Disney Genie announcement

[elgerber]

If it works like mobile ordering, your slot is held until you confirm payment or released if you cancel.

FWIW, you can store the GC info in your phone and c/p it to mobile ordering to speed things up.

already texted all the numbers to myself

 

[Marionnette]

So does anyone know the process of this. Basically at 60 days out for the fast passes we all waited breathlessly for our window to open and then bam we tried to get the best rides as fast as we could. Are we basically going to be doing the same thing each day at 7 am? That sounds very stressful. Or say I go to rope drop and get to do a few big rides but missed haunted mansion or thunder mountain. It’s now 10am. Do I buy Genie+ now or would all the LL tickets be gone anyways? Also let’s say I want to ride mine train but couldn’t do it during early morning hours. Can I buy access now at say 12 noon? I know some of these questions won’t be answered until in production but wondering how it worked in DL. We are scheduled for MK about 7 days after this whole thing kicks in later this month. Still struggling to see if it will be worth it.

My advice is to not stress out over it. You really can't change what it is going to be at this point. Just go in as an educated visitor and gather as much useful info from those who have gone before you.

To answer some of your questions:

1. You can purchase Genie+ in advance for every day of your package. Or you can purchase it on a daily basis, beginning at 12M the day of your intended visit.
2. At 7 AM, if you're an onsite guest, you can purchase IA$/ILL$ attractions. You will be able to choose from a number of return times for those attractions.
3. 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.
4. Just like paper FP, you will not be able to have more than one Genie+ LL reservation at a time UNLESS the LL reservation that you just made is 120+ minutes away. In that case, you will be allowed to pull another LL reservation for another attraction for an earlier time slot.
5. You will only be allowed to use Genie+ or IA$/ILL$ once per attraction per day. So if you buy ROTR for 10 AM, you cannot purchase it again for later that day. With Genie+ if you've used it to get a POTC reservation in the morning, you will not be able to get another POTC time slot later in the day.

There's no knowing at this time how quickly Genie+ or IA$/ILL$ selections will get taken. So much of it will be a function of how many Genie+ get sold and how many LL spots will be allocated each hour. My feeling is that the more Genie+ that get sold for the day, the more time slots Disney will allocate to Genie+.

 

[scrappinginontario]

So does anyone know the process of this. Basically at 60 days out for the fast passes we all waited breathlessly for our window to open and then bam we tried to get the best rides as fast as we could. Are we basically going to be doing the same thing each day at 7 am? That sounds very stressful. Or say I go to rope drop and get to do a few big rides but missed haunted mansion or thunder mountain. It’s now 10am. Do I buy Genie+ now or would all the LL tickets be gone anyways? Also let’s say I want to ride mine train but couldn’t do it during early morning hours. Can I buy access now at say 12 noon? I know some of these questions won’t be answered until in production but wondering how it worked in DL. We are scheduled for MK about 7 days after this whole thing kicks in later this month. Still struggling to see if it will be worth it.

Not enough info has been shared by Disney to answer for sure but I believe:
- if someone wants to ride the more popular rides early in the days then yes, 7AM will be important
- personally, even if I purchase G+ some days, I still anticipate standing in some standby lines. It will be similar to FP+ in that some rides I had a FP for and others I chose to stand in standby. In your example above, if I ‘missed’ (not too sure I understand what you mean by ‘missed’) Haunted Mansion or BTMR I would still ride them, just via
standby
- I believe Disney will allow guests to purchase G+ at any time during the day. They’re not normally ones to turn away $. Also, Disney will charge $15 for LL for one ride. Guests may choose to pay $15 for G+ for only 1 or 2 rides.

Let’s look at VIP Tours. They sellout daily and I’ve heard there are about 50 of those or more available each day. All said and done those people pay an average of about $38/person/ride!!!

Many will choose to purchase G+ for reasons that work for them. Me, I’ll assess day by day and then check my budget and make a game day decision.

 

[Grasshopper2016]

I don't see that many lessons are needed when you can only ride each attraction once. Rope drop for as many short rides as you can get, then start on the Genie+ rides you do get.

One big strategic question I have is whether, if you plan to rope drop or otherwise arrive pretty early, you ought to book your first Genie+ LL right at 7:00 a.m. or not. If it gives you a return time that is within the first hour or two of park opening (which seems likely), that might be a bad thing. Why waste part of the short-standby window doing a LL ride? And why waste your only LL for a popular ride (since there are no re-rides) at a time when the standby line isn't that bad?

