Best Strategy for a trip in 2022? Lower Your Expectations

[MainMom]

Planning at the moment for our mid august trip from the UK. Will be staying onsite for the 1st time and my research is really pushing me to a different strategy than previous visit. We would of always rope dropped our Disney days, not because we are early birds but because there was a big advantage to doing so. Now I'm not so sure.

Staying onsite (Yacht Club) we will want to take advantage of the resort as well as the parks. My perceived dilution of the rope drop advantage combined with difficulty getting morning only G+ and also perceived advantage of extended evening hours is really pushing us to an afternoon/evening strategy, stacking G+ and ILL afternoon/evening bookings. Also splitting HS into 2 days seems to make sense. Plan is Day 1 (sat) - AK rope drop as will be up early just ILL for FOP, no G+. Day 2 - HS 10ish Just Star wars stuff - ILL RoTR - no G+ (Q for MFSR). Day 3 - Pool morning - EPCOT late night (with EEH) - maybe ILL Rat + GotG ride. Day 4 - Pool morning - HS (non starwars - G+ afternoon stacking ILL MMR. Day 5 - Pool morning - MK late night (with EEH) - G+ afternoon stacking ride ILLs during EEH.

Hoping that strategy still enable us to have a great trip, still means getting up at 0700 to book stuff which is a bit rubbish. Kids are teenagers now so late nights in parks should be OK but there's no way we could do ropedrop till park close. As repeat visitors (last in 2015) the pressure is off a bit to do everything, I do feel my expectations are well are truly reduced though. Still very excited to be coming back finally in August!

What is currently being shown to happen in HS is that those genie+ are gone before you are able to grab more than 2 To stack. They have popped up with lots of of refreshing (and quick fingers) so maybe that would be something that you want to do? I don’t know that there is really a good strategy for HS right now, but a lot can change between now and August.

 

[MainMom]

it's not like people who didn't like FP+ demanded Genie+. they just didn't like aspects of it...for us...we didn't like the 3 FP cap as under the old system we got many all day every day at all the parks. We also didn't like the tiering.

As far as getting up early...due to the FP+ tiering the only way to ride headliners with short waits was to get up early anyway and get over to the parks for rope drop. So you had your 3 FP+ in hand including one Tier one ride and you had to get up, get dressed, get over to the park by 7:30 or 8am and do a stamped to the other tier 1 rides to get a short wait.

Now...albeit you must pay....and albeit you must stay onsite...you can rollover grab your phone and in a few minutes have 3 Tier 1 rides booked and then go to the park whenever you want. OR you can still get up and do RD and go for your next favorite ride early.

e.g. at DHS book Genie+ for SD and buy ILL$ for ROTR and MMRR...then turn up at part open and ride MFSR, TOT and RNR with minimal, if any wait. that was:

• NOT possible under FP+
• it was KIND OF possible under old FP but you had to hustle all over the park grabbing paper FPs under that system...
• and now it IS 100% possible and MUCH easier...for a fee.

I don’t think most people are getting all 3 of these at HS. Also currently you can’t purchase MMRR as its now included in genie+ until 8/7. And waits lately are not minimal.

 

[fatevilmonkey]

If they wanna charge and make Disney about the Rich . Charge me a $1000 for my 7 days so my son can ride slinky dog from rope drop to close . Or whatever ride I choose .

 

[Mango7100]

Some advice would be appreciated.

Hi. I have not read all 18 pages but have read many. Everyone has articulated so many things I have been concerned about with our upcoming trip in the end of July. We are 4 adults, mom, dad, DD (26), and BF(27). We have not been to Disney World in a very long time (we used to go every year with several trips a year to DLR). We have recently become AP holders at Disneyland and go often, we live part time in LA where our daughter and her boyfriend live. Sometimes we go overnight, sometimes for a few hours, we mix it up. I have not been since Genie+ but the kids have. I probably would not bother with Genie+ there as we know the ins and outs and if we can not do one thing we can do it another time. We are going to be in Orlando post cruise and thought it would be fun to spend a few days at DW. My DH who swore 10 years ago to never go back to a Disney theme park after a really bad experience for which customer service did nothing, has shocked us all and said he wants to join us at the parks in DW. Now I want to know what I can do to insure it is pleasant. He is interested in rides that show new technology.
We have 3 day park hoppers with Genie+ Debated doing 2 day which I can still do as it is a package, if we decided we wanted the 3rd day could we add it? Debating taking the Genie+ off of DH and my pass too.

