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.
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 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!
A second question (paranoid delusion?) that I don’t know if anyone but Disney can (and won’t) answer: Will the ‘availability’ for virtual queue attractions be manufactured down, in order to force magic carpet spends? Disney has a history for murky numbers on things like park capacity, AP sales etc, so it’s not completely crazy to imagine the, say 10,000, virtual queue spots they used to release 2x a day are now cut to 1,000, almost guaranteeing an additional 18,000 magic carpet add ons at $28-50(?) a unit. At this point why would Disney leave money on the table?
I agree with the general tenor of these insightful comments. WDW is being transformed to a park for the well heeled and the rest be damned. Hopefully, this will backfire and the loss of revenue will make the suits at Disney re-think their greedy plans to focus on the rich and dismiss all others..
@Charity
The Virtual Queues are still the Virtual Queues. They are available to all guests and do not cost anything extra. This is why Tom and others have recommended trying your luck with the Virtual Queue drops and if you fail, fork over the dough to ride the one time if that ride is a must for you. Rides with Virtual Queues do not have a standby line to fall back on; the Virtual Queue is essentially your standby line.
Will you have to buy genie+ to use virtual queues, like ROtR? Since those are bookable without genie plus now, and they are essentially the standby line do you have to pay $15 for the privilege of being denied? Right now if you buy a park ticket, even if you don’t add-on you still have ‘access’ to all attractions through standby and the faulty virtual queue. Am I understanding correctly that now those 2 rides per park have an additional $15 surcharge right off the bat if you want to enter the fast finger lottery? And if I assume I will not win the virtual queue lottery and just want to pay the magic carpet fee when I get to the ride, $28-$50 (who knows), do I have to buy the genie+ $15 TOO, in order to access the magic carpet purchase? Or can you a la carte the a la carte out of the genie+ and just use genie or MyDisney app for virtual queue reservations and magic carpet purchases? My head hurts.
The FastPass+ system did not limit you to only 3 per day. I keep reading comments about that being the case but that’s not true. Maybe this is the confusion with FP that Tom spoke about.
With FP+, you could book your initial 3 rides at the 60 day window if you were onsite and 30 days for offsite. Once you were in the park, you could book one at a time after you used up your initial 3. It was based on availability, but we would have days where we would be able to use FP over 10x. And it wasn’t just for the less popular rides. To maximize it, I would target the first 3 to be finished before lunch and then add one at at time for the rest of the day. For the first 3, we would be able to secure the premium rides (Seven Dwarfs, Space Mt, Peter Pan) and then use FP in the afternoon for rides like Big Thunder, Pirates, Splash, etc. Maybe I was just lucky and we went during non peak crowds (Nov after Thanksgiving), but I also had success securing additional fast passes for some of the premium rides. We even got lucky a few times with a mid afternoon FP to Seven Dwarfs. The power of the refresh would always open up new choices. And then we would park hop to Epcot and secure evening FPs to Test Track, Soarin, etc. This is why I was so disappointed with the new system.
Tbh, I do not mind this system all. Getting more than just 3 FastPass attractions for a relatively low price and at LEAST having the option to pay to get on RotR are personally very exciting for me.
Ah. I was one who was confused on the LL vs Individual Lines being either/or but not both. For some reason I thought there would be a LL option AND an individual purchase option on the same ride. Like, you could buy Genie+ and get, say Slinky Dog…OR you could just buy a single pass for it. I didn’t realize you have an extra cost on top of your already extra cost. Bummer. But I guess it makes sense with the prices they are showing.
@Chavone
The two are independent of each other. You can absolutely purchase Genie+ AND “Magic Carpet” access to the few rides that offer it. All Tom was saying is that “Magic Carpet” rides are not listed on the 40-attraction Genie+ lineup. You won’t find Seven Dwarfs Mine Train on Genie+, for example. It is only available (at least initially) as a per-ride one-time purchase, or the usual standby line. Whereas in theory, anything listed on Genie+ is available on an “unlimited” basis (return windows will start to disappear throughout the day, but initially you can grab any one of the 40 attractions starting at 7AM, and then be able to make more selections every 2 hours or when you check in to your current selection, whichever comes first.
If it’s anything like MaxPass (which it seems it will be), you will be able to add it per day. You can choose all valid days of your tickets, or only a couple, or none at all.
I have a couple of questions and maybe I’m just not reading it correctly. You’re saying either/or.
1. So if I have purchased Genie+ for my family, I cannot turn around and purchase a ROR “Magic Carpet Pass” at HS? You can not purchase both? Is that correct? And if it is, you would think that WDW wouldn’t care about that since they’re making more money?!?!
2. Will you be able to purchase day by for Genie+ or would you have to purchase for the extent of your ticket? For instance
5 day tickets have to purchase Genie+ for all 5 days?
3. Or… could you purchase Genie+ for day 1,2,3 and purchase “Magic carpet passes” for days 4 & 5?
4. How does all of this tie into a DAS? Is DAS still the same? (Basically a hard ticket you walk with?) Or can you still make purchases on top of DAS?
@Mary
As long as your family/friends are linked together in My Disney Experience, one person can secure the Genie+ rides for the entire group.
@Erin @Randy
Genie+ does not allow you to book 3 rides in advance. The booking window opens at 7 AM for each day and you can book your 1st Genie+ ride. You can then book your next Genie+ ride immediately after you enter the attraction (or) 120 mins (maybe this is changed to 90 mins) after you booked the first ride (whatever comes first). So if you book a ride at 7:01 with an arrival of 3PM, you don’t need to wait until 3PM to book your 2nd ride. You can do so at 9:01AM. But if your arrival time is before 120 mins after you book it, you can book the next ride immediately after you enter the attraction and scan your MB (similar to what you did for FP after you used up your initial 3). So there will be some strategy to maximizing the experience and how many times you use it. In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense for Epcot or AK since there are only a few premium attractions and they are not all included with Genie+ (Flight of Passage).
