Lightning Lanes v. Genie+ at Disney World
If you’re confused by the differences between the free Genie feature, paid Genie+ service, Lightning Lanes, and individual attraction selections at Walt Disney World, this comparison and explanation is here to help. It breaks down what each are and offer, along with an analogy and further explanations.
This is intended to supplement our Lightning Lane and Genie+ at Walt Disney World FAQ. Recently, we’ve been receiving questions that confusion Genie+ and Lightning Lanes, and it’s absolutely fundamental and foundational knowledge that you understand the differences. Otherwise, you won’t get the rest of it. Honestly, what’s covered here should have been the very top of that FAQ, but I assumed too much. That’s my bad–not yours. This is incredibly convoluted and confusing, and the way Walt Disney World has rolled it out has left a lot to be desired from a guest education perspective.
I do want to reassure you that this all gets easier to understand over time. As a thought experiment, try to assume a veil of ignorance about FastPass+ at Walt Disney World. Now consider all of the different tiers, the 30 day v. 60 day rule, the check-in extension rule, 4th FastPass+ scenarios, refresh strategy, Park Hopping hacks, same-day drop times–the list goes on and on. Most longtime Walt Disney World fans take FastPass+ for granted, but it had a steep learning curve. Which is part of the reason fans loved it–the barriers to entry and confusion created meant FastPass+ was easier to leverage for power users than average guests.
Many fans are confused by Genie+ and Lightning Lanes right now, and that’s absolutely understandable given that you’ve never used them and Walt Disney World still hasn’t announced all of the specifics. There are a ton of absolutely legitimate complaints about this. While certainly not the only criticism, the cost of the once-free service is far and away the most valid of those. (If you’re upset, we’d recommend emailing Walt Disney World and respectfully articulating how Genie+ will impact your future business with the company.)
“It’s too complicated and confusing” is not a particularly persuasive complaint. At least, not coming from fans who mastered FastPass+, the most unnecessarily complex ride reservation system at any Disney theme park in the world. Ask anyone who used both FastPass+ and MaxPass (again, the Genie system is built around MaxPass) more than a couple of times which was more user-friendly. I’d hazard a guess that over 75% would respond that MaxPass was easier to use and more laid back.
If you have an advanced degree in Walt Disney World vacation planning, the Genie system is only intimidating because it’s new and unknown, and currently an abstraction. It’s the type of thing you need to play with to understand. Give yourself a couple of hours with the app feature–you’ll be fine. Of course, that doesn’t wave away all of the many other complaints, but maybe it offers a little peace of mind?
But I digress. Back to the basics, with an explanation of what each component of this new system replacing free FastPass+ at Walt Disney World entails…
Lightning Lanes
Lightning Lanes are the new name for FastPass+ entrances, meaning they are actual queues or lines. Something guests who purchased Genie+ or individual attraction line-skipping access will use.
To illustrate, the Lightning Lane is the entrance on the left in the photo above. The standby line is the entrance on the right. In the coming weeks, expect FastPass+ entrances to get new signage as they’re converted to Lightning Lanes.
Lightning Lanes exist in the physical world. Disney Genie+ is a service that exists in the digital world–on the Grid. You can walk through a Lightning Lane–you can scroll through the Genie+ service with your fingers.
Free Disney Genie service
The free Disney Genie service in the My Disney Experience app will “maximize your park time” via a personalized itinerary feature that will “quickly and seamlessly map out an entire day.” It will also offer forecasted wait times throughout the day and attraction suggestions, so you can save time in line.
While Walt Disney World highlighted the free components of Disney Genie in its announcement, no one else is focusing on this for a few reasons. First, Disney IT doesn’t exactly have the best track record, so there’s considerable skepticism that this will work as advertised. Second, Disney promised similar features with My Disney Experience almost a decade ago, and none of those features materialized. (It’s a good day when the app works without crashing!) Finally, even if the free Disney Genie service works, it’s more likely to benefit the company than guests.
Maybe Disney will prove everyone wrong and deliver a free service that changes the game. Given past precedent, I’m not willing to give Walt Disney World the benefit of the doubt on that. Accordingly, we won’t be devoting any attention to the free Disney Genie service until it actually arrives–and works as advertised.
Disney Genie+ service
Disney Genie+ service is an option you can purchase in the My Disney Experience app for $15 per day that will give you priority access via the Lightning Lane at a variety of attractions, like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan’s Flight, Spaceship Earth, Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and many others. It’ll offer line-skipping access to approximately 40 attractions in total–minus two highly-popular headliners in each park.