So here is my plan and would appreciate any suggestions to improve on this.

Stay at the Four Seasons so we will have a nice room, nice pools, good service, and true 4 star hotel for relaxing when not at the parks. The down side is there really are no Disney perks except early entry which is not for us.

Day 1 we will just chill at the hotel (we arrive very early)
Day 2 going to book a VIP tour so we can hit all the hard to get rides with the entire family (4 of us) without having our nose in the phones
Day 3 chill at the pool Explore whatever rides, shows or parades we want that are not E rides. Have dinner at Epcot and see the fireworks there
Day 4 Morning explore the animals at AK or chill at the pool Explore whatever rides, shows or parades we want that are not E rides.
Day 3 and 4 the kids can decide if they want to be more aggressive about getting up at 7 am to use Genie+ or $ILL in order to ride some of the top rides.

Thoughts and Advice welcome!

When you get to Four Seasons you seriously may not want to leave. We stayed 8 days last summer and ended up only doing 3 days at the parks (and they were half days) on our APs. We ended up cancelling our other reservations for parks. Especially if you are doing a VIP tour…you may want to scale back on park time

 

[kc51570]

it's not like people who didn't like FP+ demanded Genie+. they just didn't like aspects of it...for us...we didn't like the 3 FP cap as under the old system we got many all day every day at all the parks. We also didn't like the tiering.

As far as getting up early...due to the FP+ tiering the only way to ride headliners with short waits was to get up early anyway and get over to the parks for rope drop. So you had your 3 FP+ in hand including one Tier one ride and you had to get up, get dressed, get over to the park by 7:30 or 8am and do a stampede to the other tier 1 rides to get a short wait.

Now...albeit you must pay....and albeit you must stay onsite...you can rollover in bed grab your phone and in a few minutes have 3 Tier 1 rides booked and then go back to sleep or lay around and go to the park whenever you want. OR you can still get up and do RD and go for your next favorite ride early.

e.g. at DHS book Genie+ for SD and buy ILL$ for ROTR and MMRR...then turn up at park open and ride MFSR, TOT and RNR with minimal, if any wait. that was:

• NOT possible under FP+
• it was KIND OF possible under old FP but you had to hustle all over the park grabbing paper FPs under that system...
• and now it IS 100% possible and MUCH easier...for a fee.

There was no cap on FP+. You started out with 3 and could add another after you tapped into the third one and continue that process through the day. You couldn’t get FP back in the day for MMRR and ROTR because either the rides didn’t exist or the FP wasn’t an option pre-COVID. And now you may still have to choose between SDD and MMRR because they’ve added MMRR to the genie + pool. And from what I keep reading you can’t even be guaranteed that the ILL return time you choose and pay for will be the time that ends up ultimately showing up in your plans. Not to mention SDD showing you times out to late evening if it is still even available at 7:03am. There‘s no way to actually plan your day around dining reservations, pool time, rest time, etc..

 

[Scalemaster34]

There was no cap on FP+. You started out with 3 and could add another after you tapped into the third one and continue that process through the day. You couldn’t get FP back in the day for MMRR and ROTR because either the rides didn’t exist or the FP wasn’t an option pre-COVID. And now you may still have to choose between SDD and MMRR because they’ve added MMRR to the genie + pool. And from what I keep reading you can’t even be guaranteed that the ILL return time you choose and pay for will be the time that ends up ultimately showing up in your plans. Not to mention SDD showing you times out to late evening if it is still even available at 7:03am. There‘s no way to actually plan your day around dining reservations, pool time, rest time, etc..

I've been using FP since it was a paper ticket that you got first come first serve.... each time they improved it, it actually was a downgrade in my view. Not that I think the old paper tickets would work with today's crowds and with today's guests. It manly worked great because so few really understood it or used it to it's full back then.

In the end as much as I despise Genie+.... I fear what comes next, even more.

