“Sweet Spot” for Genie+ at Disney World
Depending on when you’re visiting Walt Disney World, you might be wondering if Genie+ is “worth it” during your vacation. When crowds are low, it’s possible Lightning Lanes won’t save much time. Conversely, during peak season when attendance is higher, selections might “sell out” or return times might be too late. This post discusses when it’s best to skip or buy Genie+, along with commentary about best leveraging paid FastPass and potential changes.
For starters, those who are knowledgeable about the Genie+ system are always going to come out ahead. If you’re reading this, that’s you. Even if you find all of this incredibly confusing, you have above-average knowledge simply by virtue of knowing that Genie+ exists at 7 am on the days you visit the parks. Genie+ is still new, but we’ve seen more guests than we can count learning about it in line at ~11 am and buying it then. FastPass+ had the exact same problem, so this isn’t a huge surprise.
To that end, there are three “advanced” level strategy posts we’d encourage you to read for fully leveraging the Genie+ system: How the Genie+ 120 Minute Rule Works, Tips for “Stacking” Genie+ Ride Reservations, and Speed Strategy for Genie+ Selections. None of those things are explained by Walt Disney World on its official sites or info, and probably for good reason–they can be confusing and overwhelming. However, if you take ~30 minutes to learn the ins and outs, you won’t just be above average–you’ll be a top 5% Genie+ power user.
Now to the titular question: is there a “sweet spot” for buying Genie+ at Walt Disney World?
You might recall in our early days of testing the Genie+ system, Sarah used it and I simply stuck to savvy strategy. (See Sarah’s Day Using Genie+ at Magic Kingdom and Tom’s Day in Magic Kingdom NOT Using Genie+ .) I came pretty close to accomplishing as much as her, albeit with aggressively criss-crossing the park to hit attractions at their optimal times.
Those early tests occurred during a lull in attendance after the start of Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary, with most days being 4/10 to 6/10 on the Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar. Some days were as low as 3/10 or as high as 7/10 depending upon the park.
Unsurprisingly, the lower the crowd level, the less advantageous Genie+ (and vice-versa). In fact, once standby wait times drop below a certain threshold, using Genie+ is arguably detrimental to the guest experience.
This might seem counterintuitive given that Genie+ allows you to skip standby lines, but the reason for it is pretty straightforward. If you’re using Genie+ to make Lightning Lane selections, you almost certainly aren’t touring the park in the most efficient manner. You’re zig-zagging around based upon availability, return times, etc.
If you’re just using standby lines on a relatively uncrowded day, you’re largely doing attractions in the order you approach them. Even if you’re waiting slightly longer at each attraction because you’re not skipping the line, you aren’t wasting extra time “commuting” between each attraction. Basically, there comes a point where that added walking between attractions outweighs the added wait within each line.
This is to say nothing about the fatigue of an extra 10,000 steps per day using Lightning Lanes. If that causes you to leave the park earlier–before wait times drop at night–you’re missing out even more.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are peak weeks. During Thanksgiving, we shared Genie+ Collapsing in Crowds at Walt Disney World. That detailed the many problems with Lightning Lanes and the paid FastPass service during what was the busiest week of the year (so far) at Walt Disney World, from technical difficulties to limited ride reservation inventory.
With holiday crowds descending upon Walt Disney World, Lightning Lane availability for many popular attractions was gone not long after park opening. Slinky Dog Dash was unavailable well before that, booking up for the entire day within minutes of 7 am. There were virtually no (worthwhile) options by midday, meaning that even savvy users of Genie+ are likely only getting a couple of “good” selections per day. Novices or those visiting parks other than Magic Kingdom would likely be doing worse. Some readers reported only scoring 1-2 Lightning Lane selections via Genie+ for the entire day.
This is to say nothing of the technical difficulties with Genie. High use of My Disney Experience has always strained the system and caused problems, but Genie takes that to the next level. The extra time you spend in line by not using Genie+ might be preferable to the frustrations and time incurred in bypassing some lines. Unless your tolerance for Disney IT induced pain is high, you might come out ahead just doing standby and not messing with it.
In the last ~10 days, we’ve seen the “sweet spot” in attendance for optimal use of Genie+ at Walt Disney World (see screenshots).
