Animal Kingdom Genie+ Priorities & Lightning Lane Ride Ranks
Animal Kingdom has 11 attractions with Genie+ access, which is the fewest of any park at Walt Disney World. On top of that, only a handful of those are actually worth using the Lightning Lane to skip the line. This guide ranks the rides in terms of time-saved and how quickly each reservation books up. (Updated May 7, 2023.)
Most of the time, we don’t recommend buying Genie+ at Disney’s Animal Kingdom (DAK). However, most of the time is not all of the time–hence this guide. There’s about ~25% of the time when buying Genie+ at Animal Kingdom can be advantageous.
This applies during both peak season and when Park Hopping, two scenarios occurring with some frequency at DAK. Walt Disney World has experienced busy days that have “stress-tested” the system, so we know exactly what’s in demand among the Genie+ attractions at Animal Kingdom and what isn’t.
When it comes to crowds, wait times, and Genie+ availability, Animal Kingdom tends to be more laid back, which is in large part due to fewer guests buying Genie+ here. This is especially true on lower to moderate crowd days. In those scenarios, only a couple of Genie+ attractions will have notable wait times, and even those aren’t that bad.
On high crowd days, the wheels can fall off–and that’s when Genie+ is most useful. The park does a poor job of absorbing crowds, and lines spike significantly, with Animal Kingdom often averaging the longest wait times of any park at Walt Disney World on 9/10 or 10/10 crowd days. The difference–and reason for this–is that Animal Kingdom doesn’t have as many rides, so guests are concentrated among a handful of attractions.
Consequently, whether Genie+ will save you a lot of time or almost no time at all really depends upon the crowd level. This isn’t really a profound statement–it’s true at all of the parks–but it’s most pronounced at Animal Kingdom. On a low to moderately busy day, you won’t save enough time to make the purchase of Genie+ worth the money unless you’re Park Hopping after DAK. It’s also arguably not worth the time, as Genie+ will force you to criss-cross the sprawling park rather than doing things as you naturally arrive to them while navigating normally.
During peak season, it’s a different story as 5 of the Genie+ Lightning Lane attractions can have significant wait times throughout the day that are worth skipping. That’s still not many attractions, but it can amount to time-savings of ~4-5 hours, which is pretty good for the $16 purchase. This isn’t to say you should buy Genie+ on those days, but rather, that you should only buy it on days with peak crowds or, again, when Park Hopping elsewhere after finishing Animal Kingdom.
On any of these days, it’s possible to tackle Animal Kingdom without Genie+ or Lightning Lanes. For that, our 1-Day Animal Kingdom Itinerary covers how you can accomplish everything even if you’re staying off-site and don’t want to spend anything extra on Genie+ or Individual Lightning Lanes. It also offers great “zig when they zag” advice to flip the script on Pandora – World of Avatar and the other side of Animal Kingdom.
If you’re staying on-site, the one thing we recommend is Early Entry at Animal Kingdom. If you can’t swing getting up and out the door before park opening and are not buying Park Hopper tickets, consider arriving late to Animal Kingdom. It’s rare that we don’t recommend rope dropping a park, but Animal Kingdom experiences significantly lower crowds in the last 3 hours of the day–because people run out of things to do and head towards the exit early.
With that said, the goal of this post is to give you the tools and info you need to create your own Animal Kingdom touring plan with Genie+, rather than relying on our 1-Day Animal Kingdom Genie+ and Lightning Lanes Itinerary. You could also adopt “a best of both worlds” approach, consulting that pre-made plan and the rankings here so you understand the why of it, and can adjust the plan to account for your ADRs, showtimes, walking distances, etc. Due to the abundance of animal exhibits and walking trails–all of which have no wait times–it’s pretty easy to put together an Animal Kingdom Genie+ itinerary without a ton of backtracking.
Additionally, see our Guide to Genie+ at Walt Disney World & Lightning Lane FAQ for all of the foundational need-to-know info about this replacement for free FastPass+. This whole system is confusing and convoluted, so you might have a question or two-dozen. That answers all of the most common ones we’ve been receiving from readers.
