do prior to FP+? Prior to FP+ there was no booking rides in advance. There was just Paper FP that you had to go manually get day of, physically at the ride entrance, and everyone made it work somehow. Everyone just had to construct their touring plan accordingly based on what you have at your disposal to help make that plan.

I get the popularity of FP+ on this board becasue FP+ as it was implemented heavily benefitted the on-site, staying longer than a week visitors the most. But it made things more detrimental to 70+% of a given day's park visitors who couldn't get an Advanced FP+ for the best attractions and bloated the standby lines longer for those couldn't get an FP+

When I was younger there wasn't even paper Fastpass, we went in the summer because thats when we were off of school - it was blisteringly hot and we were told to learn to have some patience and wait in line. There weren't smartphones that could play YouTube videos or Heads Up! or whatever to entertain us either - we played games like I Spy or rock, paper scissors - or talked to each other!

Yes it sucked waiting, and yes it was probably stressful for my parents to keep us entertained while waiting in line - but the alternative was not to go to Disney at all, and I definitely wanted to be there. Plus we had a lot of experience waiting in long lines at our local Six Flags park.

I'm a parent of 2 young children now, so I completely get how stressful it is waiting in line with young kids. We do sometimes let them watch YouTube videos on our phones when we have to wait in line - call me a bad parent, but thats what we do to help them pass the time (not always, but when it gets later in the day at Disney and they're getting tired).

I totally get the concerns on G+ and ILL$ being cost prohibitive, especially for a family of 4 - but we managed with only standby lines my last 5 trips when FP+ was gone, hopefully will manage without G+ and ILL$ too. Maybe consider buying G+ for 2 days, one for MK and one for HS? That reduces the impact and you should get most of the rides you want done with G+. AK and Epcot don't have enough rides imho to justify it, but you could park hop on your MK or HS days to get even more LL's from AK or Epcot.

I will say we're DVC, so we will be able to do the Deluxe Extended Hours at Epcot and Magic Kingdom - but not sure my 2 kids will be able to stay awake for that. If you're DVC (or renting points) or staying Deluxe that is one option as well which at least takes care of 7DMT, Space Mountain and Frozen Ever After (Remy's is not open during Extended Hours).

The other thing to remember is its vacation - just enjoy yourself and the things you're able to do!

 

[Liquidice]

we've been on the trips when we had kids in daycare and we really stretched it to make those trips happen, we did it because we needed a break from real life and we loved disney. we stretched it to the max then to afford those trips, and im not sure it would be worth it now if we still had kids in daycare. Our kids are in 4th and 5th grade now, so we have the financial freedom that we didnt have 5 year ago.

I feel for the younger families now that are paying a crazy amount in daycare and are trying to do what we did. the paid fast pass is almost a must for them, but it'll come at a huge costs, and i wonder if many will just skip those trips now, or if it'll leave a sour taste in their mouths.

Its not only the cost, but the level of planning for these trips is through the roof. I've joked that you almost need a college level disney planning class to really prepare yourself.

Its funny you mention the level of planning required now - since the complaint I hear about G+ now is you can't pre-select your LL's like you could with FP+, so you can't plan your trip as much. I do agree, it is really confusing with all of the options though - so to understand everything is more complicated.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

Its funny you mention the level of planning required now - since the complaint I hear about G+ now is you can't pre-select your LL's like you could with FP+, so you can't plan your trip as much. I do agree, it is really confusing with all of the options though - so to understand everything is more complicated.

I think the complaint is really about the amount of *in the moment* planning. At least that's the issue for me. I'm the main planner, and it's going to fall on me to be the one on the phone making the plans while I'm actually on vacation. I just preferred doing it ahead of time so I could relax and be present and enjoy my family. I'm hoping that maybe it's not as stressful as I'm envisioning.

 

[Liquidice]

I think the complaint is really about the amount of *in the moment* planning. At least that's the issue for me. I'm the main planner, and it's going to fall on me to be the one on the phone making the plans while I'm actually on vacation. I just preferred doing it ahead of time so I could relax and be present and enjoy my family. I'm hoping that maybe it's not as stressful as I'm envisioning.

I hear you, I definitely agree with you that I'd prefer doing it ahead of time - but I don't think it will be that stressful to do it "on the fly". Will be interested to hear feedback from you and others on how stressful it ends up being. I will be at Disney later this week for a quick trip, but I don't plan on purchasing Genie+ or any ILL$ passes.

 

[Liquidice]

According to the Q4 earnings call - Disney says 33% of WDW guests have upgraded to Genie+ and Chapek said the majority of users said it improved their experience.

On average, WDW sees 250,000 guests per day (pre-pandemic numbers) - if we assume Disney is still at 80% capacity (nobody knows for sure, but I suspect they're at 100% now) - or that overall numbers are still down somewhat from 2019 numbers - that is 200,000 guests. If 33% of those guests bought Genie+ that is 66,000 guests per day, or an extra $990,000 in revenue PER DAY.