With holiday travelers heading home, most parks fell into the 6/10 to 8/10 range for crowd levels (with only a couple of exceptions to that). This was pretty much the perfect scenario for using Genie+ to book Lightning Lanes.
Following the busy Thanksgiving week, wait times are still high–but they’re comparatively lower. The parks posting averages in the 30-40 minute range most days.
Keep in mind that’s all attractions, including less popular ones that don’t offer (or need) Genie+ in the first place. If you’re only analyzing wait times for Genie+ eligible rides, that average is probably closer to an hour–at least for Disney’s Hollywood Studios and maybe Magic Kingdom.
On top of that, availability was far better. Slinky Dog Dash still didn’t last long, but every other attraction was available until after park opening.
Jungle Cruise, Test Track, and Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run were the next to book up, but those lasted hours–not minutes.
Over the course of the last week, we’ve seen everything except for Slinky Dog Dash still available at 11 am.
That’s significant, as that’s 120 minutes after park opening at Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, meaning it’s the latest that most guests would be eligible for their second selection.
By mid-afternoon, most parks still have ample Lightning Lane availability on 6/10 to 8/10 days. As such, you should be able to book at least 4 “good” Lightning Lane selections at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and 6+ at Magic Kingdom.
Epcot and Animal Kingdom don’t have that many good options, so you need to Park Hop to make those two “worth it” with Genie+ (or visit on a 9/10 or 10/10 day, when those two parks have longer waits but still less problems with the system).
It should go without saying, but what happened with Genie+ during Thanksgiving week should be addressed by Walt Disney World. It’s one thing for us to advise against purchasing it when crowds overwhelm the system–it’s another for Disney to let that happen, resulting in one of the longest lines in the parks being at Guest Relations.
Our expectation is that Disney will do something about those issues, probably before Christmas. There are a few possible options that should be relatively easy to implement.
The first is dynamic pricing, which has been suggested by several readers. Just like with park tickets and hotel rooms, Walt Disney World could make Genie+ more expensive on peak dates. They’ve actually already done this with Individual Lightning Lanes, which have variable pricing based on projected attendance levels. As we’ve noted elsewhere, the high range is still way too low for popular attractions like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
This option worries me for a couple of reasons. There’s the obvious issue of Walt Disney World already having increased prices a lot in the last two years while cutting an array of once free perks. Ride reservations are among those, and it would be pretty brazen for Walt Disney World to go from free to paid FastPass–and then increase the price of the latter almost immediately. That might be a bridge too far even by the company’s current standards.
Second, there’s the question of what price point for Genie+ would produce the intended result of a more manageable adoption rate. Usually, when people suggest something like that, what they really mean is “price other people out, but not me.”
There’s some degree of inelasticity when it comes to Walt Disney World’s demand during peak seasons. These are popular times to visit because they’re the only times that some people can travel. Despite Disney’s claim that date-based pricing would help redistribute crowds, that hasn’t really happened. People are simply paying more for peak dates and less for off-season ones, with attendance patterns almost unchanged.
If a family has already dropped $1,122 per night for a standard room at Grand Floridian during Christmas week, what’s their balking point for adding Genie+? Is an extra $30 per person really going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? (In other words, be careful with what you wish for when it comes to advocating for higher prices to reduce demand.)
Another option to address the problems plaguing Genie+ during the busiest weeks of the year would be to cap sales–make it possible for the Genie+ service to sell out. Effectively, this could mean that even on 10/10 days, there are still the same number of guests using Genie+ as on 8/10 days, which makes for a more pleasant experience and higher guest satisfaction.
This is the best solution, and the one we hope Walt Disney World implements. However, even this comes with a potentially significant pitfall: induced demand and the scarcity heuristic. Basically, it’s FOMO–the human tendency of ascribing higher values to things that are limited, and not wanting to lose out on them to others. Walt Disney World vacation planners are about the most risk averse people on the planet, which is why things like dessert parties book up with ease despite nonsensical price points. The scale is very different with Genie, but so too is the cost.
The end result is that when confronted with the possibility of Genie+ selling out, guests will be more inclined to purchase the service even when it’s not necessary. Instead of waiting to assess crowd levels or only buying for Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios on the day of their visit, more people will be inclined to buy the length of stay Genie+ ticket add-on.