Finally, this offers ride priorities for Lightning Lanes via Genie+ and not Individual Lightning Lanes (ILL), which are pay-per-ride. At present, the ILL attraction for Animal Kingdom is Avatar Flight of Passage. Previously, Expedition Everest was the other ILL attraction, but it has been dropped from the lineup due to lack of popularity.
Conversely, Avatar Flight of Passage is potentially worth the money. We are not keen on buying a la carte front of line access, so we do (and recommend) Flight of Passage first thing in the morning, during the lunch rush, or towards the end of the night–but those with the resources might consider buying an ILL for Flight of Passage. On moderate crowd days or below, that’s probably the better use of the money than purchasing Genie+ for Animal Kingdom.
Now, on with the ride rankings for Genie+ at DAK…
The Best of Genie+ at Animal Kingdom
1. Na’vi River Journey – This is the objective, consensus #1 Genie+ Lightning Lane selection at Animal Kingdom. If you’re planning on rope dropping Flight of Passage and want to knock out both Pandora – World of Avatar attractions first thing, it’s a savvy selection that also will give you quick turnaround time on your next choice.
2. Kilimanjaro Safaris – The argument could be made that, qualitatively, Kilimanjaro Safaris is actually the better #1 pick for Animal Kingdom. This is due to the fact that wildlife on the safari is most active first thing in the morning (and late in the afternoon), making an earlier return time subjectively preferrable. However, the standby line is short early in the morning and late in the afternoon, so using the Lightning Lane then is usually pointless.
Personally, I’d go for Na’vi River Journey without hesitation and “play it by ear” with Kilimanjaro Safaris. While standby wait times for both attractions can be long midday, they tend to be short for Kilimanjaro Safaris early and drop off a cliff by mid-afternoon–the two best times of day to do the safari, anyway. By contrast, there’s no subjectively “better” time for Na’vi River Journey since the experience is an artificially-staged indoor boat ride. (Sorry for the spoiler that you don’t actually visit an alien planet.)
3. Meet Favorite Disney Pals at Adventurers Outpost – When it first returned, the explorer Minnie & Mickey Mouse meet & greet shot up the rankings due to elevated demand and staffing limitations. As of May 2023, it has improved considerably and now has much improved Lightning Lane availability–and usually shorter standby wait times.
With that said, you can also pretty easily beat the crowd at Adventurers Outpost by doing it before 10:30 am or after 3:30 pm. Between those hours, we strongly favor using the Lightning Lane to see the globetrotting couple as they prepare themselves for their next grand expedition. The standby line moves slow, and although it contains some fun references, it’s not a pleasant experience.
4. Expedition Everest – Now a permanent part of the Genie+ lineup, Expedition Everest can have decent wait times during the middle of the day. However, it’s relatively common to find Genie+ Lightning Lane availability well into the afternoon…and there’s also a single rider line.
5. Kali River Rapids – This is another a tricky one. During the colder months of the year, Kali River Rapids is pretty unpopular and won’t have much of a wait, making Genie+ totally pointless even on 8/10 or 9/10 crowd days. However, once warm weather hits it becomes popular once again. On the hottest days of the year, this leapfrogs Expedition Everest and Kilimanjaro Safaris into the #3 spot.
6. Dinosaur – Here’s where we enter “only necessary in high crowds” country. On a low or moderately crowded day, Dinosaur will have a short or nonexistent wait and Genie+ won’t be necessary. On busier days, having a Lightning Lane time reserved could save you 60 minutes here.
The Rest of Genie+ at Animal Kingdom
It’s Tough to Be a Bug – We have yet to see a day when this attraction has run out of Genie+ Lightning Lane reservations.
The Animation Experience at Conservation Station – Same deal here. Having this as a Lightning Lane option strikes us as a way to “trick” unsuspecting guests to take the train out to Conservation Station. Don’t get us wrong–we enjoy the relaxing ride, goat farm, and whole area…but it’s not exactly popular with regular guests nor does it normally need line-skipping access.
