Lugan
Double double coaster
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2018
Dates of Stay: 07/30/2022 - 08/06/2022
Stay Location: WDW Swan
Ticket Type: Park Hopper + Genie+
We went down for a 6 day trip, luckily still having Marriott points to stay at the Swan for reward points. This gave us easy access to Epcot for trying out the 2 new attractions since we last were at WDW: Remy's and GotG. For those that are Marriott Bonvoy members, and are curious, we were successful in redeeming 5 Suite Night Awards at the Swan to upgrade from the "No-View" reward point room option to a Deluxe Corner Alcove Suite! This was our 2nd time staying at the Swan (we've also stayed at the Dolphin, but decided we preferred the Swan), on a point redemption. We'd never received an upgrade in the past (even though both stays were mid-pandemic).
This was my first experience with the new DAS system, Genie, and DAS pre-registration. I was anxious about my DAS pre-registration after hearing some mixed results, but the process went smoothly. I was only on hold for about 45 minutes before the video call. I will say that my preselections weren't great, and we ended up only using about half of them. We also had the opportunity to get Genie+ tickets, rather than purchasing each day, so we opted to do that.
As a rule, when going to WDW, we generally don't rope drop, but like to arrive about 20-30 minutes after open time to avoid the big lines through security and rush into the tap-in spots. About the only exception to this was when the RotR virtual queue system required you to be in park to join. We stay until about lunchtime, grab a meal at the park before heading back to the hotel to stay out othe hottest part of the day, and rest up. Go back about dinner time, getting a meal at the park or at one of the resort restaurants, and stay until close.
Overall, I'd say that Genie+ gave us options to do something while waiting for the DAS return time. Most of the non-headliner rides had Genie+ availability to basically walk on to the ride, if you had the availability to choose a Genie+ LL, so I found we used this a lot. I'd read about trying to stack up ride return times for the evening, but that just wasn't a good use case for us. We'd get a headliner Genie+ LL in the morning, but generally the headliner ride LL times didn't work well for our plans when it came time to select the next Genie+ time. Sometimes I could get a good match for the early evening, when we returned from our mid-day break, but often I found that I just couldn't make the headliner rides work well for Genie+. This likely has to do with the big ~ 4 hour gap in the middle of the day we had.
However, with DAS options and Genie+, we only really waited in standby lines 2 or 3 times throughout the entire 6 day stay. But, that came with a cost: Lightning Lane lines were significantly longer than I've ever experienced Fast Pass lines. For instance, when going to ride Peter Pan's one afternoon, the Lightning Lane line was backed up out past the edge of the ride front. Worse was Space Mountain, where the lightning lane was back out of the cattle-stall room, down the hall a bit. I suspect that this is partially due to Disney monetizing the Genie+ capability, and probably allowing more access to it via the old Fastpass+ days. But that's only anecdotal, with no hard evidence to back up the observation. Other than those 2 specific experiences, we had 6 days of relatively smooth operation of the lightning lanes.
A few notes on DAS selection via the app (Android):
Other things I noted when compared to the previous trips:
Stay Location: WDW Swan
Ticket Type: Park Hopper + Genie+
We went down for a 6 day trip, luckily still having Marriott points to stay at the Swan for reward points. This gave us easy access to Epcot for trying out the 2 new attractions since we last were at WDW: Remy's and GotG. For those that are Marriott Bonvoy members, and are curious, we were successful in redeeming 5 Suite Night Awards at the Swan to upgrade from the "No-View" reward point room option to a Deluxe Corner Alcove Suite! This was our 2nd time staying at the Swan (we've also stayed at the Dolphin, but decided we preferred the Swan), on a point redemption. We'd never received an upgrade in the past (even though both stays were mid-pandemic).
This was my first experience with the new DAS system, Genie, and DAS pre-registration. I was anxious about my DAS pre-registration after hearing some mixed results, but the process went smoothly. I was only on hold for about 45 minutes before the video call. I will say that my preselections weren't great, and we ended up only using about half of them. We also had the opportunity to get Genie+ tickets, rather than purchasing each day, so we opted to do that.
As a rule, when going to WDW, we generally don't rope drop, but like to arrive about 20-30 minutes after open time to avoid the big lines through security and rush into the tap-in spots. About the only exception to this was when the RotR virtual queue system required you to be in park to join. We stay until about lunchtime, grab a meal at the park before heading back to the hotel to stay out othe hottest part of the day, and rest up. Go back about dinner time, getting a meal at the park or at one of the resort restaurants, and stay until close.
