Enthusiastic about Genie+ touring

[havoc315]

You're arguments are ever changing.

You were called-out in late-summer for comparing Disney Land & Disney World.....you argued how they were effectively the same, therefore, MaxPass/Genie would be better than FastPass.

Just a few months ago you were all too quick to document that Disney World & Disney Land are so similar in ride capacity and numbers of guests, that Genie+ was going to work better than FastPass+, because MaxPass reasons.....

Now, you're agreeing that Genie+ is a flawed system, and yet, somehow, it's still better than FastPass+......despite plenty of folks documenting how FastPass was better for them, even with real-world comparison to Genie.

[But if any of us who have engaged in conversation with you have learned anything - it's all about havoc315, ammirite]

Amazingly, with real-world comparable experiences documented on these Threads, you are still arguing that people are somehow wrong - Genie+ is better.....because reasons.....

On the other hand, I have been following multiple Threads about Genie+. Seems as if the majority of complaints about capacity & tech failures are coming from Disney World, not Disney Land.....which is what many of us tried, repeatedly, to demonstrate to you.

Moreover, with you being the exception, I'm not reading nearly as many comments about folks who enjoy Genie versus FastPass (when excluding money from the conversation).

Then you must be reading very different people than me. Because everything I've said has proven to be true. Definitely complaints about tech failures -- No shock with a new system. FP+ was continuously plagued by tech failures.

I highly recommend:

As to availability and capacity -- The system started to crack in 10/10 days late last week, and started to do much better as crowds receded slightly to 8/10.
But even at the worst 10/10 days, availability was better than FP+.

Additionally, you still willfully ignore the never-ending failures of Disney IT. Seems to be countless families that have to relive these deficiencies on a daily basis while vacationing, instead of having advanced warning that came with FastPass bookings months out. I'll say it differently - Disney is increasingly requiring guests to rely on technology that is perpetually flawed; Genie punctuates the notion.

See.... I think you're half-right there. FP+ forced guests to rely on horribly flawed technology months in advance, punishing those who didn't have advanced knowledge of the technology, punishing those who were off-site. Genie+ is still far from perfect, but a significant improvement as it uses to technology to introduce flexibility.
Great --- On all my prior trips, I have "advance warning" that I wouldn't be able to ride FOP. Woohoo, lucky me. But under the new system, even on a 10/10 day, I have the knowledge that I can almost certainly ride FOP as long as I book it when I wake up.

In a nutshell, your thesis was all about enhancing the Park Experience through Genie (versus MaxPass and/or FastPass).

Correct---- And there are some bumps with new technology. But, I already seen it as a vastly improved experience over FP+.

My two-cents - the complaints are not about the money, it's about a flawed system. But adding insult-to-injury (making the flawed-system seem worse), is being charged for it.

By your own admission, Universal's system is different than Disney. My family had their first lousy Disney experience this past summer and their first Universal experience. We preferred Universal so much more (because of rise access) that our future plans (based on our Guest Experience) will no longer be Disney-focused.....because Disney, for way too many of us, has demonstrated that they are no longer focused on the Guest Experience if they cannot charge more for it. Universal is being honest, the same cannot be said for Disney.

Again, I partially agree with you: It is a flawed system. The greatest flaw is that it is too cheap. They really should charge $100-$300 per person, per day, like Universal.

Again, I highly recommend this video:

IT gives a deeper understanding to the flaws of FP+, which are only partially alleviated by Genie+.

In a nutshell, you can't give line-cutting to every person on every ride. Any attempt to do so, will fail miserably. The benefit of the original FP system was that it only applied to a few rides, and only used by some people. Even at that time, many engineers knew it would entirely fail if you tried to apply it to every ride.
So the FP+ experiment became an utter failure. It actually reduced the number of real attractions that an average guest would experience. (it increased the number for a small few, while decreasing the number for most. While significantly increasing standby wait times).
Genie+ partially fixes the flaws of FP+, but doesn't go nearly far enough. Any effective line-cutting system has to be extremely limited -- Limited to number of attractions and/or limited to the number of guests using it.
Charging $15 isn't nearly enough of a limitation. But it's a start.

