Genie+ Wish List: 3 Big Improvements for Disney World
I don’t think you quite realize what you got here!
So, why don’t you just ruminate,
While I illuminate the possibilities!
All you gotta do is rub that phone
And I’ll say
Walt Disney World fan,
What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order
Jot it down
You ain’t never had a friend like Ge-nie (plus)
Sorry for butchering that classic song, but let’s say you’ve got three wishes for Genie+ improvements to the app feature, to be exact. And ixnay on the wishing for free FastPass (or more wishes). That’s all. Three. Uno, dos, tres. No substitutions, exchanges or refunds. What ways would you like to see Genie+ improved at Walt Disney World?
As someone who has used Genie+ at Walt Disney World many times, I have a list that’s three miles long, no doubt. However, of that multi-mile list, there’s a trio of high-priority improvements that immediately jump out to me and are realistically for Walt Disney World to implement. So Abracadabra, let ‘er rip, let’s make those issues disappear! (I’m sorry, the song is stuck in my head; I shouldn’t take that out on you all.)
3. Modify Button – Genie has a number of user interface “quirks” that make it seem like it was thrown together quickly without much reference to its predecessor, and with next to no field testing. Without question, the most frustrating omission is the lack of a modify button on existing Lightning Lane ride reservations.
This oversight is particularly puzzling because the ability to modify a selection was present in the old FastPass+ system. How it worked is pretty intuitive. You would simply click on one of your existing FastPass+ reservations and then click a modify button, rather than cancel. That pulled up a version of the booking flow, allowing you to access the full list of attractions with FastPass+ availability, including different times for your existing attraction selection.
If that’s difficult to visualize, pull up an Advance Dining Reservation and click the modify button on that. It’s the exact same idea with ADRs or, you know, pretty much any other online reservation system!
The lack of a modify button is so significant because that one simple feature would provide a safety net. It would allow you the ability to lock-in a ride reservation and then continue searching, looking for better options. In particular, ride reservation refills and cancellations. If you’ve never used Genie+, this missing feature may not seem like a big deal. Just cancel and rebook instead, right?
In theory, that works. In practice, the process of searching for a new Lightning Lane, then cancelling your current one and rebooking is incredibly time-consuming and involves several clicks. I’d hazard a guess that, 9 times out of 10, by the time you cancel and get back to the booking screen, whatever you wanted is already gone. (I have literally never had success canceling and rebooking something better. I don’t even attempt it anymore.)
Beyond that, losing your original reservation can put you in a worse position, as you have to continue searching until you find a suitable replacement. Meanwhile, the clock has reset on the 120 minute rule. It really feels like having the rug magic carpet pulled out from under you.
2. Lock Times – Speaking of having the magic carpet pulled out from under you, let’s set the scene for the next issue. You’re up early, fully caffeinated, and ready to go. You get all of the speed strategy pre-steps squared away. Right as the clock rolls over to 7:00:00 am on time.gov, you refresh. You snatch Slinky Dog Dash with a perfect 9:00 am return time. Success!
…Or so you thought. After quickly clicking through and reviewing the confirmation screen, you’re surprised to discover that your “perfect” 9:00 am return time has shifted a little bit…to 5:40 pm. (Think that’s bad? Now imagine the same scenario, but with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, an attraction you specifically paid extra to book at a specific time.) That won’t work, as you have an ADR for Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater at that exact time you booked 60 days ago at the crack of dawn.
Now, you could modify the Slinky Dog Dash Lightning Lane…oh wait, no you can’t. There’s no modify button. Naturally, those highly coveted Sci-Fi ADRs are long gone (in reality, you probably booked this over 60 days ago), so you can’t modify that, either. We probably don’t need to further elaborate on why this Lightning Lane return time drift causes problems–this example tells the whole story.
Worse yet, you manage to snatch a coveted Lightning Lane selection, and while clicking through to complete the booking process, it disappears. You get the dreaded “Currently Unavailable: The Lightning Lane entrance for this experience is not available to book at this time. Please check back throughout the day or try selecting a different experience now.” Translation:Â someone with faster fingers booked the Lightning Lane out from under you. Tough break, pal!Â
Again, the suggestion for how to fix these issues comes from…pretty much every other online reservation system in use everywhere else? Lock the selection time for 60 seconds, 5 minutes, or whatever is deemed appropriate to give guests adequate time to complete the process without any surprises.