 

[TiggerBouncy]

There’s still something missing though. The capacity math for G+ just doesn’t add up. With FP+ being free, the majority of people used it. Not everyone. But let’s just say 2/3 of visitors went to the parks with 3 FPs reserved. I think I saw posted that about 1/3 of guests are buying G+. With thousands fewer people using the system why can’t people be pretty guaranteed to get 3 of the more desirable rides? Yes, you have the top 2 rides in each park pulled out for ILL$, but in the FP days, refreshers could get the desirable rides day-of and there were lots of mid and lower tier ride times available when you looked in the morning (admittedly they were for later in the day but they were available without refreshing). It seems like there should be a lot of slots for people buying G+. And yet, people are getting up at 7 am to fight for JC and PotC.

I haven’t used it but those who have, is it complete walk on? FP could have waits of 20 mins. Did Disney think that wait time was unacceptable for a paid system and dramatically cut the number of times available? People will have different opinions about whether they’d rather pay for a 20 min wait on 3+ rides or no wait for 1-2. Personally I’d rather have more rides and I suspect a lot of others would too.

Well, it's more like 60% of the people have purchased Genie+ or ILL from what Chapek said. Way more than they expected. I am not sure we ever saw the numbers on how many people used FP+.

Also, FP+ had the ride tiers and you could only get 1 tier 1. So that meant that every FP+ only had ONE of MMRR, SDD or MFSR. There are no tiers in G+.

For us, most of the rides we had Genie+ for were walk on's. The only case it was not was TSMM in which the ride went down.

 

[Kerr84]

I've been using FP since it was a paper ticket that you got first come first serve.... each time they improved it, it actually was a downgrade in my view. Not that I think the old paper tickets would work with today's crowds and with today's guests. It manly worked great because so few really understood it or used it to it's full back then.

In the end as much as I despise Genie+.... I fear what comes next, even more.

Back in the paper fastpass days, I was the "runner" for our group. I would have to go all the way across the park with everyone's tickets multiple times a day to secure the fastpasses. It was absolutely exhausting. And you didn't really know what time the fastpass was going to be for until you got up to the kiosks to get one. At least with fastpass+ you could book the three online early and plan out the rides/times so that you weren't crossing back and forth across the park all day.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Well, it's more like 60% of the people have purchased Genie+ or ILL from what Chapek said. Way more than they expected. I am not sure we ever saw the numbers on how many people used FP+.

Also, FP+ had the ride tiers and you could only get 1 tier 1. So that meant that every FP+ only had ONE of MMRR, SDD or MFSR. There are no tiers in G+.

For us, most of the rides we had Genie+ for were walk on's. The only case it was not was TSMM in which the ride went down.

It looks like the Dec Financials Call Chapek said 1/3. But there’s been a webcast since that I didn’t listen to and text didn’t come up in a quick search. If they doubled the percentage of people buying it since fall, then maybe the math does add up. It’s surprising given all the bad press about it, but people may be looking at it as the only way to go despite being very painful.

 

[Tess]

Maybe Disney is listening. I got back Sunday and I've had a least 5 different survey's sent. Not new to get surveys but these had very specific questions. The latest was very specific for the days I visited, when I planned, Crowd levels, specifically asking which park on which day.. whether I used G+ LL asking if I visited other parks and comparisons to Universal offerings. I honestly hope they make changes because as of now my family agrees, I'm not booking anything for next year .. planning on banking/renting out my DVC points before they expire.

We also received a very specific survey regarding our visit to EPCOT. The survey itself was specifically focused on EPCOT although we also visited DHS--shocking!--no survey regarding that park visit. I wish we had received one about our DHS visit. That aside, the survey requested information about crowds, Genie + (we did not use it and don't plan to ever use it with the exception of GoG and Tron whenever they finally open), dining expectations and hoped for dining in the future, crowds and yes--whether we had visited Uni or other parks during this stay. Then the usual about whether we stayed on property, value for prices paid, how much money we made, yada yada yada. We have not received a resort survey either. I did find the park specific survey interesting.

 

[DisneyFive]

After watching that YouTube video about the history of FP, it did shed some light on the benefits and drawback of each system. It still didn't change my mind that paper FP was better than nothing, and that FP+ was even better than paper FP.

