Ride Reservation Refill Rules at Disney World
Competition for Lightning Lanes can be fierce in higher crowds due to more guests buying Multi-Pass line-skipping. Despite surge pricing that can cause the paid FastPass service to cost around $40 on busy days, demand is highest when attendance and wait times are at their worst. (Updated February 23, 2025.)
Accordingly, you need advanced strategy to score the most ride reservations, especially during the busiest dates when Lightning Lane Multi-Pass is most expensive and lines are longest. Unfortunately for power users, most of the next-level hacks that were exploited under Genie+ are all gone under LLMP. There’s no 120 minute rule, stacking is no longer a thing, and speed strategy doesn’t matter as much.
Fortunately, there are new ways to squeeze the most out of Multi-Pass, which we explain in our Top 10 Tips & Tricks for Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World in 2025. That’s a crash course in turning you into a Lightning Lanes power user, and we’d highly recommend it for all the ins and outs. Of those strategies, there’s a reason why “Have a Strong Refresh Game” is far and away the #1 tip & trick for Lightning Lane Multi-Pass at Walt Disney World. This post is intended to do a deeper dive, explaining why that matters and how it works.
None of this is explained by Walt Disney World on its official sites, and probably for good reason–these tips can be confusing and overwhelming. However, if you take ~30 minutes to learn those ins and outs, you won’t just be above average–you’ll be a top 5% Lightning Lane Multi-Pass power user.
Before we dig into the details, a couple of warnings are in order. First, this is confusing or intimidating at first. While you can comprehend the contours by reading, you really need to learn this one by doing. The below explanation will make a whole lot more sense once you actually start using Lightning Lane Multi Pass.
Even if you leave this post more confused than when you started, that’ll quickly change once you start actually playing the refresh game. The learning curve is steep in the abstract, but not in practice.
Second, this will absolutely increase your screen time. I know that’s a major concern with a lot of Walt Disney World vacation planners, and some of our other advice avoids being glued to your phone. This does not. Playing the refresh game is addictive, and you could spend hours of your day trying to trade up your Lightning Lane selections and return times.
Because of that, we highly recommend setting some ground rules. Mine is that I only play the refresh game in the Lightning Lane return line after tapping in. This means I have anywhere from 2 minutes to 10 minutes–it all depends on whether there are two tap points, where merge occurs, etc. I’ll also look for ride reservation refills any time I’m waiting–to pick up a Mobile Order, the rest of my party to get out of the restroom, etc.
While this does require more screen time, it does not have to require hours of screen time. To the contrary, I view playing the refresh game as being addictive in a bad way. Searching for 5-10 minutes per attraction is a good use of time, and will usually work out to your advantage. Anything more than that and you quickly start hitting the point of diminishing returns.
With those warnings out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss what the heck ride reservation refill rules even are. And for that, we rewind to March 2020, in the halcyon days of FastPass+ at Walt Disney World…
There’s a reason we’re calling this “ride reservation refill rules,” and it’s not just because I’m a sucker for a good alliteration. It’s because this is nothing new, and was something Walt Disney World had been fine-tuning in the final days of FastPass+. I don’t remember precisely when they started, but it became a more pronounced practice in 2019. (Or so it seemed to me.)
Walt Disney World would add same-day FastPass+ ride reservations for headliner attractions “at random” throughout the day. Except it wasn’t really at random, it was based on a set schedule. The whole purpose of this was to throw a bone to guests who didn’t realize ride reservations were booked 30/60 days in advance, and showed up at the parks with nothing in hand.
Essentially, it was an attempt to remedy guest complaints about FastPass+ from first-timers. Except, like all things, the predictable process was reverse-engineered and it was better exploited by the savviest planners than ill-prepared newbies.
Almost identical ride reservation refill rules were built into the Lightning Lanes for the exact same reasons. That includes the now-defunct Genie+ system. If you already played the refresh game with that, you already know how this works–the mechanics have changed slightly, but the idea is the same.
Moving forward, here’s everything else you need to know about ride reservation refill rules under Lightning Lane Multi-Pass at Walt Disney World…
Refills vs. Cancellations
It should go without saying, but these are not the same. If one party cancels a ride reservation, that single reservation returns to the system along with its exact time slot. There are a lot of guests all using Lightning Lane Multi-Pass at the same time.
Let’s say that 9 different parties all see and attempt to book one reservation for Slinky Dog Dash. Obviously, only one can–and that happens in milliseconds, before Disney’s systems can reflect that it’s gone to everyone else. Making matters worse, all can initiate the booking process and it will disappear out from under 8 of you.