Neither of these first two suggestions are anything revolutionary, and that’s part of what makes them so frustrating. These are both painfully obvious features that should’ve existed from the get-go. The omission of both is conspicuous, and suggests that Genie+ was rushed to market with insufficient development time, resources, and testing. (Two things that frustrate me to no end as a consumer are when companies charge me for a service they didn’t properly invest in themselves or when they don’t value my time. Disney is arguably the biggest offender on both fronts.)
1. Start Upon Park Entry (not 7 am) – Another big complaint we’ve heard from readers concerns the stress of having to wake up early to book Lightning Lane ride reservations at 7 am. Our suggestion here is that Walt Disney World use the rule in place at Disneyland, which is that booking begins as soon as guests enter the park for the day. This policy at the California parks is sensible and workable–we know that because it’s exactly how both MaxPass and paper FastPass before that operated.
While the first two conspicuous omissions are inexcusable, I’m a bit more forgiving of Walt Disney World’s decision to use the 7 am start time for Genie+ booking. While this might seem unprecedented, this rule is actually inherited from the virtual queue system used at Walt Disney World. To understand the “why” of this (which is important context), we’ll go back to the opening of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. For the first couple weeks the attraction was open, guests could enter its virtual queue immediately upon tapping into Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Realizing this, guests showed up earlier and earlier to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Even though the official opening time wasn’t until 8 am, people were packing the area around the entrance several hours before that. Walt Disney World likes to avoid crowds outside the turnstiles for safety reasons, so they quietly opened the park long before then (between 6 and 6:30 am) before moving up the park opening time to 7 am. That fixed nothing. All it did was cause guests to arrive even earlier, wanting to beat the crowds and be the first to score spots in the virtual queue. (The photos above and below are from the morning before sunrise–not the evening!)
This problem persisted to the point that Walt Disney World instituted the 7 am entry time for the virtual queue. Because demand far surpassed supply, guests also had to be in the park. There continued to be an early morning crush of crowds, but it wasn’t as early since there was no advantage to arriving increasingly earlier. Someone who showed up at 4:11 am might get a worse boarding group than someone who arrived at 6:59 am.
With the reopening of the parks, Walt Disney World wanted to avoid high crowd situations and earlier opening times, so they tweaked the process yet again. This time, the assist of Disney Park Pass allowed for the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue entry process to be limited to only guests with reservations. Why am I recapping the evolution of virtual queues in a post about Genie+ improvements? Because this history informs how the 7 am ‘rule’ came to be, and why it’s not so unreasonable.
Nevertheless, I would argue that this this policy–so clearly inherited from the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue and not part of the Genie+ experience at Disneyland–has outlived its usefulness. For one thing, Walt Disney World long ago dropped any semblance of concern about congestion as was the case shortly after reopening.
For another, park hours have normalized to the point that Disney’s Hollywood Studios is regularly opening to the public at 8 am once again. In addition to that, the tapstiles are typically open by 7:30 am, with a steady stream of guests entering at that hour–a far cry from the onslaught of early 2020.
The argument could be made that changing the Genie+ policy to allow guests to make their first Lightning Lane ride reservation only after entering the park would change this dynamic. It would pull forward crowds, a repeat of that unpleasant scene in early 2020. I’m highly skeptical that would be the case for a couple of reasons.
First, there’s the simple reality that Early Entry precludes the majority of guests from doing so even if they wanted. As it stands, on-site guests are able to enter the parks (or proceed past a certain point, in the case of Magic Kingdom) long before off-site guests.
Indirectly, this would also give on-site guests another advantage, and at a time when perks for booking Walt Disney World resorts are limited by historical standards. Being able to book their first Lightning Lane around 30 minutes before off-site guests would give on-site guests better return times, and potentially mean 1 extra booking per day with Genie+.
Second, aside from Slinky Dog Dash and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, no attractions are running out of availability particularly quickly with the Genie+ system. (Add Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind to that list soon.) So to the extent that this problem would even theoretically occur, it would only happen at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot.
However, it probably would not even happen there, as it’s not happening with Early Entry. Even on busy days, there is not the same ‘crush of crowds’ stampeding DHS each morning to be among the first to experience them during Early Entry. This could be a matter of awareness, but that’s doubtful. (It’s avoidable at Epcot by using a virtual queue for Cosmic Rewind.)