The Genie+ service is essentially a digital version of paper FastPass, which was used prior to FastPass+ at Walt Disney World. Except instead of walking around the park to obtain paper slips with day-of return times, you do that via your phone. (More accurately/recently, it’s a modified version of the MaxPass service at Disneyland.)
Genie+ is theoretically unlimited. More practically, average guests will be obtaining new Genie+ return times every ~90 to 120 minutes. Like its predecessors (legacy FastPass and MaxPass), Genie+ will have internal rules inherited from those systems to ensure guests are not being shut out of subsequent selections by virtue of delayed return time windows. Those rules have not yet been announced by Walt Disney World.
Individual attraction selections
Individual attraction selections allow you to schedule a time to arrive at up to two highly demanded attractions each day, again via the Lightning Lane entrance, like Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom or Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
This is pay per ride access for up to 2 attractions in each park, as opposed to the ‘bundle’ of theoretically unlimited access offered by the Genie+ service. Attractions will either be included in Genie+ or sold as individual attraction selections–not both. There is no overlap between Genie+ and individual attraction selections. The latter will be sold at approximately 7-8 attractions in total across Walt Disney World.
Pricing for the individual attraction selections option will vary by date, attraction, and park–and will be announced closer to launch. Pricing for the comparable Premier Access at Disneyland Paris ranges from €8 to €15 (~$10 to $18) depending on the attraction and day of visit. Think of it like Express Lanes on highways—dynamic pricing that increases with demand.
Individual attraction selections are likely the source of most consumer confusion, as they don’t have a catchy name. Our guess is that many fans are conflating Lightning Lanes (physical queues!) with individual attraction selections, which is inaccurate–but an absolutely understandable error. For a company that is so good at branding and marketing, it seems like a pretty big oversight to not give “individual attraction selections” its own catchy name.
I’m inclined to start calling the individual attraction selections “Magic Carpet Access,” which would make sense, avoid any confusion, create clear product distinctions, and fit with the Aladdin-inspired branding.
All options in practice
1. Standby or Virtual Queue (all attractions, $0)
2. Genie+ via Lightning Lane (~40 attractions, $15 per day and theoretically unlimited)
3. Magic Carpet Access via Lightning Lane (~8 of the highest demand attractions, unknown cost per ride)
All attractions will have #1. Most if not all previous FastPass+ attractions will have 2 or 3, but not both.
I love a good analogy, so think of this all like the diamond lane on the highway (or carpool/HOV lane, depending upon where you live). That fast lane often has various rules for eligibility–hybrids, motorcycles, public mass transit, or vehicles with two or more occupants can use it to facilitate more efficient use of highways.
In that example, Lightning Lanes are the diamond lane–the physical infrastructure on the highway, or in this case, the attraction’s queue that bypasses the gridlocked standby line. The different types of vehicles that can use that physical fast lane are Genie+ or individual attraction purchases, plus things like DAS and Rider Switch. The only material difference in the analogy is that the same Lightning Lane will not give access to both Genie+ and individual attraction purchases–it’ll be either/or.
Okay, with that foundation in place, we can now get to the other 1,248 questions about the Disney Genie+ system and Lightning Lane physical infrastructure. Again, it’s intimidating now, but it’ll make sense over time. Just like driving a car on the highway, it’s a lot easier to grasp when you’re actually doing it as opposed to reading about it on the internet.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have any questions we didn’t answer with the above? Still confused by how Genie+ or Lightning Lanes will work? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Other thoughts or concerns? 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!
For those of us that just want to visit the parks old-school and use only the standby lines, I’m wondering how Genie+ will affect standby wait times as compared to how paper fastpass affected them…More people will use Genie+ because it’s on your phone vs. going to the ride itself to get the slip of paper. But now it’s $15, not free. Will more people use this, or fewer?
Maybe the paid headliners are also named “Lightening Lanes” to provide some flexibility. For example, assuming Space Mountain and SD Mine Train are the paid LL options at MK, if Space Mountain is temporarily closed, they could designate Splash Mountain as the paid LL for the time being.
Or if they aren’t sure if ROTR will work as a virtual queue and a paid LL, they might switch up the paid LL lineup at DHS.
Although, they could just make a “Magic Carpet Access” magnetic sign to place over the Lightening Lane signage as needed, and in the app they could just say that “Magic Carpet Access” attractions are subject to change. I dunno… just thinking out loud.