The more guests who buy Genie+ when it’s not otherwise needed, the more necessary it becomes. Instead of it only being advised for 6/10 to 8/10 days, that recommendation potentially shifts downward to 4/10 days, as well. The “success” of Genie+ lies in a sufficient number of guests opting against buying it–if the adoption rate gets too high, it really does become nothing more than paid FastPass.
Finally, there’s the solution of adding attraction capacity to the Genie+ service so it more closely resembles MaxPass at Disneyland. That system never had these problems–despite there also being an Annual Passholder add-on option–because both parks there had higher ride counts. There are two ways of doing this at Walt Disney World, with the first being to build more attractions. Given that it’s taking them ~6 years to clone a launched motorbike roller coaster in a warehouse from Shanghai Disneyland, this doesn’t seem like a realistic suggestion.
The other would be to remove Individual Lightning Lanes and roll those into the Genie+ service. This also may seem like an unrealistic suggestion, because money. However, for attractions like Expedition Everest–that are performing poorly as ILLs–the case could be made that including them with Genie+ would increase purchases of that system, and ultimately be a net positive for Disney’s bottom line. (Without knowing what the utilization rate of Genie+ is at Epcot, I think a similar argument could be made there with Frozen Ever After–even though its ILL is performing decently.)
Ultimately, the best scenarios for purchasing Genie+ are those you’ll encounter when visiting Walt Disney World right now. Crowd levels in the 6/10 to 8/10 range. For Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it’s probably even lower than that, as the ride roster is so top-heavy. Genie+ is arguably useful at Magic Kingdom even in the 9/10 or 10/10 range, assuming you overlook the tech issues (or they get fixed) and not useful at Epcot or Animal Kingdom unless attendance hits those levels.
As with anything else, this advice on the “sweet spot” for Genie+ is subject to change. It’s entirely possible Disney will tweak how the service works prior to Christmas and New Year’s, or that the adoption rate will continue to increase. The former could make buying Genie+ advisable even on days with peak crowds, whereas the latter might undermine the value of Genie+ even more. There’s also the scenario of both occurring, in which case…who knows! We’ll continue to keep you posted with on-the-ground updates and developments with Genie+ at Walt Disney World.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you used Genie+ in the last week or so? If so, what has been your experience with Lightning Lanes or standby lines? Any success or failures making Genie+ selections? How many “good” selections were you able to book each day? Other problems or thoughts to share? Do you agree or disagree with my assessment? 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!
We were there Sunday 11.28- Saturday 12.04, admittedly one of the slower weeks and stayed on the grounds. That made park opening rope drop great. We didn’t use Genie or Lightning at any time and hit all the “E” rides with little to no wait. We did some park crossing but also took in things like Tiki Room and Muppets. Sunday was showing the adult new to our group around MK to get a feel and have dinner. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were rope drop at DHS, MK and AK respectively. Epcot was on the agenda but only after 2. Monday found us walking on to Rise all the way, completing that we hit Smugglers Run, walk on again with a 10 min wait for doing a 2nd ride. After that a 30 minute walking wait for Run Away Train. Slinky dog was saved for rope drop on Thursday and were on the 3rd car to start the ride. AK rope drop found us 1st into the park and easily walked on to Navi River, Avatar was a slight wait… we still didn’t stop walking until we were at the at the introduction area. We did Navi 1st as the walking/waiting for Avatar is much more immersive and interesting. Expedition Everest was down, so we explored the park.
The most I can say is we did everything because of the on-site advantage of the ½ hour earlier entrance rope drop. Our longest posted wait was 40 minutes for Space Mountain, and it really was mostly walking to get to the loading area. I am sure the age of our group helped ~ 12 & 14, parents, and grands. We usually plan mid-day breaks and come back for late afternoon/evenings. The highlight of the trip for me was something simple ~ Pandora at night. The atmosphere was amazing, Being at WDW at night is terrific, a light show that is everywhere. However, you experience WDW just remember ENJOY THE MAGIC.
Tom, do you have advice on how to anticipate crowds in order to decide whether to purchase Genie+? ? We are visiting on MLK weekend. Thank you
We have crowd calendars that should give you rough expectations for crowd levels: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/when-to-visit-disney-world/
MLK Day weekend should be in the sweet spot. 9/10 territory.