 

[havoc315]

So I'm back, probably for the last time..

As documented above, Genie+ struggled a bit on the heaviest of THanksgiving crowds, in 10/10 crowds. Worse than I expected it to perform, but better than FP+. You could still get 3-5 premium attractions per day, even in 10/10 crowds, at every park. But on those 10/10 days, getting those 3-5 premium top tier rides did require waking up at 7am and being aggressive through your day. You couldn't stroll into the park at 2pm without anything reserved, and expect to get much.

Today, Monday, most parks at WDW remain "sold out." Crowds are still high, but more like 8/10..

So as 12:15pm, in 8/10 crowds, how is Genie+ doing:
A sample:
DHS:
MMRR is still available, Slinky and ROTR sold out early. Millennium Falcon just sold out as I typed. RNR, TOT, TSM, all remain available with afternoon return times (about 3pm to 5pm).
So DHS, which has been the hardest park, still has decent availability past noon on a 8/10 day.

Magic Kingdom:
Things actually look great for Genie+ at MK. Everything remains available. Most return times are within 2-3 hours. Haunted Mansion at 3:40, Pirates at 2:45, Splash at 2:10. Jungle Cruise and Peter Pan go further out but are still available. Mine Train is sold out, but there was plenty of time to purchase this morning.

Epcot:
In 10/10 crowds, Test Track was gone before 9am. Today, it lasted past 11am, but is gone now. Rest of the park looks great -- Soarin, 12:40, Space Ship Earth, 12:20, etc. Remy is sold out, Frozen still has evening return times available.

AK:
FOP is sold out. But everything else has good availability. Safari: 1:35. Navi:3:45.
So the top 2 Genie+ rides at AK, with plenty of availability as of 12:25pm.
Yes, FOP is sold out. But under FP+, it was sold out MORE than 60 days in advance. Today, any guest willing to pay $14 and log into MDE by about 9am, could have been guaranteed FOP.

So the lesson learned? 10/10 crowds is a bit of a breaking point, where the benefit of Genie+ is limited, where you need to be very aggressive even with Genie+. Crowds down just a bit, down to 8/10, Genie+ can deliver a greatly enhanced experience.

What remains to be seen: To what degree does Disney fix the tech woes, and do they adjust the system to better handle 10/10 crowds?
We will have more answers by Christmas..

 

[Baby Groot]

I want to apologize to the OP, clearly they nailed how successful Genie would be. It’s a clear hit with everyone.

 

[dez1978]

I want to apologize to the OP, clearly they nailed how successful Genie would be. It’s a clear hit with everyone.

You know, I was just thinking about this a few days ago lol. Its obv LOVED by everyone, and clearly allows far more "line skipping" and flexibility than FP+ did. I read the positive reviews everyday. And to make it even better, you now have to either stay up until midnight every day of your trip, or get up at 6 am daily to purchase G+ to begin with (depending on when it is available for that day), which is soooo much more enjoyable than getting your fp+ lined out ahead of time.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

So, I just wanted to pop back in here and share my actual experience with Genie+. We were in Disney the beginning of may for 11 nights. We had 10 park days and we used Genie+ for 7 of them, which for my family amounted to a total cost of $315. On top of that we spent probably $100 on fancy rides.

Aside from the fact that ride skipping now added another $400 (!) to our vacation, I will say my experience with Genie+ was mostly positive. As a family with little kids, the value in Genie+ was not in the number of attractions we used it for, but more just for the convenience of skipping the lines for whatever we DID do. We are family who takes daily breaks at the pool, so we are not rope drop - close people. That said, we did anywhere between 3-6 attractions with Genie+ each day we had it, and most times we would have been able to do quite a bit more, but we were limited by our own circumstances (again, young children lol). I got used to the system fairly easily and didn't find that the "being in your phone" aspect was TOO cumbersome. Even with Genie+ there's usually a very short wait and I would just use that little window of time to book our next attraction.