@Limary
There are no fastpass lanes any longer. They are now Lightning Lanes. There will only be 2 lanes per ride, just like in the past, except they will be “Standby” and the renamed “Lightning Lanes”.
To get into the Lightning Lane for a ride, you must either:
1) Purchase the Bundled Genie+ for $15 per day, which includes access to most of the previous fastpass rides for the whole day by making reservations one at a time.
or 2) Purchase the ride INDIVIDUALLY if it is one of the 8 rides (2 per park) that are excluded from the bundle offered in Genie +. You can only make 2 of these PER DAY and the cost is PER RIDE.
All the rides that have Lightning Lanes are accessed EITHER by the bundled option OR the individual option, but NOT BOTH. You will ONLY find Seven Dwarfs Mine Train on the individual list, and you will ONLY find Haunted Mansion on the bundled list, but both rides will have a Lightning Lane.
This is a very good foundational explanation. Anyone with questions about Genie+ and Lightning Lanes would do well to start here. As a user of MaxPass, and only a researcher of FastPass+ (when I planned my upcoming trip, I tried to figure out FastPass+ in case it came back and I gave up two hours and one headache later), I can absolutely assure everyone that MaxPass is efficient and intuitive as soon as you start using it and FastPass+, like the serpentine sentences I sometimes type out, was convoluted as HECK (although smart people no doubt exploited it ruthlessly and without mercy). Finding nifty little exploits and shortcuts in MaxPass was a delight (like the “get Grizzly River Run and hope it breaks down during your window for a Multiple Experiences pass” trick –urgent to Disney execs in charge of the Genie+ service: I am lying and no one ever did this trick. Also, people are very mad at no more free FastPass, in case you hadn’t heard.) I’m a little irked that DLR’s is $5 more expensive but I’m guessing that’s the inclusion of PhotoPass, which, being an ugly loser who doesn’t like having his picture taken, has no real value for me, but for beautiful people might be a great perk.
I would also like to predict two things, if I may: 1) Genie+ will eventually be included in “select stays” at WDW properties, and 2) Genie+ will feature an annual add-on at DLR only for Magic Keymasters. If I know my locals, we hate standby (DEATH BEFORE STANDBY!!!) but we really, really, really hate buying things that can’t be ingested or imbibed at DLR. Could be one of the reasons they hate us so much, I don’t know.
Renaming the headliner Lightening Lanes as “Magic Carpet Access” is a fantastic idea. Disney is really not helping their cast members that will have to deal with “America’s rising rage”… you all know the people I’m talking about.
Thank you for making it all so clear, Tom!
I feel like until I see the Genie+ and “Magic Carpet” individual access in use (and hear about it from the bloggers!) I won’t be able to figure out the right value proposition. I’m an infrequent visitor, so maybe I am going to be the sucker that shells out for all of it…
On my last trip to Disneyland we paid for MaxPass and it was totally worth it, so maybe Genie+ will be worth it there anyway. But at DLR there are going to be so many included attractions on a per-park basis, and the opportunity to easily park hop effectively doubles it. Even without the headliners, it might be worth it. (Especially since at least one headliner at each park is a lottery item.) Maybe I rope drop one headliner, try for the lottery for the other, and if I need to, pay for the individual access I didn’t get otherwise. It might feel “worth it” at that point, who knows.
However, at WDW, I might end up feeling that I’m paying a lot for nothing if the top two headliners in each park aren’t included. What does that even leave you at EPCOT? (Don’t get me wrong, Living with the Land is my favorite, but facing inflated line times for it if you don’t shell out for Genie+? Yikes!)
I can’t wait to hear how it all plays out!
“I’m inclined to start calling the individual attraction selections “Magic Carpet Access””
If I was clever, which I’m not, I feel like there is some joke related to getting the wool pulled over your eyes here for a bonus tie in.
Good article; you did a great job laying everything out.
You may not be able to answer this question yet, but here goes: We will be a party of 7 family members visiting in December. We are all linked in MDE. Will one person in our party be able to get a return time in Genie+ for the whole party, or will be all need to do it individually?
