Magic Kingdom Christmas Parade Added to Genie+
Due to heavy holiday crowds at Walt Disney World, high demand for Genie+, and the system collapsing in crowds during Thanksgiving, the company tweaked Lightning Lane selections for the weeks leading up to New Year’s Eve. The latest change is the addition of Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade at Magic Kingdom to the Genie+ lineup.
Prior to this, Walt Disney World moved several attractions to Genie+ that were previously Individual Lightning Lanes. This included Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain at Animal Kingdom, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Hollywood Studios, Frozen Ever After at Epcot, and Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom–all joined the flat-rate Disney Genie+ service through January 3, 2022.
That change was made to prevent Genie+ from being overwhelmed during periods of high demand–like the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Eve–which is what occurred in the lead-up to Thanksgiving. That resulted in some of the longest lines in each park being at Guest Relations, countless refunds issued for Genie+ and, if comments on this blog are any indicate, poor guest satisfaction…
With the last Disney Very Merriest After Hours being held last night, Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade at Magic Kingdom now moves to daily ops for the rest of the holiday season with performances at 12:00 pm and 3:45 pm.
This is normal, and what usually happens during the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Eve after Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party finishes its run. Day guests get “free” entertainment from the hard ticket parties, but still “pay for it” via higher crowd levels, plus peak season hotel and ticket pricing.
If you have Genie+ service and are redeeming Lightning Lane entry for Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade at Magic Kingdom, please see a parade-viewing Cast Member at the courtyard in front of Cinderella Castle during your arrival window. The Lightning Lane entrance will be on the east side of the Cinderella Castle area.
Below is the view you should expect from the Genie+ Lightning Lane location. While I prefer the end of Main Street during the Christmas parties, that’s only because of the snow on Main Street and lighting. All of those are irrelevant during daily ops. This is the best location for watching Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade at Magic Kingdom.
This is also normal, and was the viewing location offered for Festival of Fantasy Parade during the FastPass+ era.
What remains to be seen is whether Festival of Fantasy will also have a dedicated viewing location, or if this is only being done to help Genie+ balance demand with capacity during peak season.
While we’re planning on being in Magic Kingdom to see Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade, we did not buy Genie+ today, so we’re not entirely sure how selecting the parade works.
At Disneyland Resort under the MaxPass system, you could select World of Color of Fantasmic without that stopping the clock, so to speak. Our guess is that’s not the case here–that if you select MOUACP, it’s likely another 120 minutes before you can make another selection at Magic Kingdom. (If anyone is in the park today and can confirm this in the comments, we’d greatly appreciate it!)
For what it’s worth, Genie+ viewing for the noon performance of Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade was available until around 9:45 am. When we checked at 9:50 am, that parade viewing was fully booked, and the clock had moved forward to the 3:45 pm performance.
It remains to be seen how quickly the 3:45 pm Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade will book today or later this week. (We’ll update this post once the next performance ‘sells out.’) Our guess is that performances will book up faster in the coming days. It always takes time for ‘word to spread’ about changes, and more guests will realize that trying to watch MOUACP is pure chaos without the reserved viewing.
UPDATE: The 3:45 pm viewing of Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade booked up around 11:30 am.
However, Disney apparently overbooked the parade viewing area and some guests reported having their Genie+ Lightning Lanes cancelled for the MOUACP viewing area. As such, today really isn’t a useful benchmark in terms of when it’ll book up. Hopefully, we’ll get more useful info tomorrow and will report back.
Our (very) preliminary practical advice for anyone visiting Walt Disney World during the busy Christmas and New Year’s Eve weeks would be to reserve Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade as your #2 Genie+ Lightning Lane selection of the day.
See our Magic Kingdom Genie+ Lightning Lane Ride Ranks for more priorities. (Note that this has not been updated for the holiday weeks–Space Mountain is now the #4 attraction, with Splash Mountain dropping to #6 if you’re visiting on days like today when the weather is colder.
We really hope more entertainment is added to Genie+ at Walt Disney World. Even before it launched, we’ve been advocating for Harmonious to join the Epcot lineup. As you might recall, IllumiNations offered a FastPass+ viewing area in the ‘front of the house,’ which was the best viewing area for that fireworks show–and the same is true for Harmonious.
Currently, the ‘front of house’ viewing area for Harmonious is open to anyone. However, given the lack of Genie+ attractions at Epcot, it would make sense to include Harmonious as a value-add to incentivize Genie+ purchases—especially if it doesn’t sell well at first. Walt Disney World might want to separately monetize that viewing area down the road—either with dessert parties or standalone paid access for nighttime spectacular viewing. Nothing would surprise us. Harmonious viewing might be enough to tip the scales in the favor of buying Genie+ at Epcot.
