Disney Genie announcement

[Frozen2014]

this! We used and abused MaxPass, loved it! BUT, we could ride the same ride multiple times if we wanted to. In a full day we would get 10-14 rides on maxpass reservations per day depending how busy the park was. We had it pretty much figured out. Even when they raised the daily price we still felt it was worth it. Not sure about the only ride 1x though..... hmm will have to think about this one. Maybe use it on the 1 or 2 busiest days we will be there during the week.

Exactly this! That's the big difference. With MaxPass you could ride the same ride multiple times but with Genie+ you can't....which takes away the value.

 

[DisneyGuy]

This has probably been addressed but maybe I haven't seen it but one of my concerns is timing. It's one thing to be up at 7:00am to book your first Genie + time, but it's another to be up and ready to walk out the door to make sure you get the park on time. If the first time slot doesn't provide enough time to get from the resort to the park - I'm thinking if i'm at an Epcot resort, going to Magic Kingdom, i'm going to have to wait for a bus - this can take a lot of time. I'm hoping there's an hour window like with fastpass. It seems i'll have more of a choice of time with the separate lightning lane selections.

 

[MainMom]

Do you think Genie+ will automatically show you availability for the number of people in your party? We will have 7 next trip which might make things more complicated.

 

[Tom_E_D]

This has probably been addressed but maybe I haven't seen it but one of my concerns is timing. It's one thing to be up at 7:00am to book your first Genie + time, but it's another to be up and ready to walk out the door to make sure you get the park on time. If the first time slot doesn't provide enough time to get from the resort to the park - I'm thinking if i'm at an Epcot resort, going to Magic Kingdom, i'm going to have to wait for a bus - this can take a lot of time. I'm hoping there's an hour window like with fastpass. It seems i'll have more of a choice of time with the separate lightning lane selections.

Yes, there is reportedly an hour-long window in which to use your fastpass. I wouldn't be surprised if they let you use it five minutes before that hour begins until fifteen minutes after, as they did with Fastpass+. As it is, none of the parks have been opening before 8:00 lately, so you should have until at least 9:00 or 9:15 to use that first fastpass that you got at 7:00. (I'm disregarding early entry. I doubt they'd give you a fastpass return time that starts before official opening time.)

 

[charmed59]

I think the no re-ride rule makes Genie+ more attractive to 1st time and occasional visitors. Re-rides aren’t as important to them as getting an opportunity to go on most the famous rides at least once.

For a very simplified example, if they sell 10K G+ in MK a day, and HM can handle 10K in the LL without hurting the flow of the standby lines, then everybody who purchased G+ could get a pass to HM sometime that day. People who payed for G+ to specifically ride that ride won’t be disappointed. If 20% of the folks were getting HM a second time then 20% of G+ users won’t have a chance to ride it once. Obviously park hopping makes the math much more complicated.

As I mentioned in another thread, I was surprised re-riding is popular enough to mess up availability for some rides, but Disney seems to think it is.

 

[CJLove79]

Has anybody found out if you can use a Disney gift card to pay for Lightning Lanes and Genie plus?

 

[shawthorne44]

I wonder if there will be a G++ released in a year-or-so. That allows re-rises and costs maybe $60.

As I think about it more, I'm not worried about the $15. We'll be paying $20 for Haunted House Front-Of-The-Line passes at Six Flags. Of course we paid $50 for a season pass.

 

[Grumpy by Birth]

Just popping in to say how great it is that IA$ is gaining traction as the official DIS acronym for Individual Attraction Selection.

Seriously, did no one on that committee think to themselves "maybe we shouldn't use a word that starts with 'S' when we name this thing." ????

I saw yesterday where they have changed the name of IA$ (they must have seen all of the ridicule on this thread about the resulting acronym and use of a dollar sign in it). So they've changed the name to Individual Lightning Lane... when you see the price it will make you ILL !

You can't make this stuff up.

 

[dawnball]

As I mentioned in another thread, I was surprised re-riding is popular enough to mess up availability for some rides, but Disney seems to think it is.