Your comment about 90-120 minutes caused me a bit of confusion. Is that an estimate by you? Or built into system ? In other words geinie+ as I get if allows you to select your next ride and get tight on thru the left lane usually. Can you continue to get on rides immediately or is their a minimum wait between rides? More important. Do you have a choice of all of the forty rides or only some of them? Or will they all have different times? So I ride at my first stop in morning and want to do haunted mansion. Can I do that right away or might it be sold out until six? So then I either get no value by waiting until six or just forego that ride. Also does seven am make a difference? Or only on your first ride? Or if I sleep in until noon will most better rides already be filled fir the day? Herein lies the problem for spending $15. How much is guaranteed and how much are you gambling and getting very little? Part day trips are going to be tough decisions. If you don’t show at seven are you confined to standby all day?
Any guesses what rides will be “Magic Carpet Access”? I’m unhappy obviously that Disney will start charging for Lightening Lanes at all, but it seems unnecessarily gouging to create a double layer of charge, geez!
Thanks Tom. I too was getting Lightning Lane confused with the individual attraction selection.
As a dedicated MaxPass user at DL, (and someone who absolutely despised Fastpass+ at WDW), this seems like a decent end result. Pricey, yes, but not nearly as pricey as having to stay onsite at WDW to get first dibs on (only!) three fast passes per day.
Time or money, take your pick!
Thank you for sharing your insight. I think some guest will purchase Genie+ believing they will have Lightning Lane access to all the popular attractions in that park (because they have not read all the information). When they discover that the Genie+ purchase does not include Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Space Mountain, then they will most likely get upset with the greeter cast member at this attraction. The will become frustrated after have paid an additional $60 for a family of four and then the cast member mentions it will be an additional $10 per person to ride this attraction.
You could then also clarify for some folks that if you go with Genie+ $15 per ticket per day that they must be in their phones by 7am the day of going to park “x” to try and secure a ride and a time. Hopefully they will revert to the 30 or 60 day option for on-site resort guests, DVC etc.
I agree with you that Disney made this unnecessarily complex, even more so because of not giving a special name to the individual LL rides (the mouthful I’ve been calling these). I think I’ve explained this my bf 3 or 4 times now, sent him all your blog posts in the subject, and made him watch the longer 15 minute version of the announcement video. He’s still so lost, and he’s a WDW regular. I can’t imagine how the amateurs will process all this, and I feel sorry for the CMs who will have to repeatedly tell people that no, their $15 genie+ lightning lane access did not in fact buy them access to this particular lightning lane.
“I feel sorry for the CMs who will have to repeatedly tell people that no, their $15 genie+ lightning lane access did not in fact buy them access to this particular lightning lane.”
You hit the nail on the head. For all our complaints, hardcore fans will figure this out pretty quickly once all the details settle into place.
However, this is going to be an ongoing source of confusion for casual visitors–and a point of conflict between guests and Cast Members. Really feel sorry for them. (My hope is that over time, the headaches, confusion, etc. will lead to Disney just abandoning the a la carte lines.)
Bottom line: If you’re at WDW with your family and don’t want to wait on long lines, take out your wallet and spend hundreds extra during your “magical” stay. Another suggestion: Spend $1000.00 with your family of four for Mickey’s Magical Christmas Celebration.
THANK YOU for such a clear, succinct description. Appreciate the analogies as well.
It’s basically three options: 1 – don’t pay and get 0 access to LL; 2 – pay the $15pp and get access to LLs, similar to FP+; 3- pay per ride for the top tier that is not a part of the $15pp.
Am I missing something!
You are correct.
1. Standby or Virtual Queue ($0)
2. Genie+ via Lightning Lane (~40 attractions, $15 per day and theoretically unlimited)
3. Magic Carpet Access via Lightning Lane (~8 of the highest demand attractions, unknown cost per ride)
There is no overlap between 2 and 3.
Hi first of all thank you. Can we expect for the attractions which we will paid in addition to genie + have a third line?
I though it would be the same as the “fast pass” and now genie + line.
Perfectly articulated, as always. But I do have a question that doesn’t pertain to Genie+ or Lightning Lanes. Do you have any predictions on if or when Disney will announce any deeper AP discounts for food/merchandise for the 50th? I remember the for the 40th, Disney gave 20% off all food everywhere (not just 10% at select restaurants) and I think it was 30% off merchandise. We’re going to be down there 9/26-10/8 and with Tables in Wonderland not available for purchase, it’d really help. Thanks in advance!
I do not expect that to happen right away. More likely, any special discounts that might be offered will come in 2022 after the initial rush of the 50th subsides, dining is back at or near full capacity, and supply chain disruptions result in less souvenir scarcity.