Stage Shows – At Animal Kingdom, this means Festival of the Lion King, Feathered Friends in Flight, and Finding Nemo: The Big Blue…and Beyond! (Formerly Finding Nemo: The Musical.) While Genie+ offers priority seating, which can amount to a better view, it’s typically not all that advantageous for shows.
To the contrary, booking a Lightning Lane for this is just going to amount to needless backtracking or clicking in the app, and the opportunity cost of not booking something else. The vast majority of guests should simply do shows via the standby lines.
Ultimately, you should be able to knock out every single Animal Kingdom attraction via Genie+ using Lightning Lanes on the vast majority of days. The biggest problem you’ll run into on busier days is booking both Na’vi River Journey and Kilimanjaro Safaris, which may not be possible on 10/10 crowd days.
The majority of guests staying the whole day at Animal Kingdom won’t need Genie+ except on those 10/10 crowd days…and even then it’s not strictly necessary. Wait times drop a lot in the last 3 hours of the day, and we’ve yet to have any problem accomplishing every major ride at Animal Kingdom via standby in a full day. (The trickier part is occupying the middle of the day when lines are at their worst.)
Where Genie+ is most useful for Animal Kingdom is when arriving late and leaving early before bouncing to Epcot, Hollywood Studios, or Magic Kingdom for the evening. Since Genie+ offers minimal value at both DAK, it makes a ton of sense to combine a Genie+ day here with the other parks.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
How would you rank your ride priorities using Genie+ and Lightning Lanes in Animal Kingdom? Surprised by any of the rankings in our top 5, that the explorer Minnie & Mickey Mouse meet & greet ranks so highly, or is this all pretty obvious? Are you planning on buying Genie+ or skipping it? Will you use it on a DAK-only day, or exclusively when Park Hopping to Epcot? Do you agree or disagree with our rankings? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Just got back from Disney….Genie + is way worse than Fast Pass. Hated it. Lines were long and Kite Tales at AK was the lamest thing Disney has done in a long time.
DW first week of Jan. Race weekend. Thurs to Monday. 9 of us ages 5-60.
Some first timers and teens. Planning on park hopping 1/2 days to have an am and pm in MK, AK, HS. no Epcot this time. Not likely to make rope drops with this group. Per your Blogs, I read every day, Being a novice at Genie+, should we even try to do Genie + or just take our chances? You have said Star Wars and Pandora go fast at 7 am. I’d like your opinion of where it would help me to even stress over it.
We’re going for a short 4 day trip in early February. Should we even need Genie+? Also…on our first day we’re going to DAK, but won’t be getting there mid-afternoon, is Genie+ a must for that day or not worth it?
It’s hard to say whether you’ll need Genie+ at all in February–we’re expecting higher than normal crowds. If that proves true, you’ll want it for DHS and Magic Kingdom.
You won’t need Genie+ on your late afternoon arrival day at DAK. It won’t be worth it–just stay until park closing when wait times drop!
We are thinking about combining AK with a waterpark. Which would be better first? We will have Genie+, so I was thinking waterpark first and I could start accumulating LL reservations while there and then knock them out quickly at AK in the afternoon.
Agreed. KS is different every time you get on the safari vehicle. NRJ is a 4 minute “ eye candy” blip on the screen if waiting for long times to enter.
Very helpful advice to the general population. We find the Safari ride to be far superior to Na’vi River as one is interactive and the other is “eye candy”. Would also emphasize that Avatar May be the best Nee Disney attraction in memory and should be a “ no holds barred” must do.
Your suggestion to combine both DAK early and EPCOT late is brilliant in 2022 while EPCOT is under reconstruction. On 8/10 days EPCOT is easily doable with Ratatouille and Frozen the only timing challenges. Ciao.
How are Flight of Passage stand-by waits these days? Still insane?
Tom, when Expedition Everest closes for refurbishment from Jan to Apr 2022, do you expect another attraction will be removed from G+ and sold as an ILL, or that there will only be one ILL during that time? Thanks – love your blog.