Cancellations can become easier to identify over time because they will be for some random time. Once that’s booked, the return time clock jumps back to wherever it was in its cycle before (or goes unavailable, as the case may be). By contrast, reservation refills restart the clock and advance incrementally over the course of a few minutes (sometimes less, sometimes more) before booking up.
Party Size Does Not Matter
This is really only a tangential point, but it’s something that comes up a lot, and relates to the first point of confusion. If you see a cancellation, but are one of the disappointed parties that were too slow to book it, there might be the assumption that it’s because your party was too large.
Truthfully, I don’t know whether that’s the case with cancellations–if it shows for everyone despite not being a fit. Nothing would surprise me, but I do know that even as a party of 1, I am routinely have the cancelled reservation rug pulled out from under me.
What I also know is that party size doesn’t matter with ride reservation refills. Lightning Lanes are not like Advance Dining Reservations–Walt Disney World is not trying to match attraction vehicle seating with hourly capacity. That’s not even remotely possible. It’s a pure numbers game: X number of ride reservations are released, and that number can be booked in any permutation possible.
Refilled Ride Roster
Here are the attractions that we’ve seen get reservation refills at one point or another:
- Magic Kingdom: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (far and away the most common as of 2025), Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan’s Flight, Pirates of the Caribbean, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Space Mountain
- EPCOT: Frozen Ever After, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Soarin’ Around the World
- Hollywood Studios: Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, Slinky Dog Dash, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, Toy Story Mania, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
- Animal Kingdom: Avatar Flight of Passage, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Na’vi River Journey
Note that some of those are Lightning Lane Single Pass attractions.
Do These Ride Reservation Refills Always Happen?
Nope. Some attractions have their Lightning Lane availability replenished on a regular basis, others happen on rare occasion, and most are somewhere in between the two extremes. I could share a bunch of refill times here today, and they could be wrong tomorrow, next week or month.
The most illustrative example is Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. It uses ride reservation refills much more frequently than other attractions due to its unreliability. If it’s having a “bad” day, refills will be sparse or nonexistent. If it’s having a “good” day, you may regularly find same-day Lightning Lane drops that are only 10 to 30 minutes out.
Less extreme examples occur with most other attractions when attendance is not as heavy as internal forecasts projected. If Walt Disney World expected 50,000 guests, but there only 40,000 guests showed up, that’s a pretty big miss on the projection. This opens up the door for more ride reservation refills, as Disney load balances between the Lightning Lanes and standby lines.
When Are Lightning Lane Ride Reservation Refill Times?
I want to stress that there are no guarantees.
Moreover, I don’t have the level of firsthand testing experience necessary to spot patterns. There was a time when I was buying and using Lightning Lanes at least once per week at Walt Disney World, as we worked to put together our resources. However, as the paid FastPass service has become more stable, the need for further testing has decreased. And we’d rather not waste money, so we’ve slowed that down to about once per month, or whenever things change. (For example, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind switching to standby–that doesn’t pertain directly to LLMP, but it has second-order effects.)
The good news is that the folks over at Thrill-Data track what they call Lightning Lane “popup releases” (same kinda thing, different name). The list of attractions appears incomplete to me, but it should give you an idea of when to expect ride reservation refills or popup releases.
It’s worth pointing out that their data is automated–meaning an actual human isn’t reviewing the app and making notes of what’s being refilled. That means they can–and do–miss refills that appear and vanish quickly. It’s also worth pointing out that refills are mostly same-day under Lightning Lane Multi-Pass, but I’ve also seen them during the initial pre-arrival selection process. So if you don’t more screen time before leaving home, you can give this a try then, too.
What’s the Best Approach to Snagging Refills?
You should immediately choose the best available option after you’ve tapped into Lightning Lane to unlock your next selection (taking advantage of the “rolling 3 rule,” a related concept, is key to getting the most mileage out of LLMP). Always book something–do not refresh and wait for the “perfect” Lightning Lane. Booking another ride reservation is essentially a hedge.
From there, play the refresh game by searching for something better. My tried and true Lightning Lane refresh strategy is tapping in, booking the best available option, and then modifying. Although the above list of ride reservation refill attractions can be helpful, I guess, I’ve found the actual list of attractions to be longer–and drop times more scattershot–in my testing of LLMP. Basically, I’m spamming the modify button.
There are a few approaches for refreshing from here, but I favor toggling the “close” dropdown on the modify screen to refresh times. I do this repeatedly every few seconds for the duration of that 5 minute clock (see the top of the screenshots). About 75% of the time, I’ll find something better within that span of time.
