The Genie Usage, Tips and Strategy ONLY Thread

[scrappinginontario]

Why is Universal able to do it?

Due to a few things I feel.

1. Most people spend 2-3 days (is my understanding) to do the 2 U parks.
2. Their pass to ride unlimited rides starts at $120/person/day.

We heard the uproar when Disney wanted to charge $15/day. Can you imagine if they suddenly wanted to charge 8 times that amount/day???

 

[hopemax]

Why is Universal able to do it?

A. Demand is a function of "necessity." Universal didn't train their customers that if they didn't have a line-skip option they wouldn't be able to ride the big rides without excruciating waits. So they have less demand for a line-skip option before people even walk through the gate. People seek out different tricks like rope-drop, or they just wait because the waits aren't that bad. Even right now Forbidden Journey only has a 35 minute wait. Gringotts is the only one showing something horrible (130 minutes) which I would guess indicates an operational issue, like when one side of ToT goes down. Guests believe they can have a good day at Universal without it, but that isn't true at Disney.

B. Price. To buy Express pass for tomorrow it will cost you $299.99 per person, not $15. This also limits demand.

C. It's capped. Today is sold out, and they set their threshold lower than Disney sells through Genie+ or offered through FP+ so that Standby wouldn't get as bad as at Disney, which increases their customer's ability to avoid the situation Disney has created in Part A.

 

[Orsino]

Also, universal doesn’t have the numbers that Disney does. If universal ever gets to the level of visitors that Disney does, express pass will have to change.

i understand that people want express pass at Disney because in their minds it would be awesome. The problem is that for Disney to offer an express pass like product it would have to be exceedingly high price and be so limited that everyone here would be complain about how hard it is to book and lamenting that those that do get it ‘ruin’ it for everyone else.

look at how hard it is to get slinky dog G+. Now imagine having to fight to get a Disney express pass like product. Now imagine how much it will stink if you lose.

also also, Disney does have an express pass like product called VIP tour, which they wisely keep extremely limited.

also also also, Disney does kind of have an express pass like product called after hours.

 

[BridgetR3]

Interesting story from our experience today on the other side of Genie + - we had booked a ILL for mmrr and we’re in regular line for toy story. Toy story had a posted 60 minute wait and we were 85 minutes in when we finally reached the glasses area. According to a CM there, they were having technical difficulties and our wait would be at least another 40 minutes making our entire wait over two hours and causing us to miss MMRR. She stated that if we left line, we would not receive anything to return to toy story (such as a fast pass or LL) but if we stayed we would definitely miss our MMRR ILL. We spoke with two CMs at the ride and both were fairly unapologetic that they don’t offer any compensation anymore and that it was just a suggested wait time so in essence we should have planned better. I did eventually head to guest services where again we were told that in the future there is nothing they can do to help us but for this one time they would allow us to go back to do toy story. Be careful not to miss your time at all as there is also supposedly no more grace period. It’s crazy I tell ya.

 

[DisneyPanthersFan]

Toy story had a posted 60 minute wait and we were 85 minutes in when we finally reached the glasses area. According to a CM there, they were having technical difficulties and our wait would be at least another 40 minutes making our entire wait over two hours and causing us to miss MMRR. She stated that if we left line, we would not receive anything to return to toy story (such as a fast pass or LL) but if we stayed we would definitely miss our MMRR ILL. We spoke with two CMs at the ride and both were fairly unapologetic that they don’t offer any compensation anymore and that it was just a suggested wait time so in essence we should have planned better.

You should have planned for the ride having technical difficulties?

And if it's okay that the "suggested" wait time is so far off from the actual wait time, then why even bother with the "suggestions"?

 

[trompettecon]

you can do what you said the key is if the times you need are available. You will have to watch for them and they may not be down into the evening at 7am. If you want to pay for the individual lightning lanes you can buy those at 7 and choose your times.

7 a.m. LL$ only if you are on property though...

 

[tano]

Due to a few things I feel.

1. Most people spend 2-3 days (is my understanding) to do the 2 U parks.
2. Their pass to ride unlimited rides starts at $120/person/day.