I think some people are just re-riders, and can disproportionally stress rides. My family is full of re-riders, but there's usually only one or two rides that they want fastpasses for. For example, my parents will ride Star Tours 6+ times a day, but all they ride at DHS is Star Tours and TSMM. They'd ride TSMM 6+ times a day if they could get that many FP.

 

[Grasshopper2016]

The only once per ride significantly changes my G+ strategy. If you will probably want to re-ride, you would want to delay using the G+ on a ride that gets longer lines later in the day. If it starts high at park open and then stays steady, then it wouldn't matter. But, if it climbs, it might be better to go standby first.

But what if you delay Genie+, and then you find out that, by the time you want to use it on the popular ride, there are no more LL slots available? Or the return time is in the late evening, so choosing it will lock you out of LL for all of the other rides in the afternoon? That’s what I’m afraid of.

 

[White_Rabbit18]

To join ....)

Hopefully, this is the right board for this topic but I was thinking that with this new project, Disney obviously wants it to be a success because it is already getting a lot of bad reactions.

I think one way to encourage people to sign up for Genie + is to “randomly“ give people pixie dust through the app. Magically you get a message in the app that you just won a free Mickey bar, an additional repeat ride, or 15% off your next souvenir. People would go crazy over getting notifications and it wouldn’t cost Disney that much money to throw little things here and there to keep their guests happy. Plus, since they already know how much you are spending thanks to your magic band then they can give more out to their big spenders.

What do you guys think? Would you sign up knowing that you would receive free discounts/additional rides?

 

[mom2rtk]

I’m guessing there will be a few extra “surprise and delight” fast passes early on for this very reason.

 

[DisneyGuy]

Yes, there is reportedly an hour-long window in which to use your fastpass. I wouldn't be surprised if they let you use it five minutes before that hour begins until fifteen minutes after, as they did with Fastpass+. As it is, none of the parks have been opening before 8:00 lately, so you should have until at least 9:00 or 9:15 to use that first fastpass that you got at 7:00. (I'm disregarding early entry. I doubt they'd give you a fastpass return time that starts before official opening time.)

Thanks!

 

[nurseberta]

It should keep the standby line reasonable. Otherwise imagine the most popular G+ ride. People would get back-to-back reservations on it and choke the standby line.

this is what happens at universal. When my son was 4 we went on Men In Black 3 times in a row because he loved it. He wanted more but I couldn’t walk by the poor people in the standby line one more time!!
we went back later and did another 3x

 

[vadersprincess12]

I'm going to rely on the experts here ~ I have not read through this entire thread it's just too long.

Do I understand correctly that, if you choose to, you have to pay the $15 a day fee for Genie+ simply for the pleasure of paying an additional fee per attraction to ride two attractions per day through Lightening Lane?

 

[Marionnette]

I'm going to rely on the experts here ~ I have not read through this entire thread it's just too long.

Do I understand correctly that, if you choose to, you have to pay the $15 a day fee for Genie+ simply for the pleasure of paying an additional fee per attraction to ride two attractions per day through Lightening Lane?

No. Genie+ ($15 per day) and the ILL$ (Individual Lightning Lane Selection) are two separate things. You don't need to purchase one in order to buy the other.

 

[Turksmom]

Purchase of Genie+ is not required to purchase ILL$. Answered in FAQs
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/genie/

 

[vadersprincess12]

Thanks Turksmom ~ it makes sense now ~~ still not thrilled with having to pay for things like this and having to start at 7:00 a.m. but I guess that's just where things are right now at Disney.

 

[nurseberta]

Has anyone considered if you purchase an ILL$ for Remy, could you still request a BG??

 

[persnickity2020]

As I mentioned in another thread, I was surprised re-riding is popular enough to mess up availability for some rides, but Disney seems to think it is.

I think Slinky being a G+ attraction is almost entirely to blame for the "no re-rides" rule. I suspect those slots are going to go pretty quickly even without extra rides on the table.