Overall, I'd say that Genie+ gave us options to do something while waiting for the DAS return time. Most of the non-headliner rides had Genie+ availability to basically walk on to the ride, if you had the availability to choose a Genie+ LL, so I found we used this a lot. I'd read about trying to stack up ride return times for the evening, but that just wasn't a good use case for us. We'd get a headliner Genie+ LL in the morning, but generally the headliner ride LL times didn't work well for our plans when it came time to select the next Genie+ time. Sometimes I could get a good match for the early evening, when we returned from our mid-day break, but often I found that I just couldn't make the headliner rides work well for Genie+. This likely has to do with the big ~ 4 hour gap in the middle of the day we had.
However, with DAS options and Genie+, we only really waited in standby lines 2 or 3 times throughout the entire 6 day stay. But, that came with a cost: Lightning Lane lines were significantly longer than I've ever experienced Fast Pass lines. For instance, when going to ride Peter Pan's one afternoon, the Lightning Lane line was backed up out past the edge of the ride front. Worse was Space Mountain, where the lightning lane was back out of the cattle-stall room, down the hall a bit. I suspect that this is partially due to Disney monetizing the Genie+ capability, and probably allowing more access to it via the old Fastpass+ days. But that's only anecdotal, with no hard evidence to back up the observation. Other than those 2 specific experiences, we had 6 days of relatively smooth operation of the lightning lanes.
A few notes on DAS selection via the app (Android):
- I've heard reports that you can request a return time to a park you're hopping to via speaking with a CM. I was told emphatically at MK that this was not possible when I asked for a DAS return time for Epcot. In this specific instance, we'd started the day at Epcot, hopped to MK, and were headed back to Epcot when I stopped at guest services to see about getting this return time (and resolving #3 noted below). Further, what I noticed was that after tapping in to a park, I could get a return time for that park, even if I left the park for a mid-day break. BUT, if you tap into another park, you can no longer make a return time reservation for the initial park. I believe that Disney intends for you to be inside the park to get a return time, but since you don't "tap out" of a park, it doesn't know if you've left or not. Once you park hop to another park, and tap in, Disney now knows that you've left the initial park.
- I had a weird issue with my account that wouldn't let me get details on DAS return times in the app, nor on any of the "any experience" options I received when a ride went down via the app. My wife was able to just fine. I could get the details via the web-page. This was a pretty big annoyance. When I asked about it at Guest Services, the CM said that IT was making some backend changes. They were instructed to notify them of any guests complaining about issues with their accounts and include details. She couldn't do anything to help fix my account. This isn't an acceptable means of introducing new features, in my opinion. They shouldn't have paying guests as guinea pigs.
- I also discovered, after park hopping without using a DAS return time at the initial park, that I had no option to cancel a DAS return time via the app. The app wouldn't let me make a new DAS selection, prompting me that I already had one. This is a major failing in the app, in my opinion. Instead of this prompt, it should allow me to override, and "give up" the old DAS return time in favor of the new one if I want. Without this feature, I had to wait in line at Guest Relations to get them to clear out the DAS return time for me.
- On our last evening, we were hopping back to Epcot after meeting some friends at MK. By the time we arrived at Epcot, and tapped in, the expected wait time for Remy's was long enough that the app would no longer allow me to get a DAS return time (~ 8:15pm, 50 minute wait time). Another stop at Guest Services, and he was able to add the return time for me, but instructed me to not be there after 9pm, or else I wouldn't be able to ride, as they shut down the lightning lane at that time. We barely made it in time, needing to stop and get a bite to eat before rushing through the park to the back. While I appreciated him granting the time, I see this as another failure of Disney IT to anticipate guest use cases and plan accordingly.
Other things I noted when compared to the previous trips:
- Mobile food ordering seemed to be smoother. There were shorter lines for walk-up ordering than I experienced before for the snacks that we did get.
- MagicBand+ was underwhelming. We decided to get one of these to check out, but found it inconsistent in getting interactions with the statues around the park.
- Other than some CMs still wearing masks (mainly at dining establishments), you see almost no lasting sign of the pandemic at the parks: foreign visitors are back, crowd levels are high, people are packed in to interior lines without regard to distancing.
- Perhaps its because WDW is pushing the mobile app over physical tickets, and MagicBands aren't being provided to on-property guests, but any tap point queues took longer to go through. This might get better, as people get more experienced, but what I witnessed was a lot of people caught off-guard needing to get their phones out once they got up to the tap points. Then there's the issue of kids not having their own phones, so parents are having to tap multiple times, selecting different people in the app(?) for all members of their party. This is really the failing in the concept of having the phone be the center of the experience: a large number of kids that are going to Disneyworld don't have their own phones to use to tap in. I also saw some very large parties (including multiple adults) where only a single phone was being utilized for tap-in functionality. This is a failing of the Magicband+ concept, too. It pairs with your phone via bluetooth, and then you have to have the play Disney app running to get credit for any interactions to do any of the "quests", get any badges, etc.