But if you wait to book your first LL, maybe the slots will begin to fill up. Maybe the only way to actually grab 5 or 6 Genie+ LL slots in a day is to start early, because by the time you get to peak afternoon hours, there might not be much of anything left --- and if you can grab anything at all, it might only be for the evening.

If "stacking" is allowed, then it seems like the argument for pulling your first LL at 7:00 gets stronger. But Disney still hasn't confirmed or denied that rumor, have they?

 

[mousestruck]

Haven't been to Disney in awhile, and we last time we skipped AK, but from what I know, I will say the same.

All four of our family will definitely use Lightning Lane for: Flight of Passage at AK, Star Wars Rise or Resistance at HS.

The rest may vary (e.g. just kids getting Space Mountain at MK)

Guess the others will depend on the wait times on that day. I do really want to try Frozen, Remy at Epcot and Runaway Railway.

As for Genie+, that's a tough one. At Epcot for example, totally worth it for Soarin and Test Track...but then you can only book each ride once via Genie +, and nothing else is really worth it from what I understand with current wait times. So do we splurge and get it? We will have 2 Epcot days, so maybe we will bite the bullet for one of our days?

MK seems worth it for Genie+ as there are a lot of rides included. But both days or just one day?

At HS, I guess Genie+ is worth it just for Millennium and Slinky Dog dash, and then Toy Story and Star Tours...so most likely purchase it.

Definitely makes it interesting for a different kind of planning.

I agree with all of your assessments. I think that we will probably pay for the same two individual attractions (FOP and ROTR), unless we're able to hit them with extended evening hours since we'll be staying at a deluxe resort. So far EEH has received very good reviews, but who knows if that will be continued and whether or not they expand to include all parks.

I am eager to read reviews once the program begins, but I'm guessing that we will purchase Genie+ for one day at each park with the exception of AK. It just doesn't seem worth it, especially if EE continues to have a single rider line, since there are not many attractions included. We'd be more likely to just pay for FOP and try to hit the other attractions with rope drop, extended evening hours or when stand by lines are reasonable.

 

[0FF TO NEVERLAND]

Man I’m still so angry about this. 7am!!! I need to wake up everyday of my trip at 7am if I want to book something. I want to sleep on my vacation also. I don’t rope drop. Now I gotta stress every morning of everyday of my trip if I wanted to buy this overpriced money grab. It’s ROTR lottery…everyday of your trip

I like sleep Disney. Comeon. It’s a vacation also. Don’t force people to wake up early

 

[mousestruck]

One big strategic question I have is whether, if you plan to rope drop or otherwise arrive pretty early, you ought to book your first Genie+ LL right at 7:00 a.m. or not. If it gives you a return time that is within the first hour or two of park opening (which seems likely), that might be a bad thing. Why waste part of the short-standby window doing a LL ride? And why waste your only LL for a popular ride (since there are no re-rides) at a time when the standby line isn't that bad?

But if you wait to book your first LL, maybe the slots will begin to fill up. Maybe the only way to actually grab 5 or 6 Genie+ LL slots in a day is to start early, because by the time you get to peak afternoon hours, there might not be much of anything left --- and if you can grab anything at all, it might only be for the evening.

If "stacking" is allowed, then it seems like the argument for pulling your first LL at 7:00 gets stronger. But Disney still hasn't confirmed or denied that rumor, have they?

I have been wondering about that as well. I think we'll have to wait and see. What do you mean by "stacking"? Is it possible we'll be able to book more than one at a time if the first available time slot for our #1 pick is late in the day?

 

[Turksmom]

One big strategic question I have is whether, if you plan to rope drop or otherwise arrive pretty early, you ought to book your first Genie+ LL right at 7:00 a.m. or not. If it gives you a return time that is within the first hour or two of park opening (which seems likely), that might be a bad thing. Why waste part of the short-standby window doing a LL ride? And why waste your only LL for a popular ride (since there are no re-rides) at a time when the standby line isn't that bad?

But if you wait to book your first LL, maybe the slots will begin to fill up. Maybe the only way to actually grab 5 or 6 Genie+ LL slots in a day is to start early, because by the time you get to peak afternoon hours, there might not be much of anything left --- and if you can grab anything at all, it might only be for the evening.

If "stacking" is allowed, then it seems like the argument for pulling your first LL at 7:00 gets stronger. But Disney still hasn't confirmed or denied that rumor, have they?

