Genie+ on day of arrival?

[Peachy22]

If I'm flying in tomorrow and planning to arrive to Epcot around 11am, is it worth purchasing Genie+? And, secondly, can I make an LL selection first thing or will I be given a LL with an early time slot that may be before I arrive to the park? Thank you.

 

[pinkxray]

We did the same thing on Monday. We boarded our flight at 8am. We were at the airport in CT at 7am so DD17 grabbed a virtual queue for Guardians while I bought the individual lightening lane for it.
I also booked test track. We landed around 1130 and I immediately booked soarin and modified test track to a bit later.

We got to EPCOT a little past noon. I was about to also use it to get a lightening lane for spaceship earth and Remy. Frozen seemed to be down the whole time we were there . We only stayed until around 530. Probably could have done every ride but DD was tired from the long day.

When I originally booked test track it was for around 10, which we would still be in the air. I kept modifying it until we boarded to get it to after 12.

Our guardians virtual queue ended up being called soon after 1 which worked out well. It wouldn’t have worked if we had gotten an earlier group. But I would have tried for the 1pm group if I had to.

 

[jimmymc]

You can buy Genie+ early and make your first reservation at 7 am. I would try to time it for around 1 pm on either Ratatouille or Frozen. The times will get further out pretty soon after 7 am, so start early and keep refreshing until the window is later. Should take maybe 3 to 4 minutes. Then you can make your second reservation 2 hours after park opening.

Genie+ can be great for Epcot if it's really crowded and you want to ride both everything, but towards the end of the day all the Future World lines get really short. You're basically paying $20 to skip 2 of these 3: Test Track, Frozen, Ratatouille. The third one will probably sell out by the time you can reserve it, or the park won't be crowded enough to warrant it.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

If I'm flying in tomorrow and planning to arrive to Epcot around 11am, is it worth purchasing Genie+? And, secondly, can I make an LL selection first thing or will I be given a LL with an early time slot that may be before I arrive to the park? Thank you.

We just did this two weeks ago - we bought Genie+ for Epcot on arrival day (in our case, it was also a Friday). I made my first LL just prior to take-off, and then throughout the travel day. It was nice to have some things waiting for us while we waited for our room to be ready.

I will say that while it worked for us, the crowds really didn't warrant it. If you're going to have a full Epcot day later on and/or don't have little kids, you definitely don't "need" it for Epcot - it's more a question of convenience. We did it because we have small kids who got up super early to make our flight, and we wanted to make the rest of the day as easy as possible on them. We wound up knocking out Remy and Frozen, and we did use it for a couple of other things, but the lines were all short enough where we would have been fine waiting. That said, LL made it all walk-on, which was nice with kiddos who were a bit tired and cranky. I