To be sure, changing the approach is a risk for Walt Disney World (albeit one specifically confined to DHS). It’s one thing for me to express confidence in this not being a problem as an armchair analyst with a guest-centric point of view. There’s no accountability for me in being wrong (other than saying: “my bad, maybe they shouldn’t have done this”). Moreover, this would almost certainly be a win for early-rising tourists staying on-site, even if it might cause problems for others.
Admittedly, I would not have this same confidence if I were in charge of operations and my words had consequences. Instead, my perspective would be “maintain the status quo at all costs” because so many alternatives had been tested (with the Rise of the Resistance VQ) and so many did not work. In other words, it’s understandable why operations wouldn’t want to rock the boat.
Nevertheless, I think it’s worth the risk. This 7 am start time is incredibly frustrating for a huge segment of guests, and also makes availability go faster (again, primarily for DHS). Changing things up might be a bit of a gamble, but there’s also the reality that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance isn’t the shiny new thing it was 2 years ago, and Slinky Dog Dash isn’t worth that much effort. A lot more people were willing to get up early and jump through hoops for a “free” brand new blockbuster attraction than will do so for a ~2 year old ride that costs $15/person or a weiner dog-themed outdoor roller coaster that’s also part of a paid package.
I’m willing to bet that if the policy were changed to allow the first Lightning Lane reservation to be made upon entering the parks, it would normalize demand. There would be some pull-forward of guest arrival times to the parks, but also a slow-down of distribution/return times.
While it’s not directly analogous due to demographic differences, this is more or less what can be observed at Disneyland. (Even if it played out differently, there are other fixes for this–like staggered refill times, and a bit more transparency about them.) By and large, the guests who were always going to wake up early would do exactly that, and those who wanted to sleep in would do that.
In short, starting Genie+ booking when guests enter the park would strike a better balance, dial down the competitiveness, and make for a more pleasant overall experience. The story is similar with the top two improvements, too. If the complaints we’re hearing about Genie+ are representative, this trio of improvements would be a nice compromise between the current system and its FastPass+ predecessor, which would be very welcome by Walt Disney World fans. It wouldn’t instantly address all of the outrage, but it would like make guests happier who have come to terms with now paying for something that was once free.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of these suggested improvements for Genie+ at Walt Disney World? Do you think any of these wishes are bad ideas, or ones that could have unintended negative consequence? Assuming that advance booking days/weeks/months is out of the question, do you favor making reservations at 7 am or upon entering the park? What would be your three Genie+ wishes? Do you agree or disagree with my picks? 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!
From your lips to Disney’s ears…
I agree with “lock times” , and the Modify button. The Modify button is a laughable oversize in my opinion, and expect it’s arrival. I don’t mind the 7 am booking. To me out helps that I have a plan already before leaving my house or hotel room. The anxiety of getting in a long line waiting to scan in to start booking LLs is not something I miss. Also most people are already up at that time in would think of they’re going to the parks.
I really wish Genie+ would let users select later return times, like FP+ used to. We could plan our day around our ADRs, and minimize the walking distance. But if Genie+ forces users to take the next available return time…no ADRs for us. Definitely not at DHS, anyway.
I like your #2 and #3, but I don’t want to have to be in the park to book. We did almost no rope drops and loved it. We’d rather hang out at the pool in the morning and stack LL for the afternoon. So much more relaxing!
We made our first trip to WDW recently. Since we were planning on buying the G+ and ILL regardless I would have much preferred the ability to book them in advance (either a week or month before). I hated having to set my alarm every morning coming from the west coast as we wanted to sleep in. This isn’t the free FP days…..if they’re gonna charge why not let on property guests book early if they want.
I HATE the 7 am booking time. HATE IT. We are night owls and normally don’t even roll into the parks until 4 pm or so. We used Genie+ every day of our November trip and every day, I resented what it did to my vacation. I’m considering not even bothering with Genie+ for much of our upcoming trip next week because we’re supposed to be sleeping in and enjoying ourselves, not getting up at dawn as we do at home. If WDW requires you to actually be in the park to make your first selection, I’ll absolutely never buy it, since it will be useless to us.