We are sitting at the airport after spending the last week at disney. We found the tips to be helpful. We ended up only using genie+ in HS and MK. Which worked very effectively. The biggest frustrations we found were that 1. It felt like you now have no option but to pay at certain parks. 2. I timed multiple parks that we used standby for and almost every single one was close to half the posted wait time. 3. The amount of ride closures was more than I have ever seen in my life. Yes I know rise goes down pretty much everyday, but we were even removed from the carousel today. 4. Though slightly off topic, but the amount of things that seemed to be sold out was very annoying. The “christmas” popcorn buckets are completely gone. Also some of the special 50th stuff such as the lemonade drinks with the characters that changed colors were out. We felt that disney changed during covid and we are not sure it’s for the best. I’m all for paying for the chance at some extra rides like 7 dwarfs or rise, but bring back fast passes so we can slightly plan our day with young children. Thank you though Tom for all that you do to help us plan!
@Kathy – it really depends on your group and how you tour/what your priorities are. I was at WDW 11/27-12/1, 1 day in each park and the last day hopped through 3 of them. We did Genie+ on our MK day only. It definitely allowed us to hit some rides we might have missed (Jingle Cruise), but I felt like I should have had more options later in the day. It pretty much became useless by 5pm. At HS, you are better off showing up before rope drop with early entry. Park opened at 9am and we were in Galaxy’s Edge at 7:45 and off Rise before 8:30. We did everything in HS we wanted in one day by finishing the night on Slinky. As Tom says, go early and stay late.
I’m trying to decide what would make the most sense for our trip next week. We currently have 4 day tickets, one day for each park. I was planning on purchasing the after hours event at MK for our 5th day but it sold out. So now I’m thinking about purchasing hopper tickets or adding a 5th park day. Also debating if I should purchase genie plus or not. Sigh. I miss the old days of 3 fast pass each day. That was much simpler and I liked that it was decided in advance. Anybody care to weigh in with what they would do?? (Dates are 12/14-12/20, 6 in my party).
One thing about paper Fastpass (basically Genie+ with extra walking and having to check wait times in person, but little to no technical problems) is that popular rides disappeared quickly during busy times like Thanksgiving week, or Presidents Day weekend. I can’t find the original comment right now, but another commentator mentioned that they had relative “success” Thanksgiving week because they wanted to ride a lot of the mid-tier Genie+ rides. While that also worked under paper Fastpass in busy times, the problem with the “beating the crowds to Big Thunder” strategy is that it can only work at parks with a Magic Kingdom level of Genie+ attractions. (Hollywood Studios only gets double digit attractions by including several stage shows that line skipping is virtually unnecessary.)
Not only is it virtually impossible to design a line skipping program that doesn’t hurt causal tourists at the expense of detailed planners (or vice versa), there really isn’t a way to design one that works for all four WDW parks.
This article is not about Thanksgiving week, it is about using G+ after the Thanksgiving crowds and it being a sweet spot because it could save time and LL has better availability. I and other commenters are just saying G+ was not a need during this time and we were able to enjoy the parks with and without G+. .
Hi I am now at WDW 11/30-12/09. Having a Magical Time with my 2 granddaughters 5&8. I decided not to use the genie + or LL. Standby lines are reasonable. No problems with waiting. I like taking my time and covering all sections of the parks. No need to rush around by a clock and phone in hand. I do check my genie for wait times only. I will use my money on other things like Character Meals & Shopping. I always booked 2 days for each park , plenty of time to do everything without the extra cost or doing the marathon.
Thanks, Tom! I just returned (November 29 thru December 4) from Disney World and promised to report on my experience with Genie+. Please note I was a solo traveler and did not mind paying for Genie+ or the two lighting lane reservations. I think my plans would work great for other solo travels or couples, but might get expensive for families on a tighter budget. I have some thoughts on how I think Disney should adjust Genie+ to accommodate all budgets, but that’s another post. First, this is definitely more complicated than the old Fast Pass system. Here was my strategy (and I really liked it as the results were very positive) – (1) get up early and purchase Genie+ before 7am, (2) at 7am, if going to MK or HS, purchase the LL reservations for that day in the morning timeframe, (3) if staying on property, make your first LL reservation at 7am (after your purchased LLs), (4) relax and enjoy the rest of your morning, but also get going for a rope drop, (5) rope drop and try to hit 2 or 3 rides without Genie+ or the LL reservations, (6) ride your first LL reservation and then book the next after checking in through the attraction entrance, (7) rinse and repeat! I did this at MK and HS and rode nearly every attraction before 12:30pm. I was having a great resort lunch and cocktail before 1pm! I spent the rest of the afternoon resort hopping and relaxing, stacking Genie+ reservations for EPCOT or another park and then returning later in the evening to a park. Just my experience and two cents! Hope you have a great trip!