Disney has confirmed that if the time for the ride you selected is more than 2 hours later, you can make another selection after 2 hours have passed.

ETA- Sorry- I was wrong about where I had read it. Still nothing direct from Disney

 

[Grasshopper2016]

Disney has confirmed that if the time for the ride you selected is more than 2 hours later, you can make another selection after 2 hours have passed.

Thanks. I've seen that quasi-confirmed by insiders who claim to have heard Disney say it at media events, but I haven't seen it confirmed in writing by any official Disney source.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Disney has confirmed that if the time for the ride you selected is more than 2 hours later, you can make another selection after 2 hours have passed.

Can you please supply a link to this information? I read all info that I could find that Disney published and didn’t see this.

I hope it’s true and had been speculated but I missed seeing what you did when you say, ‘Disney confirmed…’

Thanks

 

[Grasshopper2016]

I will add that the no re-rides rule seems to be similar. I believe that insiders have confirmed it, but Disney has remained silent. The difference is that Disney might never publicly announce the no re-rides rule. It might just be that, once you pull a LL for a ride, that option is never shown to you again for the rest of the day, even if other people who haven't ridden it yet are seeing it.

It seems less likely that Disney would allow stacking without announcing it. But who knows, maybe they would. Did they ever publicly announcing the stacking rule for Maxpass at DLR?

 

[g-dad66]

On the question of making first LL selection at 7:00am, I'm thinking that for HS, it would be smart to go for SDD first. This is clearly the "Tier 2 attraction" that will have the longest waits during the day. It probably won't take long before the first available LL time for SDD gets pushed beyond 11:00, which would mean no eligibility to book second LL attraction until 11:00 (assuming a 9:00 park opening, and a 120-hour maximum wait for eligiblity for next LL access).

Just like with FP (+ and -), the earlier we grab, the more grabbing we can do.

And if our first LL time is 9:00 to 10:00, that gives us from 8:30 Early Entry until 9:45 to do some Standby lines.

But in a park like Epcot, it may not be important to start early, since TT and Soarin LLs may be the only things worth getting, and we can only get them once.

 

[Marionnette]

​

Can you please supply a link to this information? I read all info that I could find that Disney published and didn’t see this.

I hope it’s true and had been speculated but I missed seeing what you did when you say, ‘Disney confirmed…’

Thanks

I'm not finding anything on the Disney website that confirms this. But many bloggers have reported it, including our own Deni Sunderly:

Similar to Disneyland’s old Disney MaxPass, only one selection can be held at a time, with the exception being when a guest’s next selection time window is more than 120 minutes away. In that case, Disney Genie+ will allow a second selection to be held.​

https://www.wdwinfo.com/news-storie...ney-world-oct-19-weve-got-all-of-the-details/

 

[ShayBells]

A couple of things that I see that has different information coming out about it:

I have seen people say you can make your 2 LL$ at 7am for the day, but Disney website still says one at a time in its wording when mentioning LL$ ... (could be bad wording for them, or could be that people are wrong and LL$ will be one at a time too which will suck. I would rather plan for them if I want them and book them all at once before they run out.)

Then as far as the 120 minute delay, Disney website does not mention this but everyone has reported it, but every comment I see about this is different. I keep seeing this mentioned in different ways. 120 minutes from time of booking or 120 minutes before the time period of your selection, or can you for example at 7am pick Jungle Cruise when the next available selection time is 1pm so I can right away make another selection becuase I have more than 120 minutes from my selected selection, but that doesn't really make sense. (I think this one I am most confused about and won't be not confused until I see it in action LOL)

I think overall it will come down to availability no matter what. If I am not able to get AT THE VERY LEAST 3 a day, then there's no point and therefore will be a waste of money.

BUT My plan right now is to be cautiously optimistic. If I think it's worth it for this trip at least I will probably buy it before hand for each day. We park hop and most of those hops are to MK so it will be nice to have it for two parks and IMO make it worth more, and I won't have to worry about purchasing it each day or not at 7 am when my brain barely works.
If it is a complete waste of money when I experience it on my own it'll be a lesson learned.