Disney, PLEASE let resort guests have the ability back to book Genie+ in advance and to choose the times! If I could book in advance the way I could with FastPass+, I’d probably buy Genie+ for every day of every trip. And the ability to book in advance/choose your times could be an added perk for resort guests, who don’t have much reason to stay on property these days.
“0”
Too much lightning Lane users
The old fast pass system was fare. You walked to the attraction and use your ticket. Then, if available, you receive a fast pass.
Genie + & individual lightning Lane system are only for rich guys. So now Disney got first and second class customers. All depends on how big is your wallet.
Only thing I’d add is I wish resort guests could book in advance like it used to be! Then none of us would have to get up a 7am. Or stress about what we’re having to book to ride all day.
Tom, I would say that #1 and 2 are BRILLIANT, if they weren’t so bloody OBVIOUS! Seriously, they are critical deficiencies in the system, and they need to be pointed out constantly so that even Disney will see that they are obvious. Not just the real smart guys like you and me – and most of your respondents here. I agree with the crowd sentiment that the ONLY fix to the registration time is to return to the ability to book rides in advance. I like 60 days, even 30, but I would be a lot happier with 10 than day of….
Thanks for keeping on these issues that have pretty much taken the magic out of the parks, even for my young grandchildren who, while they are Disney veterans even at a tender age, don’t understand why they can’t do everything they used to have the ability to do. Keep up the good fight.
I agree with all three of these! I just used Genie+ at Disneyland and it was great but I’m apprehensive about it for my fall WDW trip. The one thing I would add is I wish it would grey out attractions you’ve already experienced and are ineligible to book again. More than once at Disneyland, I saw a great time pop up for Smuggler’s Run for example and then get disappointed after a couple clicks when I realized I couldn’t take advantage of it
I’d #1 (the last one) a bit as I’d like to change the time to park opening without it being in person. Making it be in person may bias it against newer guests who don’t know things that we take for granted, like how official opening time can be more like guidelines than fast rules even for the general public or how WDW isn’t as compact as DL or that there’s a giant lake between the parking lot and the Magic Kingdom. I just want to change the time to simplfy the rules for the next reservation; I’ve got to imagine there’s a backlog of people trying to get their second LL at 9AM based on the guidelines for getting the third, fourth, etc. LL.
My genie wish is no phones needed. I would gladly rent a device that I could use while there if I wanted too that included the genie + option! We spent 10 days at Disney world last year. We would see meltdowns of kids and angry upset parents trying to take the phones away from their kiddos so they could “book a ride, check wait times, or order food!” No fun at all. We were 2 adults and grateful to not have to deal with that!
How about giving two or three lightning lane selections .. love the idea of the modify button… Don’t like the only book if in the park button. This doesn’t help anyone who got lucky enough to book dining outside of the park and can’t get there early and then be way behind on booking rides(or a ride as it stands now). How about a wish the Disney’s IT team get on the ball and not have the error messages all the time .. they know everyone will be on at 7am… C’mon Disney step it up…
I can’t help but feel like this sets up a false dichotomy: (A) wake up before 7am every day of your vacation and book from your hotel, or (B) wake up every day of your vacation before 7am in order to get breakfast, transportation to parks, and check in at the turnstiles at 30 minutes before park opening. Neither one addresses the problem of wanting to have a more relaxing start to the day on vacation, especially if you are coming from a western time zone, or staying up late for various disney after hours events.
There is of course an option (C) that worked well for years–allow guests to book 30 or 60 days in advance of their vacation, just like dining, so that you only have to do it once from the comfort of your own home instead of every day of an exhausting vacation.
100% agree
I feel you are exactly right about this being a false dichotomy. I can see that Genie+ is more friendly to those who are “learning as they go” than FP+ was. But even FP- was friendlier to those who want to sleep in on vacation.
# 1 – No, the lack of a modify button is a feature, not a bug. The risk of having the new reservation “gone” helps reduce the churn of reservations. I perceive this modify button request as a benefit for Super Users. #2 – Yes, but a very short duration for the lock in time; no more than it takes to presses the buttons; say 10 seconds? # 3 This complaint still amazes me; but I am asleep by 10 pm most vacation nights. So I assume this is a night owl vs. early bird thing.
First, these are also my three wishes, so it’s not fair that my wishes were already taken by someone who was faster and up earlier.
