Disney Genie announcement

[CWTC]

There should be some makeup pass for people who miss something (stuck on monorail) etc. Genie should know that the ride was not redeemed

The problem though is everyone would use that as an excuse and badger the CMs.

 

[Marionnette]

I just finished watching blogs by PCDev, Paging Mr. Morrow, Kyle Pallone and I rewatched the Touring Plans video.

The general feeling was that IL$ was worthwhile for the vacationer but local APs probably won't use them. PCDev showed a LL queu for ROTR from yesterday that went on forever due to the ride breaking down several times. Imagine paying $15 per person (to be able to skip the 2-hr standby line) and you end up standing in a LL queue that is almost as long! BTW, the standby line for ROTR was closed once it reached 2 hours and guests could not join standby. All the live bloggers were surprised to learn that the ILL$ were limited to 2 per day total and not per park. They all felt that this was a flawed limitation because they could see that ILL$ were available but they could not purchase them

As for Genie+, they all pretty much felt it was not worth purchasing. But keep in mind that this comes from the perspective of individuals who are in the parks regularly and are less likely to want to ride lower-tier attractions. All of the live bloggers were not attempting to stack reservations. They were choosing the return times for attractions they prefer, were not refreshing to see if better times were available and were not attempting to minimize their overall wait times. None of them combined ILL$, G+ and standby. They were only doing ILL$ and G+.

For G+, tapping in around 5 minutes early worked. Mr. Morrow was 14 minutes late for Soaring and Mickey still turned green when he tapped in.

If you skip a G+ reservation and you're well past your return window, it counts as your one G+ for that attraction. You can cancel before your return window opens and still be able to get a G+ for that attraction later but once the window opens, you're SOL.

I'm still watching a few other videos. I'm still on the fence about spending for either G+ or ILL$ on our next trip. Partly because I have a great distaste for the nickle and dime approach and partly because I just don't feel it's worth it since we will have an infant in tow. On top of that my MDE app throws an error when I'm signed in and won't allow me to purchase ILL$ but I can buy them for myself if I'm signed in under my husband's account. Go figure that one! It's just not worth my time to try to get Disney IT to fix it.

 

[maciemouse]

I am going to Epcot tomorrow evening. How do I pick a later time for Remy? It is always showing the next available time when i have been looking today. I need something late. Is there a way to pick your time? Thanks!

 

[Disturbia]

Just remembered; add your card to magic mobile (where your Apple Pay is stored); mine got deleted somehow

had a code sent to my email and had to add it again (it’s an option in the app menu below my genie day)

 

[Marionnette]

I am going to Epcot tomorrow evening. How do I pick a later time for Remy? It is always showing the next available time when i have been looking today. I need something late. Is there a way to pick your time? Thanks!

When you click on "purchase" you will be given a number of time ranges to pick from. Once you choose a time frame it will display actual return times in that time frame. e.g. You pick 7 PM and it might show return times of 7:05, 7:20 and 7:45 to choose from.

 

[DisneyKidds]

Another wrinkle with ROTR ILL$ is that the ride often seems to be omitting some of the pre-shows which, to many people, is an integral and critical part of the experience.

Can you tell me more about this? What parts of RotR does ILL$ cut out?

Having experienced RotR in both DL and HS my opinion is that RotR isn’t necessarily a great ride, but what makes it a worthwhile attraction (not that I’ll ever pay ILL$ money for it, overall it’s not that good once you’ve seen it once) is the entire experience from start to finish. That is unique and cool, you live a full Star Wars story. Remove any aspects of that overall experience and the attraction would just be meh. I’d be po’d if I paid for it and didn’t get the full experience.

That’s always been a problem with some FP attractions, you bypass the best parts of the queues, things that are worth seeing. I could deal with it for a free time savings, but having to pay and miss out would be terrible.

 

[Alexis56578]

We're not going 'til May, but from what I've seen the past two days, it's really only necessary to buy LL and even that varies by ride. I'm gonna keep an eye on ride times, but I don't personally see a problem with waiting 45 minutes to ride Haunted Mansion. The only rides I'm looking at that are floating at higher times are Pirates and Peter Pan.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that it won't be worth the money unless you're going during times when the parks are at capacity like Christmas Day or New Year's.

 

[persnickity]

I guess the point is, that this is not necessary......

Why not let people start booking an hour after the park closes the previous night? There is absolutely no difference at all.....Why 7am?

In my ideal world, they'd open up booking an hour before open for the park you have your reservation in - that seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I don't know why they settled on 7am, but I have no trouble at all imagining why midnight wouldn't be popular.

 

[wisblue]

is this because the LL bypasses ride content? I have never been on it

It wouldn’t be that. Occasionally some earlier elements of the attraction before the main ride are not working properly and they have a way to bypass them.

That happened to us once on a day when the ride had been down for a few hours. When you know what the whole attraction usually is, and one or more elements are left out, it is disappointing.

I think someone who pays for a specific experience is entitled to receive the full experience. I also think that a gift card in the amount paid is reasonable compensation. Use it to buy a couple of drinks or snacks that you probably would have gotten anyway and you’re back to even without making someone go through the process of initiating a credit to your payment method.

 

[wisblue]

Can you tell me more about this? What parts of RotR does ILL$ cut out?