Compare the left and right, the latter of which shows pop-up availability for 4:25 pm that wasn’t there 2 minutes earlier. In my experience, toggling this “close” dropdown is the most efficient way to play the refresh game.
Finally, we want to underscore yet again that Lightning Lanes are not the end-all, be-all of park touring strategy. Our Best Time-Saving Strategy at Walt Disney World covers the best and worst ways to beat the crowds right now and Lightning Lanes are not the best (and certainly not the easiest) way in 2 of the 4 parks.
The only parks where Lightning Lane Multi-Pass works better than all other strategies are Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom. Everywhere else, there are superior strategies for saving time waiting in line. At all 4 parks, there are alternative approaches that work well enough, don’t cost money, require as much backtracking, and do not involve screen time.
The bottom line is that you could ignore Lightning Lanes entirely–pretend they don’t even exist–and still have a fantastic trip. Don’t let FOMO get the best of you–buying Lightning Lanes is not a “need” and there are plenty of other ways to beat the crowds. If you’re overwhelmed by Lightning Lane Multi Pass, the aforementioned post is the most succinct resource for current strategy.
Ultimately, this might be confusing or frustrating, but it’s important to remember that this is essentially a “loophole” and Disney itself doesn’t publish anything about ride reservation refills for a reason. This is not meant to be common knowledge–they’re supposed to be a ‘relief valve’ of sorts for guests who don’t know all of the ins and outs, and are just randomly looking for availability.
While the ground covered here is good information to have, at the end of the day all you really need to know is that spamming the modify button can help you trade up attractions and return times thanks to ride reservation refills. (There’s a reason why our Top 10 Tips & Tricks for Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World in 2025 is much more succinct!)
The bottom line is that much knowledge will help you make better choices and get more mileage from Multi-Pass. To quote the great Indiana Jones (Adventure): “Real Rewards Await Those Who Choose Wisely.” For everything else you need to know about LLMP, see our Guide to Lightning Lanes 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
Do these ride reservation refill rules make sense to you or is it too overwhelming? Will you use this strategy for scoring Lightning Lane selections? Have you had success in getting Slinky Dog Dash during one of these refills? What about headliners in other parks? Thoughts on leveraging ride reservation refills versus other strategy? 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 just came back from our vacation from April 1-8.The parks were crazy packed . Way too much time spent on genie plus along with all the issues . Two of my Grandkids were hit with strollers by people looking at their phones and saying sorry doesn’t cut . I don’ t understand why it is that if you pay to ride and skip the lines it can’t be more vacation friendly ? For the most part we have caved in to paying, so why the crazy from 7 am till closing? Design a system that lets you book 30-60 days out for the rides . Fans should be asking for something better and maybe we will be able to see more of the parks’ beauty rather than refreshing and looking at our phones. Stop the insanity!
I feel like the big change with this knowledge is to consider prioritizing earlier return times for your first Lightning Lane. For example, if you can snag a mid-priority attraction (say, Runaway Railway or Toy Story Mania) with a return time in the first 30 minutes of park operation and then refresh just right after 9:30am to grab a higher priority attraction after it replenishes (say, Slinky Dog Dash or Tower of Terror), you could be one Lightning Lane ahead of where you’d have been if you had just snagged a late return time for the top-tier ride in the first place. Combined with a good rope drop strategy, of course.
I was getting coffee at Yacht Club on 3/17 and heard a woman saying she’d missed the Rise ILL so I told her about the drop at 7:17. Adorably she thought it was a one day thing Disney was doing for St Patrick’s Day. Such a cute idea but nope. We had good luck with drops and refreshing that trip and are hoping it holds for our trip next week.
I’m so glad you posted this information. We have a group of 13 going in October and this will be super helpful. However, I may need a weekend trip before that to “test” it
Is it my imagination or did we never get an actual list of the refill times with their attractions beyond the two very early ones?
It’s not your imagination.
The problem with the later times is that they are incredibly hit or miss. One day, X attraction will recieve a refill at X time. The next day, it might not. When it comes to the ‘shortly after the hour/half hour’ refills, I’ve yet to ascertain any pattern with the specific attractions that do and do not get refills. I assume there is one, but I cannot figure it out–it seems almost random to me.
From my perspective, knowing that these happen is much more important than knowing the times. Those times will almost certainly change–they did in the FastPass+ days–between now and your trip. It’s the foundational knowledge that matters, as it’s something you can account for in building your own plan. (And also, you can do a dry run a morning or two before your trip and learn how this is working then, rough times, etc.) It’s one of those ‘give a man a fish v. teach a man to fish’ kinda deals.