We heard the uproar when Disney wanted to charge $15/day. Can you imagine if they suddenly wanted to charge 8 times that amount/day???

If Disney cared about uproars they wouldn't have increased prices and reduced offerings.

 

[cgattis]

Interesting story from our experience today on the other side of Genie + - we had booked a ILL for mmrr and we’re in regular line for toy story. Toy story had a posted 60 minute wait and we were 85 minutes in when we finally reached the glasses area. According to a CM there, they were having technical difficulties and our wait would be at least another 40 minutes making our entire wait over two hours and causing us to miss MMRR. She stated that if we left line, we would not receive anything to return to toy story (such as a fast pass or LL) but if we stayed we would definitely miss our MMRR ILL. We spoke with two CMs at the ride and both were fairly unapologetic that they don’t offer any compensation anymore and that it was just a suggested wait time so in essence we should have planned better. I did eventually head to guest services where again we were told that in the future there is nothing they can do to help us but for this one time they would allow us to go back to do toy story. Be careful not to miss your time at all as there is also supposedly no more grace period. It’s crazy I tell ya.

Yeah the new customer service (or lack thereof) attitude was really the last straw for me. “So you paid for all our new planning features and you still didn’t get to ride what guy wanted?? Oh well.” That just doesn’t work for me at these prices.

 

[katyringo]

So I'm guilty of this today too but I'm reminded that we have a whole genie discussion thread and this one is focused on strategy. Like it or not this is the system we got.

so I fly out tomorrow and have Epcot on Saturday. Fully booked day accross all 4 parks.

I am solo so I'm planning to use test track single rider.
I will book $LL for frozen and Remy. I probably don't need genie but I got it for my whole trip. I'll probably book soarin.. I'm going to watch for evening times for living with the land for the Christmas lights. That's kinda my Epcot plan.

 

[cjlong88]

So I'm guilty of this today too but I'm reminded that we have a whole genie discussion thread and this one is focused on strategy. Like it or not this is the system we got.

so I fly out tomorrow and have Epcot on Saturday. Fully booked day accross all 4 parks.

I am solo so I'm planning to use test track single rider.
I will book $LL for frozen and Remy. I probably don't need genie but I got it for my whole trip. I'll probably book soarin.. I'm going to watch for evening times for living with the land for the Christmas lights. That's kinda my Epcot plan.

Thank you for getting us back on track! I have found that refreshing did wonders for us when it appeared like things we wanted to book were gone. Good luck!

 

[dez1978]

If Disney cared about uproars they wouldn't have increased prices and reduced offerings.

There obv isn’t too much of an uproar seeing as the parks are PACKED this week

 

[wisblue]

Back to the subject of strategy (as opposed to editorializing).

Is there a site that tracks daily LL return times at different times of the day? I’m thinking of something similar to charts of standby times.

This would help guests know what they might expect to be available as they move through the day based on expected crowd size.

I did a little bit of this the week before our recent trip by looking at return times at 9 AM, 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM and it helped me decide what attractions to book first and which I could expect to get later.

Obviously, return times have run out a lot faster this week than they did last week, and it will be interesting to see if they return to something closer to last week’s pattern next week.

It‘s impossible for us to know if this week’s pattern is purely because of larger crowds, or a combination of larger crowds and a higher percentage of guests purchasing Genie+.

One non strategy comment. I think we should expect that Disney will eventually implement surge pricing for Genie+, similar to what it does for park tickets and what Universal does for its express pass.

 

[Missmaureen78]

Back to the subject of strategy (as opposed to editorializing).

Is there a site that tracks daily LL return times at different times of the day? I’m thinking of something similar to charts of standby times.

This would help guests know what they might expect to be available as they move through the day based on expected crowd size.

I did a little bit of this the week before our recent trip by looking at return times at 9 AM, 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM and it helped me decide what attractions to book first and which I could expect to get later.

Obviously, return times have run out a lot faster this week than they did last week, and it will be interesting to see if they return to something closer to last week’s pattern next week.

It‘s impossible for us to know if this week’s pattern is purely because of larger crowds, or a combination of larger crowds and a higher percentage of guests purchasing Genie+.

