Genie Service

I’ll always go back to WDW and probably pay for things like Genie+ (when it makes sense) so I don’t really have a right to complain.

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know what would ever make me think twice going. Even with all the price rises I think I would just ‘make it work’
 
Can you just buy the lightning lane with out Genie? I will pop in early, ride a few rides, pay for a headliner or two and then go hang at the pool. I am not paying $15 per day to rider star tours or TSMM.
This is what I was thinking! Why pay an extra $ 15.00 to get on Haunted Mansion or Pirates or Buzz. I can get those at rope drop or at the end of the night. And FOP would be the only ride that is a must do for me. And what about MMRT, this one may be on the higher price ala carte' thingy. It all sounds more confusing than before. However, who knows maybe it will work out okay. The worst part for me is the 7 a.m. scramble. And how will it work with PH? That could put me all over the place because who knows when you'll get assigned a time. Sounds nightmarish. Ugh! I go back and forth with feelings...lol!
 

I think I read everything on here. Does anyone know the start date of the Genie?

RalphRR
First thought-- has to be Sept 15th ish, give them a few weeks to brake it in before 50th.
Second thought ---- can they get it working that fast ?
Third thought --- maybe November or even 2022.

I have NO idea now.
 
I'm of the mindset of a few previous posters - I don't want to feel like I have to wake up at 7am each day on vacation to book my first ride, and then have to be on our phone every time we're done with our ride to book our next time. Our phones are usually buried all the way at the bottom of the backpack because we barely use them in the parks.

I also don't like the idea of paying $15, and then not being able to get as many passes out of it during the day for the rides we want to do. And it's going to be a headache when we're on larger family vacations - my husband and I would be okay prioritizing spending money on this and taking the money out of our Disney budget elsewhere (food & souveneirs), but the rest of the family is going to be a toss up of who is willing to also purchase it or not. We always did the planning - we'd know which parks we were going to because we'd have a meal reservation in there somewhere, plus the fastpasses set up before we arrived. Other members in the family would want to be more spontaneous and and try to get us to change plans and it usually caused tension somewhere along the trip. If some of us are paying for genie+ and some aren't, I can already feel the headache lol.

Our next trip if planned for February, and I have to say I'm really happy this is getting launched months ahead of our trip so we can see how it shakes out.
Yes, traveling with a big group is so much harder, but at least I worked it all out ahead of time booking the FP+'s. I think having to plan day by day as we go along and then having my $ 15.00 tell me I have to be at Magic Kingdom at 6 p.m. when my plan would have been to go to Epcot at that time, is going to be ridiculous. I always park hop, so I'm thinking they may not have designed this Genie all that well for park hoppers. They say they have but that remains to be seen!
 
Old lady here(on the outside not the inside :blush:), I just retired and December was to be my retirement trip. More days than usual, plans to spend more on shopping for Disney housewares. Yes ticket prices went up, yada yada that happens at least once a year. There has been speculation in the air for months about fp coming back as a paid option. I think most of us got our brains around that.

Now, I'm 64 not 84, but I didn't grow up with a game controller or cell phone glued to my hand, and I don't walk around never taking my eyes off my phone, I call rather than text because texting takes me forever. To my point: Disney isn't only charging me for my fast passes (I know its called lighting lane), they are now putting me into a competition every morning of my vacation with every under 30 who did grow up in a digital world with game consoles and cell phones as second nature to them, in order to get my first (maybe only) fast pass. Who do you think will win? :crazy2: I'm thinking I could master mobile order without too much trouble, but I'm not fast on the button thing.

(Getting up early isn't the problem, 40 years of getting up at 6 or earlier to get to work has made that my norm.)

I know I can choose not to pay, but now that I'm 64 I also have joint issues. Standing in the same (or almost the same) position for a long period is incredibly painful. In no way do I consider myself disabled, nor would I ever compare myself with those unfortunate enough to have a truly difficult life. I'm just feeling really intimidated about this right now. As a person travelling to Disney solo most of the time, I can honestly say I've never felt intimidated before a trip.

Thanks for listening. None of my non Disney friends would get it, they'd just say go somewhere else, like they've been saying for years.
Right on! I'm 67 and have only recently started using a smart phone. My knees give way periodically but do not consider myself disabled. Using FP+ made my vacation something to look forward to and I was guaranteed to ride my favorites. I'm hoping this new service will work for me and so many others like me that just want to enjoy their vacation without getting frustrated everyday when the Genie grants me wishes I didn't hope for. Happy travels!
 
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I'm wondering how those legendary tour groups will work with Genie? In days of old they sent a runner to the machines to gather up all the FP for the group. Not sure how they worked the digital FP but now? wonder what will happen.
 
I have a January 2022 trip coming up, split stay at Poly and AKV. I will def. try out the Genie (no I am not excited to pay blah blah) but I am curious to give it a try.