 

[sndral]

Regarding ‘stacking’ of LL passes - the Disneyland folks who used max reported that they could do this & G seems loosely based on that model, however there seem to be some important differences - DL/CA had longer hours back when max was in use, the wait time to pull the next ride was 90 minutes - not 120, so in theory more opportunities to pull rides & since rerides were allowed more rides to pull from although competition for the slots would have been higher w/ rerides I suppose.
I have a question regarding IA$ - back in the good old days of FP+ as on site guests we made our FP+ selections at 60+ days & if we had offsite guests joining us in the park & we were connected on MDE we could make FP+ for them at 60 days too, this December we’ll have the same scenario - can I an on-site guest at 7 a.m. buy everyone’s IAS for ROTR or do the offsite folks have to wait until DHS opens to buy theirs?

 

[aviva5675]

Practicing from home for IA$/ILL$ may not work. Offsite guests cannot reserve those selections until they have entered a park. You may not be able to see any IA$ time slots at all if you're checking from home. I guess we will know for sure after Oct. 19.

This is what Ive been wondering...as Fl AP we might drive over for a few hours. I thought that at park openin I could start booking my LL or ILL, even if I was still at home. Not happy if have to be actually have tapped in already to start getting rides booked. And can ILL be done at 7 or park opening if not resort guest? I know LL is 7 for guest only.

 

[luv2cheer92]

Regarding ‘stacking’ of LL passes - the Disneyland folks who used max reported that they could do this & G seems loosely based on that model, however there seem to be some important differences - DL/CA had longer hours back when max was in use, the wait time to pull the next ride was 90 minutes - not 120, so in theory more opportunities to pull rides & since rerides were allowed more rides to pull from although competition for the slots would have been higher w/ rerides I suppose.
I have a question regarding IA$ - back in the good old days of FP+ as on site guests we made our FP+ selections at 60+ days & if we had offsite guests joining us in the park & we were connected on MDE we could make FP+ for them at 60 days too, this December we’ll have the same scenario - can I an on-site guest at 7 a.m. buy everyone’s IAS for ROTR or do the offsite folks have to wait until DHS opens to buy theirs?

Oh thats a good question. Idk that I've seen that brought up anywhere. That was a nice little "hack" with FP+.

 

[Turksmom]

Can you please supply a link to this information? I read all info that I could find that Disney published and didn’t see this.

I hope it’s true and had been speculated but I missed seeing what you did when you say, ‘Disney confirmed…’

Thanks

Sorry, you are correct. I thought I had read it on the Disney Parks Blog, but it was on another site.
Here is the quote,
"Per Walt Disney World, Genie+ will provide guests the ability to book new ride reservations before using a prior one if the next available ride time is far into the future. Meaning that guests won’t be locked out of making new Genie+ selections if it’s the morning and the next available ride time isn’t until later in the afternoon.
To answer one very common reader question, Walt Disney World has officially confirmed that Genie+ will allow guests to make their next selection 120 minutes (2 hours) in the future even if they have not yet redeemed the first Genie+ selection. This is just like the former legacy or paper FastPass system–and how we’ve said this will work since the original announcement. Nevertheless, it’s nice to have official confirmation."

 

[Miffy]

There's no knowing at this time how quickly Genie+ or IA$/ILL$ selections will get taken. So much of it will be a function of how many Genie+ get sold and how many LL spots will be allocated each hour. My feeling is that the more Genie+ that get sold for the day, the more time slots Disney will allocate to Genie+.

This right here is the sticking point: How quickly will G+ and especially ILL$ sell out? For everyone who wanted the BG lottery for RotR to end, this might just be another lottery, except one you have to pay for if you get lucky!

And, as a side note, as bad as IAS was, ILLS is worse--acronymishly speaking, that is.

 

[Marionnette]

This is what Ive been wondering...as Fl AP we might drive over for a few hours. I thought that at park openin I could start booking my LL or ILL, even if I was still at home. Not happy if have to be actually have tapped in already to start getting rides booked. And can ILL be done at 7 or park opening if not resort guest? I know LL is 7 for guest only.

ILL$ (previously known as IA$) is the "tier 1" attractions that are not included with Genie+. That would be attractions like ROTR, 7DMTR, FOP, etc. They can be booked at 7 AM if you are staying onsite but not until you have tapped in at a park if you are staying offsite. ILL$ will allow you to choose a return time from available slots.

Your first Genie+ selection (tier 2 attraction) can be made at 7 AM, whether you are onsite or offsite. It will only offer "next available" time slots. So if you don't intend to arrive at a park until later, getting up at 7 AM to book your first Genie+ may not give you any advantage. In fact, you may need to constantly refresh until return times meet your expected arrival time.