BTW, G+ is virtually identical to the old paper FP system, except for a few things.
1) It's done on your phone
2) Your first can be booked at 7am (instead of after entering the park)
3) You can now possibly scoop up a G+ if someone cancels or if Disney drops more during the day
4) The top ride in each park is not available on the system
Other than that, the process is the same.

Regarding FP+, one of the big issues with prebooking 3 rides was that the parks struggled to handle that capacity. There weren't enough attractions and time slots to support that, so that's why they made some fairly meaningless FP's like for shows and stuff.

Anyway, I think they could still handle prebooking but limit it to two prebooked, then you would choose one at a time, day-of, after those were used. That's a 33% reduction in the load on the system right off the bat. To prevent all the "good" FP's getting prebooked so far ahead, let ALL guests with reservations prebook at 2 weeks before their first park day. If you don't know you're going to Disney two weeks in advance, well then that's too bad and you're left with day-of G+ selections, which isn't the end of the world.

Another, less desirable, option would be to prebook one each day and then you can get more one at a time day-of once you enter the park.

Enough of this 7am, every day, nonsense.

Dan

 

[snikki]

After watching that YouTube video about the history of FP, it did shed some light on the benefits and drawback of each system. It still didn't change my mind that paper FP was better than nothing, and that FP+ was even better than paper FP.

BTW, G+ is virtually identical to the old paper FP system, except for a few things.
1) It's done on your phone
2) Your first can be booked at 7am (instead of after entering the park)
3) You can now possibly scoop up a G+ if someone cancels or if Disney drops more during the day
4) The top ride in each park is not available on the system
Other than that, the process is the same.

Regarding FP+, one of the big issues with prebooking 3 rides was that the parks struggled to handle that capacity. There weren't enough attractions and time slots to support that, so that's why they made some fairly meaningless FP's like for shows and stuff.

Anyway, I think they could still handle prebooking but limit it to two prebooked, then you would choose one at a time, day-of, after those were used. That's a 33% reduction in the load on the system right off the bat. To prevent all the "good" FP's getting prebooked so far ahead, let ALL guests with reservations prebook at 2 weeks before their first park day. If you don't know you're going to Disney two weeks in advance, well then that's too bad and you're left with day-of G+ selections, which isn't the end of the world.

Another, less desirable, option would be to prebook one each day and then you can get more one at a time day-of once you enter the park.

Enough of this 7am, every day, nonsense.

Dan

I like this but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have people book upon entrance or park opening. Then it’ll be a hot mess of rope droppers stopping to look at their phones, running and falling all over the place. I also don’t think 7 am is the best either.

 

[DisneyFive]

Then it’ll be a hot mess of rope droppers stopping to look at their phones, running and falling all over the place.

True. I can totally picture this. LOL Back in the paper FP day, this was the "running of the bulls" for TSMM at HS, Soarin at EP, etc... but nobody was looking down at their phones. They were trying not to let grandma or their kids get run over or lost .

It's a major drawback of having it on the phone now.

Dan

 

[TiggerBouncy]

It looks like the Dec Financials Call Chapek said 1/3. But there’s been a webcast since that I didn’t listen to and text didn’t come up in a quick search. If they doubled the percentage of people buying it since fall, then maybe the math does add up. It’s surprising given all the bad press about it, but people may be looking at it as the only way to go despite being very painful.

In the 4th quarter call, Chapek did say it was about a third, but added that Genie+ usage during the holidays were "above 50%". He didn't say how far above, so my 60% may be a bit over. I am also assuming that current figures are at the same rate as during the holidays - because it feels that way.

So take what I said with a grain.

“While we anticipated these products would be popular, we have been blown away by the reception in the quarter, when more than a third of domestic park guests purchased either Genie+, Lightning Lane, or both,” Chapek said, adding that during the busier holiday season, Genie+ usage rose above 50 percent.

 

[Scalemaster34]

Back in the paper fastpass days, I was the "runner" for our group. I would have to go all the way across the park with everyone's tickets multiple times a day to secure the fastpasses. It was absolutely exhausting. And you didn't really know what time the fastpass was going to be for until you got up to the kiosks to get one. At least with fastpass+ you could book the three online early and plan out the rides/times so that you weren't crossing back and forth across the park all day.

