The biggest talk of the town is the new ‘fast pass’ system at Walt Disney World. Disney Genie Service – which includes: Genie, Genie+, and Individual Lightening Lane. Everyone is trying to figure out if Genie truly gives you the best Disney day, if Genie+ is necissary, and if Individual lightening lanes are worth the extra expense. With our visit during one of the busiest weeks of the year, we tried it and here are my thoughts.
First, its good to understand that there are three ways to use this service. The first way is “Disney Genie” – this is a free service that will plan your day for you by making suggestions of what to experience throughout your day based on your interests that you enter into the system. The next way is “Disney Genie+”. This is a pay per day service that allows you to skip the line on select attractions. It does not include all rides/shows, but it does include a lot of them. The third way is Individual Lightening Lane. This is a pay per ride service for the most popular attractions at each park. There are way too many rules and caveats with the two paid features to mention them all in this post. Molly at All Ears does a fantastic job explaining it. Check them out here.
We used the Genie+ service two out of 7 days of our visit and we used Individual Lightening lane once. We purchased Genie+ for use at Hollywood studios. We did park hop to Epcot and used it there on the same day – that was nice. We also purchased Genie+ at Magic Kingdom on New Years Eve. The Individual Lightening Lane we purchased was for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
What I learned:
- You do not need to purchase Genie+ for every park or for every day of your trip – I suggest making the decision of purchasing it each morning.
- I would purchase Genie+ for Magic Kingdom, but wouldn’t bother for Animal Kingdom. Epcot and Hollywood Studios are a maybe…
- Purchase Genie+ early in the morning and choose your first Lightening lane early… don’t wait until you get to the park
- Learn the 120 minute rule and use it!
- Familiarize yourself with navigating Genie before you need to, you want to be able to have fast fingers.
- Refresh to find better times
- Individual Lightening Lanes are not necissary if you rope drop the big rides during Early Theme Park Entry for all Disney resort guests.
- You probably don’t need Genie+ at all if you are staying at a Deluxe resort and have the Extended Evening Hours
- Individual Lightening Lane is fantastic for Rise of Resistance. (And probably Remy’s since the virtual queue is gone now)
- Unfortunately, unlike the old fast pass system, you can only ride each ride ONCE through Lightening Lane.
- Genie recommendations don’t make a lick of sense. I would think twice before blindly following its suggestions.
- Genie+ Lightening Lanes are not always available and will ‘sell out’. There were several rides we could never get a LL for… refreshing COULD make one pop up, if you are lucky…
I knew it was only a matter of time before Disney started charging for a ‘skip the line’ service. Every other amusement/theme park that I know of has been charging for this type of service for a long time. Most of them charge a lot more than $15 per day per person. I am glad they came out with something because I like skipping the lines and didn’t like the lines I had to stand in when they didn’t have anything at all. I hope they make it a little more user freindly, though.
What are your thoughts? Do you have any questions about this that I can answer for you? Leave a comment below, I would be happy to help. 🙂 Don’t forget to like and subscribe. As always, thanks for reading.
The Mouse Traveler 