We used this on our winter break trip after you mentioned it on a breakdown day post. The hardest part was waiting for the refills and resisting the urge to book something. I also gave myself a 5 minute rule for refreshing to reduce screen time.
Hopefully you’re right about most people not having the patience for this.
I am here now and all of this is 100% accurate. Thankfully I knew refills are a thing, so I was able to benefit from it. I was at Hollywood Studios on Sunday, 4/17/22, and after experiencing the Genie+ disaster over Thanksgiving, I wasn’t hopeful. On 4/17/22 at 7:00am, I got SDD for a noon return (first time ever being able to score a LL for SDD). At 7:01, as I was trying to get a ILL for ROTR, the app started to glitch, and I was using my Verizon data, not WiFi. We were rope dropping ROTR (wanted to ride it twice). By the time I could get back into the app, ROTR was “gone.” I continued to refresh for the next (approximately) 25 minutes, and new times started to appear. For about 5 minutes, everytime I tried to get one I saw, it was already gone, then finally luck and I got one after 5 minutes of OCD refreshing. We were in the ROTR queue by the time I could put my phone away. I missed the entire experience of entering the park, was not able to enjoy that moment, look around or anything. Most of this time, my daughter was asking me to get off my phone, not really understanding what I was doing. After ROTR, went to MFSR with a 15 minute wait, then on to MMRR with a 30 minute wait. Was also able to get LLs for MMRR (so rode it twice) and Rockin Roller, but only after OCD refreshing. Never could get a LL for MFSR, but we had already ridden it at rope drop. Rode SDD again just before park close, posted wait was over an hour, we waited 30 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised by what felt like a very successful day at HS. Rope dropping HS is a must for us, at least during high peak crowds.
I was a big fan of FP+, mainly because of the ability to plan ahead. Ride reservations could be booked around ADRs and to accommodate afternoon rest breaks. I don’t mind paying for this service, but having the ability for advanced planning would make this so much better.
Correction to my own post. My HS day was Sunday, 4/10/22. I’m still here and apparently I’m living in the Disney time warp. I guess the sign of a great vacation is losing track of the days!
The 7:17 refill saved us at HS last week. We had only 3 park days and hitting the headliners at HS was a priority, so we snagged SDD at 7:00 and then Rise was already gone. I knew about the 7:17 thing but was still super nervous, but just kept refreshing from 7 until 7;17 and then all the good Rise times popped up. Also, they opened the parks super early last week, so we were actually standing in line for Rope Drop during my first 2 days of ever using Genie+. (We literally were going thru the tapstiles with our family of 4 at 7am The First Day I’m trying to actually book Genie+, with kids little enough to struggle with the fingerprint thing… it was a mess). However, all the strategies worked and we had an amazing 3 days at 4 parks. (plus a rest day to try to recover).
Thanks Tom for the great info!! I knew something was going on with the times, but didn’t understand it to this extent. I checked MK times this morning for Thunder, Jungle and SDMT, and at exactly 7:17 there were earlier times available. Thunder went from 2:30 to 11:00, Jungle from 6:30 to 2:00, and SDMT from not available to 9:00!! And these were not just one time pop ups that then immediately go back down to the later times. They gradually worked their way down to later times; with the exception of SDMT. That early time was available really long and advanced to a later time at a much slower pace. Seems like the best strategy is get a Genie + right at 7am and then wait for the refill on ILL. Thanks again Tom, this certainly fixes having to use multiple phones at 7am, which is what some pros have been suggesting. And this gets better times with this strategy!!
Do you need to be at a Disney hotel to use Genie + at7:00?
I am getting conflicted messages about access time to Genie + for guests of non-Disney hotels. We are staying a a Disney “official partner” hotel. I though we could do the 7:00am booking, but when I spoke with Disney, they say I cannot access it until park opening. Which is correct?
I stayed at one of the Good Neighbor hotels (Signia by Hilton at Bonnet Creek) in early March and can answer this question. The reason you’re getting conflicting information is that both are technically true. You can purchase and book your first Genie+ selection at 7am regardless of where you are staying. However, if you want to get an ILL (like Rise of the Resistance), you MUST be staying at an actual Disney Hotel for this in order to get one at 7am. Otherwise, you have to wait until the park opens to purchase an ILL.
This is also confusing because my Good Neighbor hotel did have access to Early Entry. So…there’s perks to the Good Neighbor hotels, but booking ILLs is not one of them.
Thank you Maggie for replying.
Is it correct that ILL cost extra even with Genie+? Did you find you needed the 7:00am ILL slot? Or did you still manage to get onto Rise or other rides?
We are going in July and I am trying to get my head around Genie+ and ILLs. I hate change!!