When taking pictures with Disney magic is everywhere no need to ask . Say hello To the artist taking your picture instead of sticking your arm out with your band and not saying a word. Don’t let family members stand to the side screaming at the kids for Thier attention that’s the number one cause won’t want to take a picture
I agree with your tie for first place, but the tiebreaker for me was actually duration of the rides themselves. NRJ is maybe four minutes (it feels insanely short), while KS is a 20-minute ride. So, psychologically, if I book a LL for KS first and the NRJ slots are all gone by the time I’m eligible for a second reservation, I’m probably just not riding NRJ unless the wait time goes down at some point. I actually really like NRJ, but it just feels like getting the short end of the stick to stand in line for an hour plus for such a short ride. On the flip side, I will gladly stand in line for an hour to do KS because the ride itself lasts almost half my wait. It just feels like I’m getting more bang for my (time) buck.
What are your recommendations for Genie+ when you start at another park and go to Animal Kingdom in the afternoon?
Thanks Tom. And as Costello would say to Abbot. “Fine now explain to me what I just said.”
So are you saying even in rope dropping we should do Na’vi as LL instead of trying to get it in Early entry? I was hoping to early entry both rides in Pandora and choose a LL for one of the other rides.
@Darren, seriously on the okapi?
I’m still debating buying this for our non-parking hopping AK day over the MLK holiday weekend…but with EE down for maintenance, that leaves basically 3-4 rides that we can probably go to after 2pm and buy FOP if necessary.
Thanks as always for all your reporting. You really do a bang up job. The more I read the more comfortable with Genie+ I become and foolishly think I understand.
Honestly, do I have this right? I get up to rope drop ROTR at DHS and at 7am make my first pick, say SDD, but the earliest I can get is 5pm (lucky to have gotten it at all) Now I can’t make another pick till 9 am. At 9am I get TOT (not to be confused with T2T which everyone should be supporting – Happy Holidays hint hint) for 9:30am. Remember this is theory only. I realize on planer Earth this is probably impossible. SO when I report in to TOT at 9:30am I can then make another selection and don’t have to wait till 11 am. Is that correct?
Now it’s 9:30 am and I check in to TOT. I decide we’re park hopping to AK to view Avatar in the evening so for my next selection I choose NRJ for 8:45pm. At this point I can’t make another pick till 11:30am. Is this correct? It’s going on 10am and I have what you kids call “stacked” two rides. Yes?
You have it mostly right–but the clock doesn’t start ticking on your second Genie+ reservation until park opening, so you need to move all of those times forward 2 hours.
My DAK day was fairly low crowd level and I had no problem doing everything with a rope drop sans G+, including all shows, trails, and the magic that is Kite Tails. On a subsequent day, I parkhopped about 3PM or so on a more moderate day, and since I was using G+ for park hops, I found the LL for Safari quite useful to bypass a 100 minute wait. Unfortunately I am not allowed on the Safari anymore because something about my presence greatly offended the okapi. Other than that, I had a great time.
Tom
You mention 9/10 or 10/10 days. Where are you getting these from? With having to make the decision by 7:00 am how do we know how busy the park will be?
Two additional thoughts based on our trip last week here: (1) We split our last day at MK and AK, going to AK second and Genie+ and it worked out great– we were able to do a few early easy MK FP rides and then get the Safari for 2p, Avatar for 2:45, Navi River for 3:00—it actually (could have also lined up Dinosaur right after)–if we weren’t headed to the airport, I could have also picked up a few A list rides for DHS (RnR, ToT) if we park hopped again around 5:30. (2) We did AK the first time on Sunday 11/28 and crowds DID NOT thin out as the day went on. The line was over 1h for the safari as the line closed for the day, Avatar was also well over an hour the last time I checked before park closing. Everest was down to less than 10m though!
Thank you! I already had a pretty good idea that it’d be helpful on my AK/Epcot day, but this gives me an idea of what to target–namely River Journey and Safari here for sure in the morning, and Dinosaur if it’s crowded. Then, if it isn’t, I can start booking times at Epcot for the evening. Not that Epcot needs a lot either, but…it wasn’t in our cards to have a more-useful AK/HWS day. On the other hand, this means I’m not having to book Slinky dog at 7am and not get another pass bookable until 10am…