Ultimately, all of the recent additions to the attraction lineups change the equation for purchasing Genie+ when visiting Walt Disney World in the next couple weeks. While the Genie system still is frustrating and buggy, this changes its usefulness and how long attractions should remain available even amidst peak season crowds.
Assuming you don’t mind some My Disney Experience glitches and email codes, Genie+ is an absolute no brainer for Magic Kingdom the next two weeks. The same is true for DHS, so long as you go in with a strong strategy and awareness that availability for headliners goes fast. Epcot and Animal Kingdom are more open questions, with my gut saying it’s probably going to be hard to score both Test Track and Frozen Ever After in the same day. As always, the best-value approach there will be Park Hopping between the two.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What are your thoughts on Walt Disney World adding Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade at Magic Kingdom to Genie+? If you booked Lightning Lane viewing for MOUACP, were you able to immediately make another selection, or did you have to wait 120 minutes? Hope more entertainment will be added to Genie+ or would you prefer first-come viewing locations? 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 are planning our first ever Disney trip to DW in November (13-16). I’m so overwhelmed, we are staying at one of the resorts but I feel I need someone to hold my hand through this process so I don’t mess up our trip. I planned to use Genie+ and we are going to be at magic kingdom for 2 whole days so that will hopefully help our chances of getting the best out of Genie+ and not the heart or headaches
To tell the truth, I fall in love with Walt Disney World and I have been there about 5 times. Of course, it’s truly frustrating that thеre were such heavy holiday crowds in this place and that it was really difficult to get pleasure from spending time in a full measure. Honestly, I consider all these changes expedient and prudent because there are no other ways to cope with this situation and be in an advantageous position. Such an agiotaje and huge demand are quite justified and I think that it is inevitable in any case. Because of it, I think that it is truly important to take certain measures to create harmony. Also, I really hope that there will be more entertainment in Genie+ at Walt Disney World because it will be a huge advantage of this tool and it will increase the quantity of users. I think that it should be a priority of Genie+ and be of paramount importance in this service in order to refine it.
We did the Genie+ parade at 7am Wednesday. We did have to wait 120 minutes after park opening for next selection, but it was worth it, in my opinion, because we came here to enjoy Christmas and we booked MK on the 22nd in hopes they’d have something from the Christmas party. Once we got into the viewing area, the outer circle surrounding the statue, we were able to walk around to face the castle. Found some spots to squeeze in. Was a pretty great view!
https://youtu.be/EuS5CGhjDK8
A CM told me it’s 120 min AFTER park opening so I guess I should not have jumped to the graduate level blog! Genie+ is definitely a little more complicated than Disneyland’s old Max Pass!
I got Slinky at 7am today. Tried for the next genie+ at 9am (120 min later), Disney says I can’t book another until 10:30?!?! Anyone else having this experience? Did Disney increase the return booking window??? Of course Slinky has been down all morning so maybe the system slows everything down…
I’m glad to know this, as we’ll be in MK on 12/26. I’ll test it out, and let you know!
I’m seeing reports that they overbooked the LL area for the parade and that Genie + erased these reservations for guests without telling them. Disney just can’t seem to get this system right!
Haha, of course they did!
There is a very small viewing area between the Christmas Shoppe and the bridge to Cinderella’s Castle Courtyard. There are a few white benches there that seat a total of about 25-30 people. For the parade during Very Merriest Hours, CM’s roped off this area about 20-30 minutes before the parade. They only allowed in people who could sit on the benches (no standing room). We were lucky to be able to grab seats there for our 2 viewings of the parade (2 different nights). We comfortably sat about 10 feet from the floats. The parade view from these seats was fantastic. I don’t know if the CM’s will handle this area the same for the daytime viewing; but if they do, I think its well worth trying to get these seats.
@Mickey1928, I agree. I didn’t want to cross thread, but I thought that article (and the one about Iger & Chapek) were both fantastic. The writing and analysis is all top notch. I’m waiting for the DTB book :-).
The Atlantic had another good (and very brief) article today that I thought accurately reflected on the collective fatigue: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/omicron-end-of-pandemic/621089/.
Thanks for the kind words–and sharing that article. I hadn’t seen it previously, but definitely agree with both the premise and the sentiment.
I’m going to cheat here to praise you. Your latest post about the Omicron virus was FANTASTIC. Full of important info reported straightforward. This is why you are the ONE BLOG to follow.
Thanks for the kind words! 🙂 Don’t expect more updates, though–I have the same fatigue as the majority of Americans and am ready to move on with life.