Genie+ park based priced!

[MarieLM]

Ugh. This will, of course, drive up Genie+ sales. And that will make the experience worse than the status quo for everyone.

Until now, many people have concluded that Genie+ just isn't worth the cost at EPCOT and Animal Kingdom. With fewer people buying Genie+ for those parks, the Lighting Lanes are shorter and the standby lines are faster (without having to let as many LL people in). Now, more people will buy Genie+ for those parks, since it comes at a significant discount. That makes LL availability worse and LL waits longer, which in turn makes the standby lines longer.

It makes it much harder to plan a solid strategy and feel like you've gotten the experience you've paid for.

 

[Guest Mode]

If you have park hoppers but park passes for MK but only plan to book Genie+ rides after 2 pm for a different park (say AK/Epcot - cheaper) do you have to pay for park hopper Genie+ or a regular Genie+ for AK or Epcot?

You could buy a LLI$ in AK AND Epcot so I suppose you would have to buy the park hopper Genie+ but just want to see if anyone experienced this.

Also, has anyone tried getting refunded via chat? I got FOP refunded (booked for a child too short accidentally) and on a separate occasion switched an anytime pass for ROTR (LlI$ ride broke down all evening) for GOTG (our next day park).

If you're only going to use Genie+ in ONE park, you only need to buy Genie+ in THAT park. Buying ILL$ is totally separate. You do not need Genie+ to buy ILL+.

 

[movingthestars]

Adding my experience to this thread. Two days ago, I went to MK with my husband and mother. I bought us all Genie+ in the morning before we went, only for MK. After we were in MK for awhile, my husband decided he wanted to park hop. So away to the blue umbrellas we went. I asked the CM if she could just switch our MK Genie+ to the multi parks ones (since the price was exactly the same). She called someone on the headset and then told me I had to refund and rebuy. I was worried I’d lose the LL I already booked but she assured me I wouldn’t. So she refunded the entire purchase and I still had the LL on our accounts. At that point I could have just said thank you, walked away, and never rebought Genie+ therefore having 2 free LL per person. I didn’t do that, but I’m just illustrating that this is their dumb system where they don’t just have a simple upgrade button in the app.

So then, comes the other issue. My husband and I have APs so automatically we can park hop. My mom doesn’t but her purchase in the morning was still tied to ours so it was all refunded anyway. This was my first time doing this so I couldn’t figure out how to buy the Genie+ for just my mom again (she isn’t tech savvy and I always have to do it all for her on my phone) so at this point I have repurchased for my husband and I with the multi park option but nothing for my mom. The CM just gave it to us for free for my mom at that point, so after all that nonsense they lost money on us anyway (and let’s be clear, I was standing there ready to pay but it was too confusing for both myself and the CM). And this is from someone who is relatively good at technology and has been using the system since they rolled it out. Yay Genie+

 

[Disturbia]

Adding my experience to this thread. Two days ago, I went to MK with my husband and mother. I bought us all Genie+ in the morning before we went, only for MK. After we were in MK for awhile, my husband decided he wanted to park hop. So away to the blue umbrellas we went. I asked the CM if she could just switch our MK Genie+ to the multi parks ones (since the price was exactly the same). She called someone on the headset and then told me I had to refund and rebuy. I was worried I’d lose the LL I already booked but she assured me I wouldn’t. So she refunded the entire purchase and I still had the LL on our accounts. At that point I could have just said thank you, walked away, and never rebought Genie+ therefore having 2 free LL per person. I didn’t do that, but I’m just illustrating that this is their dumb system where they don’t just have a simple upgrade button in the app.

So then, comes the other issue. My husband and I have APs so automatically we can park hop. My mom doesn’t but her purchase in the morning was still tied to ours so it was all refunded anyway. This was my first time doing this so I couldn’t figure out how to buy the Genie+ for just my mom again (she isn’t tech savvy and I always have to do it all for her on my phone) so at this point I have repurchased for my husband and I with the multi park option but nothing for my mom. The CM just gave it to us for free for my mom at that point, so after all that nonsense they lost money on us anyway (and let’s be clear, I was standing there ready to pay but it was too confusing for both myself and the CM). And this is from someone who is relatively good at technology and has been using the system since they rolled it out. Yay Genie+

That sounds like a stressful and time consuming experience. I’m glad it worked out for you in the end though.

 

[AustinTink]

Curious if any of y’all got a Disney survey emailed today re: LL and ILL? Looks like they are contemplating a move back to an FP+ style/ book- ahead system with tiers. One part of the survey mentioned only being able to book one Tier A ride per day.

I’m glad to be visiting this year with Genie+ because a move backwards to FP+ would be a deal breaker for me.

 

[itf]

Curious if any of y’all got a Disney survey emailed today re: LL and ILL? Looks like they are contemplating a move back to an FP+ style/ book- ahead system with tiers. One part of the survey mentioned only being able to book one Tier A ride per day.

I’m glad to be visiting this year with Genie+ because a move backwards to FP+ would be a deal breaker for me.

if there’s a limit of one tier A ride for pre booking I could understand but if it’s one total per day then it’s more of a joke for the price than before.

 

[AustinTink]

if there’s a limit of one tier A ride for pre booking I could understand but if it’s one total per day then it’s more of a joke for the price than before.

I’m in a Genie+ group on Facebook. They posted screenshots of the survey. One Tier A ride per day was definitely the idea being floated in the survey. Multiple people received the email and confirmed. And, I agree, one Tier A booking per day would be ridiculous. Will be interesting to see if it actually gets implemented.

 

[thevolcanogod]

It’s a simple fix. Allow pre-purchase for length of stay. Allow resort guests to book for the next day at 10pm the day before (not freaking 7am which is so arbitrary). All others can book when park opens. Remove ILL altogether and merge VQ and the system to make it one experience. Remove the 1 per ride per day restriction. Get rid of LL language and Genie+ language - call them fast passes again and just ditch the genie alltogether.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

I believe that is the goal (systematically reduce attendance while forcing guests to pay more) since the parks are currently packed and the guest experience is suffering.

The parks are not currently packed. Not at all. I don't have pics to post. but I saw them on another site, and HS looked like a ghost town.

I have been watching posted rides waits and they have been rather low. BG availability has also been lasting much longer, too.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

Thanks for posting this because I was starting to think my memory was playing tricks with me. This was our experience too in the the 90s and 2000s. It was the best time ever to go to Disney. So easy to manage and maneuver.

One year, in the mid-00s we went during our son’s school spring break and the parks were empty. We kept running into other families from our school and we felt like we had the parks to ourselves. So empty it was almost spooky.

We will buy Genie+ because I refuse to wait in lines but will buy it through gritted teeth.

I'd keep watching crowd levels if you are going relatively soon. The past 3 weeks or so crow levels have been comparatively light. Late June and 4th of July are normally pretty busy, and WDW just doesn't appear to be all that busy right now.

For example the 1pm BG's for GoG have been lasting:

june 29: 4 hours
june 30 : 3 hrs 39min
July 1: until park close
July 2: until park close
July 4: 3 hrs 30min
July 5: 3 hours

Back in April the 1pm drop average was less than an hour.

(The 7am BG is still usually gone in less than 10 seconds.)

Slinky G+ has also been lasting a lot longer than it did a few months back.

Touring plans shows mid/low level crowds the rest of the summer, and they've said their predictions have been running a bit higher than actual crowds this summer.