One non strategy comment. I think we should expect that Disney will eventually implement surge pricing for Genie+, similar to what it does for park tickets and what Universal does for its express pass.

Thrill Data.

 

[Disturbia]

This is confusing because you can still have more than one booking at a time, you just have to follow the "use my selection or wait 120mins- whichever comes first" rule.

let's say MK opens at 8am.

if I book at 7 for a return time of 3-4pm
I can book again at 10am. - I get a 5-6pm time
I can book again at 12- I get a 6-7 time
I can book again at 2- I get a 7-8 return time

its 2pm and I am now holding 4 bookings. I just entered the park for the day..

alternatively

I book at 7am and I get a 8-9 return
I enter my ride at 830- I can book another. I get 9-10 return time.
I enter my ride at 9- I can book another- I get a 1-2 return time.

I've used 2 genie+ without stacking and now I can book another one at 11.

at 11 I book with a 3-4 return time.
im now holding one for 1-2 and one for 3-4

at 1pm I would be eligible to book another. I do and I get a 5-6 return time.

I use my 1-2 return time one.
I use my 3-4 time one and I'm eligible for another because it's been 2 hours since I booked my 5-6 one.

you can still stack.. you just Have to follow the "use the LAST one I booked or 120 mins- whichever comes first"

This doesn’t really work in practice and isn’t as great as it sounds (I did stack at MK and HS but ended up riding less rides overall) as we never had passes past 1 pm at 7 am in early November. It might work when park passes are sold out during major holidays. It’s also disadvantageous as you’re waiting 2 hours and wasting precious time when you could be rolling with the next available and closest ride (am has more availability vs afternoon and later). If you’re park hopping then stacking past 2 pm makes sense but I doubt you can really find much late afternoon availability at 7 am. I found myself looking at my phone and setting 2 hour timers and it just took away from the experience.

Personally I liked booking a 9 am pass and continually booking until I was ready to leave the park and then try to book a late afternoon pass while eating lunch/at resort; stack 2 hrs after that if you want before heading back to the park.

I would much rather pay for an after hours party (not available when we went).

 

[magicwdw]

Based on all the Genie+ posts - it seems it's not worth buying on extremely busy days since you might only get 2 or 3 rides in and that is very expensive for a family of 4 or 5 (crowd level 8-10 on a scale of 10). On very low crowd days (which is getting more and more rare) it might not be worth buying since it's not needed (crowd level 1-4). I guess when Genie+ is a decent buy is during moderately busy days when you could go either way on buying it (crowd level 5-7). Just my thoughts and I'm sure I'll buy Genie+ on one of my next visits and see if it works for us.

 

[wisblue]

Thrill Data.

I‘ve looked at that site. It takes a little time to figure out exactly how to interpret and navigate some of those color coded graphs.

 

[GBRforWDW]

The working theory on that is that it’s not really another drop. Rather, people who cancel or don’t finish booking have their spots re-released at chunk times instead of dynamically. So a lot of people who maybe went for a SDD reservation at 11 am only to see it’s actually 8 pm by the time they got to the checkout screen release it, things like that.

I started refreshing Slinky Dog at 7:10 this morning. At 7:11, I started seeing new times available starting at 3pm and refreshed several times to find several times available for all hours beyond 3pm. Those time slots lasted another 1-2 minutes.

Went back in at 7:21 and started refreshing again. At 7:23, 10 minutes after they were gone the second time, more times were available again, mostly the same times I saw before but maybe not as many slots, though I did get a 12:45 option first this time. Those times lasted another 2 minutes.

ETA: SDD had availability again at 7:35, though not quite as much and that stayed a couple more minutes.

Realized I was keeping time in Central time so updated to Eastern,

ETA: at 7:47, only saw 2 time slots this time. 3:30 and 3:40 before showing sold out again.

Last edit:checked back at 7:59 and refreshed for 2 minutes and didn't see any more pop up.

 

[Figment1990]

Just reporting in with our strategies and experiences. Yesterday (on Thanksgiving), we were at DHS. At 7 am I booked Rise for 11am, DH booked MFSR for 4:25 and then I booked MMRR for 1:30. We originally were not going to book MMRR but my parents have never been on it, and I was a bit nervous we wouldn’t be able to get another LL at 11. We decided that since we had already done RnRC and have another day yet that we can return to DHS if we wanted, we would “sleep in” and arrive at 10 for a “relaxing day” and we actually did mostly accomplish that.