Since Disney World is open 365 days a year, that translates into roughly $361M in additional revenue (and likely pure profit since there is no cost for Genie+). This doesn't include the cost of ILL$.

 

[lovethesun12]

Since Disney World is open 365 days a year, that translates into roughly $361M in additional revenue (and likely pure profit since there is no cost for Genie+). This doesn't include the cost of ILL$.

True, but playing devil's advocate, isn't it possible some revenue (people deciding not to go or go for fewer days) may have been lost as a result of the introduction of the extra fees? I guess it would be almost impossible to figure that out considering a decision not to visit would depend on a number of factors I'm sure.

 

[New Mouse]

True, but playing devil's advocate, isn't it possible some revenue (people deciding not to go or go for fewer days) may have been lost as a result of the introduction of the extra fees? I guess it would be almost impossible to figure that out considering a decision not to visit would depend on a number of factors I'm sure.

Its a guarantee significant revenue was lost, but in the world of wall street, you do your best to spin and cover that fact which is obvious to those pahing attention!

 

[Aluminum Falcon]

According to the Q4 earnings call - Disney says 33% of WDW guests have upgraded to Genie+ and Chapek said the majority of users said it improved their experience.

On average, WDW sees 250,000 guests per day (pre-pandemic numbers) - if we assume Disney is still at 80% capacity (nobody knows for sure, but I suspect they're at 100% now) - or that overall numbers are still down somewhat from 2019 numbers - that is 200,000 guests. If 33% of those guests bought Genie+ that is 66,000 guests per day, or an extra $990,000 in revenue PER DAY.

Since Disney World is open 365 days a year, that translates into roughly $361M in additional revenue (and likely pure profit since there is no cost for Genie+). This doesn't include the cost of ILL$.

Outside of the revenue side of it, I think 33% is a good number. In contrast to the 100% of guests that could use FP+, so that alone may be causing shorter wait times. I think if you look at it on a macro level, Disney was never looking for 100% buy in, I think they were looking for a smaller percentage to help alleviate long standby wait times.

I would also add that you will probably see more people take advantage of Genie+ for the holidays, so that percentage may jump a bit by next quarter

seeing a demographic breakdown would also be nice, but I doubt we will see anything like that anytime soon

 

[eandt]

We are just back from a 7 day trip. We did not buy Genie + What we found was that the posted standby wait times were almost always more than the actual wait times, many times significantly more which made us wonder if Disney wasn't purposely inflating posted wait times in order to persuade more folks to purchase + and the individual lightning passes. Disney would never do that .............. would they??? We did purchase ROR lightning pass and it was a true front of the line experience ..... doubt we would do it again though and certainly not for that ride.

 

[ZeeWP]

We are just back from a 7 day trip. We did not buy Genie + What we found was that the posted standby wait times were almost always more than the actual wait times, many times significantly more which made us wonder if Disney wasn't purposely inflating posted wait times in order to persuade more folks to purchase + and the individual lightning passes. Disney would never do that .............. would they??? We did purchase ROR lightning pass and it was a true front of the line experience ..... doubt we would do it again though and certainly not for that ride.

Disney always inflated their wait times even before G+ and ILL$. It's their way of saying "oh look you waited less than you thought". It's psychology.

I think this is just a silver lining for Disney. But really, waiting 45 minutes instead of 60, or 10 instead of 20, or 120 instead of 135 minutes, it's not enough time different to trick people to buy it or not, IMO.

 

[eandt]

Disney always inflated their wait times even before G+ and ILL$. It's their way of saying "oh look you waited less than you thought". It's psychology.

I think this is just a silver lining for Disney. But really, waiting 45 minutes instead of 60, or 10 instead of 20, or 120 instead of 135 minutes, it's not enough time different to trick people to buy it or not, IMO.

We always found the posted times pretty accurate in our experience, last week not so, not even close in many cases. Perhaps it was just a coincidence.

 

[ZeeWP]

We always found the posted times pretty accurate in our experience, last week not so, not even close in many cases. Perhaps it was just a coincidence.

Yeah I saw some data I think from touringplans that showed about 10-15 minutes longer on average.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

True, but playing devil's advocate, isn't it possible some revenue (people deciding not to go or go for fewer days) may have been lost as a result of the introduction of the extra fees? I guess it would be almost impossible to figure that out considering a decision not to visit would depend on a number of factors I'm sure.

I'd imagine that this would be a factor. It WILL be a factor for us going forward. We've always planned longer trips (10 or 11 days) and we usually would pay for park tickets all of those days. Assuming you're able to get MORE done in a day by paying for Genie+, you would need less overall park days to accomplish the same things. So where maybe we would have bought 10 days of park tickets, now we might cut our trip shorter. Do Disney for 5 days where we pay for Genie+ every day, then go to Universal or a Florida beach for a few days instead. That's a case where paying for Genie+, even though it's technically an additional cost, would save us money at Disney. We'd be spending less money on hotel accommodations, merch, and onsite food if we were to split our 10 day stay now between Disney and another Florida location.