I found that for our family, the strategy that worked best was going into the parks briefly in the morning for one or two attractions that might be hard to get later on, and then heading back to the resort by noon. We'd have lunch, sit by the pool, and shower, all while I'd be stacking up Genie+ reservations for when we would return to the parks around dinner time. By the time we re-entered the park, I'd typically have 3 or 4 genie+ attractions stacked up and ready. Of course this worked well for us because the resorts we stayed at were walking distance to parks, to the travel to the parks was easy. Not sure how well this would work if you were staying off-site or at a resort that's a little further out. I liked this strategy much better than getting inside the parks and booking one attraction after the other, because there's often lag time if you want to get on any of the more popular rides. Like if you get off Dumbo at 10am and want Haunted Mansion, you might not be able to get it for another hour, and if lines are too long elsewhere to warrant getting in line, you're left killing time. While this would be fine for most adults, it's hard to do this when you're planning around naps and antsy, unpredictable kiddos. By stacking for the evening, we'd come in and go directly from attraction to attraction, which allowed us to do shorter stints at the parks and keep our daily pool visit going.

I liked Genie+ better than I thought I would but it's not without it's downsides. Obviously there's the cost. Beyond that, Genie+ makes it difficult for larger groups to stick together. We had a larger travel party. We often started out together for the first Genie+, but as soon as you separate or do a Genie+ separately, it becomes really hard to get them back on the same schedule. We wound up splitting up a lot more than we used to in the days of Fastpass+, which is a bummer since the whole point is to spend time together. I also didn't love the waking up at 7am thing, BUT I will say I think it's probably not actually that important to start booking immediately at 7:00 every morning than you'd think. For Hollywood Studios, YES. Start at 7am. Anywhere else, nothing really seemed to sell out all that quickly.

 

[MomOTwins]

So, I just wanted to pop back in here and share my actual experience with Genie+. We were in Disney the beginning of may for 11 nights. We had 10 park days and we used Genie+ for 7 of them, which for my family amounted to a total cost of $315. On top of that we spent probably $100 on fancy rides.

Aside from the fact that ride skipping now added another $400 (!) to our vacation, I will say my experience with Genie+ was mostly positive. As a family with little kids, the value in Genie+ was not in the number of attractions we used it for, but more just for the convenience of skipping the lines for whatever we DID do. We are family who takes daily breaks at the pool, so we are not rope drop - close people. That said, we did anywhere between 3-6 attractions with Genie+ each day we had it, and most times we would have been able to do quite a bit more, but we were limited by our own circumstances (again, young children lol). I got used to the system fairly easily and didn't find that the "being in your phone" aspect was TOO cumbersome. Even with Genie+ there's usually a very short wait and I would just use that little window of time to book our next attraction.

I found that for our family, the strategy that worked best was going into the parks briefly in the morning for one or two attractions that might be hard to get later on, and then heading back to the resort by noon. We'd have lunch, sit by the pool, and shower, all while I'd be stacking up Genie+ reservations for when we would return to the parks around dinner time. By the time we re-entered the park, I'd typically have 3 or 4 genie+ attractions stacked up and ready. Of course this worked well for us because the resorts we stayed at were walking distance to parks, to the travel to the parks was easy. Not sure how well this would work if you were staying off-site or at a resort that's a little further out. I liked this strategy much better than getting inside the parks and booking one attraction after the other, because there's often lag time if you want to get on any of the more popular rides. Like if you get off Dumbo at 10am and want Haunted Mansion, you might not be able to get it for another hour, and if lines are too long elsewhere to warrant getting in line, you're left killing time. While this would be fine for most adults, it's hard to do this when you're planning around naps and antsy, unpredictable kiddos. By stacking for the evening, we'd come in and go directly from attraction to attraction, which allowed us to do shorter stints at the parks and keep our daily pool visit going.