Having experienced RotR in both DL and HS my opinion is that RotR isn’t necessarily a great ride, but what makes it a worthwhile attraction (not that I’ll ever pay ILL$ money for it, overall it’s not that good once you’ve seen it once) is the entire experience from start to finish. That is unique and cool, you live a full Star Wars story. Remove any aspects of that overall experience and the attraction would just be meh. I’d be po’d if I paid for it and didn’t get the full experience.

That’s always been a problem with some FP attractions, you bypass the best parts of the queues, things that are worth seeing. I could deal with it for a free time savings, but having to pay and miss out would be terrible.

I don’t think he’s saying that the IALL always leaves out some elements. It’s that some days some elements are bypassed for everyone.

 

[Jonfw2]

Fastpass always skipped segments of the lines for certain rides. Flight being the highest example.

Having said that, I think RotR’s preshows being down yesterday was a coincidence.

 

[Disturbia]

Paging Mr Morrow checked with a coordinator at FOP said there is no 15 min grace period at the end for Genie+; it depends on the Cast Member. He was 14 mins late at Soarin and his magic band lit up green.

He park hopped so you can only buy 2 LLIA$ Per day, not per park.

 

[jimim]

So you opted for a boat and not Disney to avoid stress?

Congrats on what must be your first boat.

Just kidding obviously but seriously, congrats on the second best day of a boat owners life.

Okay, just kidding again. Seriously, congrats =)

I know all the jokes. There is zero stress in fishing or owning a boat. All my friends have them and have zero stress. I fish from them weekly for years. I have owned little boats. This is my first decked out bass boat. But I have good people around me to always help me. No stress here or ever will be on the water.

 

[wisblue]

In my ideal world, they'd open up booking an hour before open for the park you have your reservation in - that seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I don't know why they settled on 7am, but I have no trouble at all imagining why midnight wouldn't be popular.

The problem with an hour before opening would be that a lot of people planning to be there at opening would be in transit.

I was thinking about that for DAK where we will want to be at the park by 7:30 for the Early Entry. If I want to make any LL reservations at 7 AM that day it would have to be on the bus or after we arrive at the park.

Midnight wouldn’t be popular with people (like us) who want to be asleep by then because they plan to be up early to get to a park at rope drop.

 

[DisneyKidds]

I don’t think he’s saying that the IALL always leaves out some elements. It’s that some days some elements are bypassed for everyone.

So saying ILL$ leaves our elements of the experience is inaccurate. ILL$ delivers whatever partial experience is available to everyone if parts of the attraction are down. Whew! Thanks for clarifying.

Paying and not getting the RotR full Monty would be worse than not paying and not getting the RotR full Monty though.

 

[jimim]

Not sure a boat is going to be any less work LOL. It must be your first. Congrats.

See previous post. People always say that. Like I said I’m on 3 different boats weekly fishing for many many years and there is never any stress but we also are able to service anything that goes wrong and service as needed. Maybe there is no stress cause they are able to fix anything as it comes up.

 

[Monk6552]

I was clicking around the Tip Board from home yesterday and today. For MK, yesterday after 7am I could see the G+ return time options for all MK rides which utilize lightning lane. Today, however, half the park's rides were marked "closed" - it appeared to be all the rides which are not open for Early Entry. The time was maybe 8:45am. So maybe, like you found in AK, they decided not to allow G+ selections for those rides until the rides actually opened? But why? You can make your first G+ selection at 7AM and none of the parks are generally open at 7AM. Why restrict certain rides? So confusing!

I saw this as well - expect I looked at the rides earlier and all of those rides WERE available with LL times - and then they went dark as "closed" until 9:00 AM on the dot - I refreshed and they were back. Very weird.

 

[wisblue]

So saying ILL$ leaves our elements of the experience is inaccurate. ILL$ delivers whatever partial experience is available to everyone if parts of the attraction are down. Whew! Thanks for clarifying.

Paying and not getting the RotR full Monty would be worse than not paying and not getting the RotR full Monty though.

Please see my post before the one you quoted where I gave my opinion about getting less than the full experience.

I think I made it clear that I think someone who pays for a full experience is entitled to the full experience.

 

[RalphRR]

I have a different question. I was poking around with the Genie app for a vacation I have coming up before Christmas. I have park passes for all the days of the stay, but Genie tells me that no one is eligible to use the Genie services on some of the days. I thought I could just get a new park pass, but there none available. Anyone have any fixes?

RalphRR

 

[Monk6552]

FWIW, we are arriving tomorrow and got G+ for our entire stay (we have a vacation package and I'm not sure we could've chosen by day even if we wanted to, either way - we're locked in already).

For tomorrow we are going to DHS. My hope is that I can purchase the two ILL$ AND a G+ likely for SDD at 7 am before our flights take off, but as others have noted - we are at the mercy of the LL availability at that time and ironically it may be too early for us if G+ hasn't been booked out late enough in the day to make sure we will be at the park in time - in which case we'll need to see what's available when we land.

The ideal would be if we could stack all three at something like SDD 4:00 PM, RotR 5:00 PM, MMRR 6:00 PM....but it's a bit of a crap shoot, so I guess we'll see!

My biggest question at this point is if there is any drawback to enabling regular Genie? I've been looking at all the return times on G+ for the past two days to get a sense, but I've been hesitant to enable regular Genie as I'm nervous that it could result in not showing me all the rides on the tip board. Anyone have experience with it yet?