I had too as well.... seems like that started before most folks had a cell phone, so there was no calling to say... hurry up and meet me here.

But hardly ever ran into there not being a FastPass available... at least not till very late in the day. Biggest reason I "liked" it, is so few around us understood how FP worked back then. Of course it helped that back then there were simply fewer people competing for those paper FastPass. Half the time we would get a Tower FP... and the posted wait would end up being "13"...

100% that system wouldn't work today, but then really nothing will as it's a matter of too much demand for too little ride capacity. Be interesting to see how reservation numbers looked for booking under 30 or 60 days... compared to how they are now.

 

[jujubiee4]

Enough of this 7am, every day, nonsense.

Dan

I hate this part of it the most. 655 am Everyone get ready to start tapping in. Hope to the
heavens you get it before other guests. All the money you plopped down for the trip
comes down to tapping and refreshing as often and fast as you can. The stress and
anxiety people are posting BEFORE they even arrive for a VACATION is sad.

I guess this is the new and "improved" Magic experience.

 

[DavidNYC]

Except you have a hell of a lot of "ifs" here. Maybe you can get all three rides IF you're staying on site and if you get lucky that the times work. And then - no you don't get to go to the park whenever you want . . . because as many people are reporting, the time you're assigned to ride can easily vary by hours by the time you click the last button so you're stuck with whatever they give you unless you want to spend time with guest services.

As for the 3 FP cap - there was never a 3 FP cap. It was 3 in advance. Exceptionally easy to get 5-10 extra in a day and more if you were aggressive. The tiering - while I didn't love it - at least made perfect sense. It was a way to ensure more people got to choose at least one of the most popular rides rather than a much smaller number getting all of them to the exclusion of others. And - both of those issues are still present in more extreme forms.

And no - you are 100% wrong about having to get up early before. If you wanted to arrive at the parks at 3pm - you made your reservations after 3pm. And again - absolutely nothing has changed with that under this system.

So all of the negatives you pointed out under the old system are still present in more extreme situations and the benefits you quote are being widely reported as not being easy to achieve for a tremendous number of people. What you say was impossible under FP+ was basically how every trip was for me under FP+ and even more. Easily rode RnR, ToT, TSM, SD multiple times per day without much difficulty.

 

[Westerner]

Maybe 7AM is not as big an issue as it appears? Previously I thought G+ value hinged on getting a good booking at 7AM, but I'm rethinking that. As long as you get your 1st booking in by park open, you can still get your 2nd one in by park open+2hrs so you won't be at too great of a disadvantage by sleeping in a bit. By park open you can still get LL's for rides like NRJ, MFSR, PP, and TT for your 1st G+ booking. The only G+ LL that consistently sells out prior to park open that I can think of is SDD.

 

[DisneyFive]

Maybe 7AM is not as big an issue as it appears? Previously I thought G+ value hinged on getting a good booking at 7AM, but I'm rethinking that. As long as you get your 1st booking in by park open, you can still get your 2nd one in by park open+2hrs so you won't be at too great of a disadvantage by sleeping in a bit. By park open you can still get LL's for rides like NRJ, MFSR, PP, and TT for your 1st G+ booking. The only G+ LL that consistently sells out prior to park open that I can think of is SDD.

That's one strategy and I totally agree that it works good for a day that you want to sleep in. I see this working really well at AK and EP.

However my plan at MK and HS is, at 7am, to try and get a G+ as early as possible after park open for a headliner of my choice. Once I tap into that, then roll from there, getting more G+ each time. I think this will net me the most G+ for the headliners I want (I'm not interested in SDD for instance)

Dan

 

[jknc]

I hate this part of it the most. 655 am Everyone get ready to start tapping in. Hope to the
heavens you get it before other guests. All the money you plopped down for the trip
comes down to tapping and refreshing as often and fast as you can. The stress and
anxiety people are posting BEFORE they even arrive for a VACATION is sad.

I guess this is the new and "improved" Magic experience.

I despise Genie Plus with a passion, however, if you don’t get what you want @ 7 am, standby is an option.