I liked Genie+ better than I thought I would but it's not without it's downsides. Obviously there's the cost. Beyond that, Genie+ makes it difficult for larger groups to stick together. We had a larger travel party. We often started out together for the first Genie+, but as soon as you separate or do a Genie+ separately, it becomes really hard to get them back on the same schedule. We wound up splitting up a lot more than we used to in the days of Fastpass+, which is a bummer since the whole point is to spend time together. I also didn't love the waking up at 7am thing, BUT I will say I think it's probably not actually that important to start booking immediately at 7:00 every morning than you'd think. For Hollywood Studios, YES. Start at 7am. Anywhere else, nothing really seemed to sell out all that quickly.

I feel like it is important to caveat this by pointing out that early May is one of the few remaining “off-seasons” at WDW. For those going in pretty much any time other than September, expect 7am to be extremely important and things to sell out much faster. With all due respect to the previous poster, saying G+ works great because you went at a time that pretty much everyone is acknowledging has been to lowest crowds of the year is like saying airfare prices haven’t gone up because you got a great price on a one-hour flight taking off at 5am on a Wednesday.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I feel like it is important to caveat this by pointing out that early May is one of the few remaining “off-seasons” at WDW. For those going in pretty much any time other than September, expect 7am to be extremely important and things to sell out much faster. With all due respect to the previous poster, saying G+ works great because you went at a time that pretty much everyone is acknowledging has been to lowest crowds of the year is like saying airfare prices haven’t gone up because you got a great price on a one-hour flight taking off at 5am on a Wednesday.

I agree to an extent to what you're saying but I also went to WDW in early-mid day (5/7-15) and I definitely don't think that period is an off season anymore. The secret is out in terms of when the lower crowd times are. Yes it was less busy than spring break or President's day week when I did a 3 day trip, but it was in no way quiet. It was still very busy with average waits being in the 60-90 range. By 10:30 am every single ride minus Star Tours had a 60+ minute wait at HS. I still think people are making up canceled trips due to Covid (heck, my trip was supposed to happen in May 2020 and this one was the third time I had to reschedule) so that explains the higher crowds during typical "slower" periods. Compared to WDW however Universal was WAY busier. Shoulder to shoulder crowds in Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and Jurassic Park.

I had success with Genie+ last week and President's day week but I do agree that last week was better due to things not selling out as fast. I was even able to "fiddle faddle" as Molly from Allears puts it and grab a Slinky Dog Dash during my mid day pool break. I wouldn't have been able to do that in late Feb. With Genie+ I think you can make it work no matter when you go but you do have to work a little harder during busier periods which is the biggest complaint of Genie+.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

I feel like it is important to caveat this by pointing out that early May is one of the few remaining “off-seasons” at WDW. For those going in pretty much any time other than September, expect 7am to be extremely important and things to sell out much faster. With all due respect to the previous poster, saying G+ works great because you went at a time that pretty much everyone is acknowledging has been to lowest crowds of the year is like saying airfare prices haven’t gone up because you got a great price on a one-hour flight taking off at 5am on a Wednesday.

That's a fair point. May was lower crowds and I'm sure that helped. But I've been in May before and the low crowds that used to be in May were NOT our experience this May. I didn't say it worked "great," I just meant to say that it wasn't as bad as I went in expecting it to be. I had VERY low expectations for Genie+. Despite hearing from coworkers/friends who'd been in January and February that it worked out pretty well for them, I was expecting total disaster. Genie+ has it's limitations and it's issues for sure (even in a less crowded time, so I'm sure that can be multiplied by larger crowds), and I certainly wouldn't call myself a fan of it, but our experience wasn't complete and total disaster. I was a huge fan of Fastpass+ and vehemently against Genie+ from the get go. My post was just to maybe allay some fears for some people who are worried, like I was, that Genie+ would completely divebomb their trip. For us, at least, it wasn't perfect but also wasn't all bad.