@Mike
I get why some people did not like the FastPass+ system but you were not limited to 3 per day. It was 3 initial FPs that could be booked 60 days out for onsite guests, but you could book 1 at a time from there and I had a lot of success with it, which is why I’m nervous about the new system. Cost aside, I can’t imagine this being an improvement for my family. We thrived with the old system. Maybe it was my OCD and just being lucky with the refresh button.
Question: Since both my husband & I will be using DAS will we HAVE to have Genie+ or will it be useless for us? We are both mobility impaired. Thanks.
I can understand people being upset about the individual attractions. While I personally believe charging a $15-$25 price is a good way to control and regulate the distribution for ultra-high demand rides, the cost can seem significant for a single ride. Furthermore, if a high percentage of capacity is given to the Lightning Lane purchasers, leaving little room for standby, then you will be faced with extremely long standby lines if you fail to pay the premium.
I do not understand anyone being upset about Genie+. Honestly, once people start using it, I expect very high guest satisfaction — superior to Fastpass+. It should allow far far more spontaneity and should allow the guest to experience far more premium attractions than they could with Fastpass+. Fastpass+ suffered from a simple but massive problem: There wasn’t nearly enough ride capacity to give every single guest 3 true premium fastpasses every single day. So you ended up with tiers, you ended up with inability to book the top attractions even at 60 days.
Genie+ will fix this problem: By charging a price, it will greatly reduce the number of people using the system. I’d guess, at MOST, 50-75% of guests will purchase Genie+. And instead of reserving 3 rides in advance, with reserving only 1 at a time, on the same day, there should be plenty of availability at most attractions through the day.
Seems many people who are upset are viewing this as being exactly the same as FP+, but with a $15 price and a mad dash at 7am instead of 60 days in advance. This will be NOTHING like FP+. Capacity will not disappear at 7am. If you’re planning on arriving at the park at 2pm, you can probably still get a wide selection of Genie+ passes at noon. Passes will not book up at 7am. And you’ll likely be able to get multiple premium attractions per day. Yes, you will have an advantage if you start early and rope drop — But that’s always been the case.
Do you know if Genie+ will allow you to pick three rides ahead of time and then add one at a time after the last one has been entered? Like FastPass selections?
This is what I surmised after days of reading and re-reading previous posts. So, I’m glad I understand now and thank you for writing this explanation!
Honestly, for those that are still confused…it’s legit exactly like the old FastPass except you don’t need those little tickets you just go onto the app.
There’s a lot of negative things about this….1. too much cell phone usage required 2. you have to pay 3. the rides you or your family REALLY want to see will basically be un-rideable unless you stand in line or pay extra money (for me this one is the WORST out of all the negatives)
We’re going in April as planned and then I think we’ll be heading to the beach for a couple of years.
Personally, I’m CAUTIOUSLY optimistic about the new system. Sure, I don’t like paying for something that used to be free, unless the thing I’m paying for is an improvement. And I think there’s a chance that this could be a net improvement over FP+.
I’ve never experienced MaxPass at DLR, but I do remember the legacy FP system at WDW, and it was great as long as you didn’t mind the legwork (I was the FP runner for my family, and it almost doubled the steps I got in the parks). Of course, it was even better when they didn’t enforce the end of your return time, but that’s another matter. I have little to no issue with returning to a similar (but digital) system as long as it works. My main complaint (other than the cost) is that it prioritizes arriving early at the park to start pulling LL passes (can we find a new acronym for the LL reservations?) rather than having your first three scheduled for later in the day if you’re not rope dropping.
As for the individual attraction selections (Magic Carpet passes) – I see a potential upside to this system. Assuming that the vast majority of guests won’t want to pay for access to a single ride, the LL utilization for those rides will be quite low, meaning that the standby lines for those attractions will move much more quickly than they did in the FP+ days. That will actually make access to those rides MORE egalitarian, as most (90%?) of guests will be in the same bucket, and hopefully 3 hour waits will be less common.
As for the complaint that I’ve seen that people don’t want to spend their vacation staring at their phone, I think we’ll be doing much LESS of that then we were when we constantly refreshed the FP+ listings hoping to score a hard-to-get ride.
There are some aspects of FP+ that we’ll miss, but I’m holding out hope that Genie+ will not be a total disaster and MIGHT even be an improvement. If it is, then I won’t complain too much about the $15/day.
For our December trip, I will probably do one of the Genie+ or individual purchase. But not both. I am just going to have to determine whether I think doing the most popular attractions with little wait or doing multiple of the “2nd tier” attractions with little wait provide the better value. Leaning towards Genie+ at this point.
Thanks for the clarification! This does sound a lot like legacy paper FASTPASS – but virtual, like DL’s MaxPass.
(I’m curious to see how going from that system to Fastpass+ changed touring, but that’s a question for another post.)
1st- if i’m paying extra on top of my vacation, i’m paying touring plans $15 for a year’s subscription to do what Genie claims it will do.
2nd- if there is not going to be any advantage to resort guests by way of a fixed number of “free” access to any of the rides with your resort package, that’s yet another ding on not staying on site.
3rd- can we talk about the fact you have a photo with Dr. Von Drake?
I’m starting to like this new system already – it eliminates the horrible 30/60 day thing. Now if they can just do something about the horrible 180 day ADR situation.
If I’m arranging all the rides for a family of four, do i pay the $15/day x 4 on my phone through the mydisney/genie app? How do i make sure everyone in my party is covered, without having each person have to pay the $15?