Disney used to be the land of the Mouse, Magic, and fun. Just left after a 10 day vacation there and witnessed parents so wrapped up in their phones trying to make reservations that their little ones wandered away and got lost. Was struck several times by similar nose to phone adults. People were running from one side of the park to the other because these reservations cannot be scheduled in a logical order. Doing extra early morning opening got us on multiple rides we wanted before each park opened. The late extra hours also gave us multiple rides, Only disappointment was the food booths closing so early at epcot. Did not purchase any individual LL or genie plus and still had a great time.
Did test run this afternoon more out of curiosity than anything (my trip isn’t until late October). Can confirm 1:32 p.m. refresh of rides at MK, Epcot and HS.
How can you test run genie plus without buying it?
I went to the app, clicked My Day, and switched over to Tip Board. It shows the available time slots for Genie+ as well as standby times for the rides at each park. I refreshed at 32 after the hour and it showed earlier times, suggesting the reservations had been refilled.
Checked again this morning from 7-7:15. As an example, Millennium Falcon had 6:15p showing when I first looked, but times kept changing on refresh until 7:15 when there was a 9:15a spot open. Thanks for this tip, will keep playing around with it to see if it’s still happening by the fall!
While at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios in a July 2021. It was awesome just walking from ride to ride not fighting to go on anything not looking at my phone to plan plan plan except Rise of the Resistance. It was so magical and fun. No stress at all. Get rid of all rice reservations and just wait in line and enjoy. Disney is not so much fun anymore!
Thanks Tom ! Definitely a good idea to have some practice runs……We head to WDW in 3 weeks plus two days! Very much looking forward to all the strategizing (I’m an A type to the extreme) so this stuff really brings me a great deal of joy.
Thanks for posting this Tom! I had used this method in March! I anecdotally noticed they would restock rides around 7:08 from my dry runs at home before the trip. On our Epcot day, Frozen return time went by way too quickly one morning (like return time of 6pm booking at 7:02), I anxiously waited until 7:08 with constant refreshes and saw it restart at 12 noon returns. I was able to then get a 2oclock window which was much better for my family. I’m glad you did an article about this!
This is one reason why I recommend doing a dry run prior to your trip–it’s a lot easier to see these refills occurring when you’re not actually making LL reservations. A couple of mornings watching from 7-7:30 and you could probably catch whatever the current times might be (assuming they change).
Maybe we can just go back to whoever gets up early, runs the fastest, doesn’t mind standing in line, and stays till closing can ride the rides they want to ride like amusement parks used to be. I am not anti technology, but the amount of planning and strategizing it takes to go to Disney and ride want you want to ride is ridiculous. Disney should be rebranded to the “The most stressful place on earth”.
I find doing things electronically a lot more civilized than getting the whole family up at the crack of dawn to rush to the parks and run to the rides while still in a zombie like state. You are anti tech and biased.
You absolutely can still do it the old fashioned way. Just come and go as you please and use the standby lines instead. No one is saying you HAVE to buy or use Genie+. I’d actually prefer if everyone felt this way and didn’t want to bother with working smarter instead of harder so that those of us who prefer to make efficient use of our vacations have a better shot at booking LLs.
I benefitted from you mentioning this in previous posts on my trip in February. I was patient and didn’t give up when I really wanted to just book something else. I got SDD at 7:17 with a 9:35 return time. I felt like a rockstar.
Love this guide! It suits my hyper-focused (read geeky) mind! Who needs to pay for games to keep your mind sharp when you can just blogs like this! I’ve used tips/techniques I’ve read here a number of times in the past, but I get the biggest kick when I can help others also be in the know. They are always so grateful.
Love it! I agree it suits my somewhat obsessive compulsive nature. It’s very satisfying to win at Disney.
I definitely saw FOP refills. I was out of things to do at AK, and booked a LL for Dinosaur, not because I wanted to go on it, but because I was out of things to do and didn’t want to go “home”. And then FOP showed up, and had several times available. I hadn’t planned on going on it, and wasn’t looking to book it at 7am, but at that point I thought why not. (I am solo so it is just the cost for 1 person) So I ended up cancelling Dinosaur and heading to Pandora for dinner at my least favorite place to eat at AK (Satuli Canteen, that was their 3rd failed chance with me) and then going on FOP.
Great info, thank you!!
Between refreshing, your “fast fingers” strategy, and rope drop, we manage to get 80% of what we want. The remaining 20% is a good lesson in very, very low-stakes disappointment. My over-privileged kids now understand that money can buy many things, but we can’t always get a spot on Slinky Dog.