We arriver and had a mobile order placed for Ronto Roasters. Walked around Galaxy’s Edge until 11 when we made our next LL for TSM at 4:15.
Rode RotR
Rode muppets
Rode Star Tours / Frozen (split up)
At 1, we booked Aliens b/c that was really the only one left, for 7:50
Met at the hub and had fun taking pictures with the golden statues
Rode Lightning McQueen
Had lunch (they were behind, but that was ok)
At 4:30 ish rode TSM
Played with photo lenses in Galaxy’s Edge
At 5:20 rode MFSR
After that we decided to do standby Aliens b/c the wait was only 30 and we didn’t want to walk all the way back here - gave up our LL
Got blue milk
Stood in line for ToT (45 min)
Watched sunset greetings and shopped on Sunset Blvd for DS/DH to ride RnRC (55 min)
Let park around 9pm

So, we had a GREAT day and did everything we wanted. I considered it $40 ish for us to have 3 passes going in and pulled a “4th”, This was not more than we used to really get with FP+ (we were not super FP users unless we pulled a 4th going to a second park. Our strategy was always longer trips, spread out the headliners). However, I’ll say it again, we were able to be there all day. If we had been trying to leave, probably we wouldn’t have felt the value. As it is, I still was less than thrilled enough that we’ve decided NOT to get G+ this morning. We wanted to try to get on Test Track but have decided to try standby, even if it is really long. Or skip it. DS did ride it earlier in the week during our extra extended hours, which was a really good deal and we did almost everything That night anyways. We knew though, that if we used our G+ at TT for tonight, that we wouldn’t get to use it at AK. So we decided it wasn’t worth getting for 1 maybe 2 (couldn’t get another for Epcot until 12). My main goal for Epcot anyway is to see holiday stuff And harmonious.

I might regret it later if my party decides they want to ride a bunch of stuff in Epcot, but I feel great about saving the $80 we were most likely going to pay today for TT!

I still ended up having to get up early though for FOP which still is very annoying.

 

[intertile]

This morning we were prepping for our day at HS. I purchased Genie + at around 6:40am and waited for 7am to grab SDD. Then I would get ROR and last MMR. At 7 exactly.got SDD with a return time of around 12:30. Then frantically went back to get ROR and the app crapped out on me. Went into this loop.of loading and asking me.for my password. Had to force stop it and disconnect from wifi to finally get it to stop. 7:03 got back on and ROR was sold out. Got MMR for 2:30 and resigned to the fact we would have to rope drop ROR or go at end of day...not happy to say the least.

As I was muttering "niceties" about genie+, I started refreshing and all of a sudden noticed availability for SDD were it was sold out. Kept refreshing and around 7:15am saw ROR pop with availability. Grabbed it quickly for 5:45pm. I had heard rumors that Disney may be holding some availability and dropping it later in the day(or someone never completed there purchase and it took sometime to reset). I figured good for the group to know if someone gets blocked out of something in a busy day, they can still have an opportunity to grab it if you keep refreshing every so often.
That being said I HATE Genie+, much prefer FP+, and from what CM's have told me there are few that actually like the new system. They have been telling guests to write Disney and complain, which I plan to do. I dont expect much but doesn't cost me anything(it worked at DVC with the point tables). Anyway, DG+ is only worth it at MK and HS. AK and EP simply don't have the rides to validate it.

 

[GBRforWDW]

I had heard rumors that Disney may be holding some availability and dropping it later in the day(or someone never completed there purchase and it took sometime to reset). I figured good for the group to know if someone gets blocked out of something in a busy day, they can still have an opportunity to grab it if you keep refreshing every so often.

Congrats on grabbing the RotR when it popped back up!

I'm keeping track of Slinky up above (last page) and it does look like, at least for that one, every 10 minutes after it runs out, some times are available again. I'm guessing these are never completed checkouts as the times are usually the same but the number of time slots continues to decrease.