Along with the modify option, what if G+ used the mobile order modify option, where you can keep pushing your window out by 15 minutes or so, in case you can’t get there within the allotted time? That’s always neat, as I am an early food planner and way too optimistic about how quickly I can go number two to “make room.” To avoid huge rushes on LL queues by latecomers, maybe you’re limited to one or two modifies per selection, I don’t know.
Other than the ones you mention, and the fact that ILL rides need to be moved to the Genie+ pool –no more ILLs–my remaining stuff is minor edits. For instance, finding Genie+ in the first place. The option is a bit hidden, since it’s beneath the thing that says “Get Started with Genie” and I think most people don’t know that “Genie” and “Genie+” are two very entirely different things, so they click on the Genie part and, as Rocket might say, the chaos begins. It would be like if Apple decided to name their AirPods “iPhone+”. Yes the two work together but we’re talking about ENTIRELY different functions. Genie is the free and useless planner. Genie+ is your Lightning Lane dispenser, which also isn’t evident, because there the terminology SHOULD have been the same. What does a genie have to do with lightning? Wrong mythological entity. What was wrong with MaxPass and FastPass? FastPass was your ticket to a line-skip, and MaxPass was the digital/paid ticket dispenser. Pretty simple. Clicked with most people. 10/10 no notes.
I’m so used to doing my Twitter Genie nonsense that when someone asked me how to purchase Genie+ I was momentarily stumped! I accidentally took her through the free Genie set-up like some tourist and I apologized about eighteen times before we finally got her squared away with Genie+. She very rightly moved on to someone else to ask where she was supposed to make her Genie+ selections, because that isn’t obvious either. WHAT DOES TIP BOARD MEAN? To me, a Tip Board is a dry erase board that a boss puts up in the office for the employees to make suggestions on for about two hours until they realize how horrible of an idea it was. I wouldn’t think that clicking on Tip Board would bring up my Genie+ possibilities, yet here we are. It should be called “Lightning Lanes” or even “Wait Times”, not “Tip Board” but I’m not a fancypants software designer.
Disneyland-specific suggestion: Let me purchase Genie+ in advance like WDW allows. Not to make selections, but just to have it purchased, so I don’t have to do it upon entry.
As for moving the first selection time forward to park entry, like Disneyland does: DLR doesn’t have Early Entry (yet) but they could do it similar to how DLR handled Rise when it first Rose, which was: you had to be checked in to a park before you could join the VQ, but the VQ itself didn’t open until park open. Gates opened about 30-45 minutes before the park, so if people wanted to congregate on the train station steps and wait to get a Boarding Group, they could, and the ones who wanted to chance being in the Peter Pan AT&T data dead-zone when the VQ opened, they could do that too. The consequences of our actions. We would have no one to blame but ourselves.
Tom, thanks for the thoughtful write-up. Given all the complaints about Genie+ do you think it’s likely there are modifications (or even *gasp* overhauls) made to the system in the next year?
I am definitely not on board with having to be in a park to make lightning lane reservations. As a general rule at Disney, I’m up at 7 am getting breakfast, so making a reservation at 7 am is no problem. But you want us to be in the park in order to make a reservation? Now I have to get up at 6 am to get breakfast, take half an hour to travel to the park, and get in a line up for 30-45 minutes so I can make a reservation — if there are any of the better ones left. You are going to have thousands of unhappy kiddos from first thing in the morning until they are dragged back to the resort to get some rest. The 7 am reservation at the resort was about the only beneficial part of Genie+ and you would take that away? The other two suggestions may make sense, but tie it with having to be early to the park to make lightning lane reservations is so ridiculous it just doesn’t make sense.
THIS *******
Agree, but even more. At 7 am, I was waking up to roll over and reach for my phone. Early birds would definitely get the worm, but there are a lot of night owls . . . . Agree with the guy above – reset to a 30 or 60 day reservation process.
The getting up by seven thing works fine – for folks not experiencing jet lag. Being awake at the equivalent of 4am my time does not enhance my experience of a 12 hour long Disney day.
I haven’t used Genie + yet (not due to arrive until 2023) but the 7am booking was actually something I’m looking forward to! Almost like a mini-game at my hotel each morning to see if I can snag the best spot! Also, the idea of booking at park opening with 3 kids hanging off me and trying to remember which pocket my tickets are in just sounds way too stressful!