What if we can pay to stack additional Genie+ reservations? Or just allow more than 1 reservation at a time? That way we can spread out the demand across the inventory throughout the day.
@Nochole. Thanksgiving week you might have been lucky to get 2 of those rides done by 11:30. SDD and MFSR were 90+ minutes. There was no stacking for the afternoon. By 11am in MK you could have got a C ride (not big thunder or splash). And by 1pm it was picked over pretty good.
It’s a big difference depending on crowd levels and if you want to do the headliners.
We were in the parks last week and tried G+ one day. We did HS in the morning and stacked for MK in the evening. We did 4 lightening lanes. Honestly our plan of doing mornings and evenings worked out for us the best, so we didn’t get G+ for any other park days. We did everything we wanted multiple times. Our last day we decided to do 3 parks. We used early entry for HS and did Slinky dog, Toy Story Mania smugglers run, Mickey and Minnie’s railway, and Star Tours and a last walk though of galaxy’s edge before 11:30am. After lunch, we hopped to MK. It was crowded and we ended up doing attractions we haven’t done for a long time, as well as repeats: Buzz, the steam boat, Tom Sawyer Island, People mover, Monsters laugh floor and dinner at Cosmic Rays to see Sonny Eclipse. We could have gotten on Space Mountain for a 25 minute wait, but we had already ridden it twice earlier in the week. After dinner, we hopped to Epcot to fill up on snacks, ride Figment, and see the American Adventure and Harmonious. It was a great, relaxing day to finish off the week. We had done all the headliners earlier in the week, some multiple times. So basically, we didn’t need G+. I can see it being helpful for quick trips, but it is certainly not a need if you know what you are doing.
Tom,
Let’s make a deal. You stop advocating for getting rid of Magic Carpets, and I’ll stop bashing Country Bears. (I want to love the Bears. I love the idea of the Bears. But when I saw it a few years ago after not having seen it for over 30 years, I was ready to cut my own arm off if it meant I could escape that endless show.)
Tom, as you know, currently guests using Genie+ can only reserve each attraction once per day. If THAT was changed (one of my wishes) and guests could book the same attraction more than once per day like we could with FP+, do you think that would have a positive impact on the system being more worth it?
We spent Thanksgiving week with 14 of us. We did an 8 day park-hopper ticket and I consider myself very knowledgeable of WDW. Couple things i strongly disliked: 1) We couldn’t book anything in advance. I prefer to do all the planning prior to the trip so it’s stress free when we are there. I didn’t like having to jump on my phone at 7am every day and not knowing what we would even be able to get. 2) i didn’t like that the genie+ selections didn’t get you multiple times to choose from. The ILL options did, at least in the beginning of the day when they had some. But the regular genie+ rides did not. Which made me feel like i did need to be my on phone all day to monitor my tip board and see when a ride opened up to a time that worked well for us.
Our first two days were spent criss-crossing parks and talking multiple times to guest relations. I felt like i got the hang of it after that but my two hangups that i wrote about above were still frustrating. All in all, with the crazy crowds – we were glad we got it and every time we walked by a line that was 120+ min long, we said – well worth it to have genie+!!!!! We also had family members though that did not like genie+ and were frustrated most of the trip. So i just think it depends! Oh, my other feedback was we couldn’t book something for 14 of us – so b/c we had two designated genie+ bookers in the group, our schedules didn’t line up. That was a bummer for our families that went.
Thanksgiving Day – my genie didn’t work on my cell for 6 hours that day. Super frustrating – but was so thankful my husband’s app was working. If we didn’t have another cell phone with, that day would have been rough.
All in all – i prefer fast pass. but we made it work. And i’m thankful to have an option to skip the lines, if i want to.