To be fair, each of the systems I have used (paper FP... adv sched. FP... stand by... virtual) all have their +/- and not one of them has been "perfect" for our travel patterns.

I liked the amount of rides I could do with the paper ones if I was dedicated, but those required getting there early to get the 'good ones" and keep accumulating them. Since we are not rope droppers, the scheduled ones were nice, but I always found it hard to do anything besides those scheduled ones as the stand by were so long and all the slots were gone.

Stand by is always hit or miss for us... last Jan at a low time and with capped park attendance it was great.. all my other experiences have been daunting.... like no way do I want to wait longer than an hour, i would rather look for something else to do.

So I will give Genie+ and Lightning Lane a try and see how it works for my next trip if it is available. Although I dont like the idea of paying, I do like the idea of some stress free ride scheduling with Lighting Lane... but I have my doubts about the stress free... and how many will be available for purchase? There are only so many people that can be put on Rise per day. At this point, all have been going virtual que (not counting VIP)... Now with the Lightning lane it is going to take away from virtual. Is it going to be a free for all for Rise LL after the virtual ends at 5 seconds past 7am? And LL being all gone at 7:02?
 
I like the idea of calling this service Jafar like someone suggested. Cheapek probably found Jafar found Jafar's lamp and his wish was: I want higher per person guest spending.
While I do find Chapek being likened to Jafar amusing, this genie service is not his doing. Fastpass+ being reinvented/replaced with a paid service predates his tenure as CEO. Iger would have done the same and obviously approves of it in his current board role. I know many don’t like Iger either(although I don’t know why - imagine the parks sans pixar, which was successfully integrated and acquired in large part to Iger’s close friendship with Steve Jobs, never mind lucasfilm or marvel) but this was inevitable.

Did your favourite restaurants, local butcher, and big box stores get cheaper over the pandemic? Are you boycotting them?

Let’s try to be positive and give this new system a chance! Maybe it will balance the park experience better than ever before - this has been years in the making, I’d like to give Disney the benefit of the doubt here and assume they did enough R+D to make this a success!
 
Will you be able to get more than 3 Genie+ rides per day as you go along? I wasn't sure about this.
 
Will you be able to get more than 3 Genie+ rides per day as you go along? I wasn't sure about this.
From what I can see - as per Disney you will be able to make your next Genie+ reservation as soon as you tap into your scheduled ride. No mention of being able to book after 120 minutes or any other perk or restriction. So I would imagine it’s unlimited, someone correct me if I’m wrong.

Unfortunately you can only book 2 a la carte individual ride selections per day.
 
From what I can see - as per Disney you will be able to make your next Genie+ reservation as soon as you tap into your scheduled ride. No mention of being able to book after 120 minutes or any other perk or restriction. So I would imagine it’s unlimited, someone correct me if I’m wrong.

Unfortunately you can only book 2 a la carte individual ride selections per day.

The information you have is what I saw as well. You can simply get the next one as soon as you use the first.

That is why I see many deciding to forgo the park hopping option…or at least not purchase in advance…since you pay for the day and what better way to get your money’s worth then by sticking with one park.

And who knows, maybe that is part of the plan so they can leave hopping at 2 pm.
 
While I do find Chapek being likened to Jafar amusing, this genie service is not his doing. Fastpass+ being reinvented/replaced with a paid service predates his tenure as CEO. Iger would have done the same and obviously approves of it in his current board role. I know many don’t like Iger either(although I don’t know why - imagine the parks sans pixar, which was successfully integrated and acquired in large part to Iger’s close friendship with Steve Jobs, never mind lucasfilm or marvel) but this was inevitable

The Genie service was in development under Chapek. Disney has been working on the Genie recommendation engine for years. Chapek was the President of Parks and Resorts before becoming CEO.

FastPass was still around with Iger. Originally, the rumors had Disney keeping FastPass+ but offering additional FastPass selections for additional fees. That system would have made more sense. The Genie service has little to do with Lightening Pass anyway. They've decided, for marketing reasons, to mingle them together by calling the paid FastPass system Genie+.

This is Chapek's decision all the way. He is using COVID as an opportunity to readjust pricing and value in every aspect of the company. He has made no qualms about reducing spending on the parks in shareholder calls since becoming CEO.
 
The Genie service was in development under Chapek. Disney has been working on the Genie recommendation engine for years. Chapek was the President of Parks and Resorts before becoming CEO.

FastPass was still around with Iger. Originally, the rumors had Disney keeping FastPass+ but offering additional FastPass selections for additional fees. That system would have made more sense. The Genie service has little to do with Lightening Pass anyway. They've decided, for marketing reasons, to mingle them together by calling the paid FastPass system Genie+.

This is Chapek's decision all the way. He is using COVID as an opportunity to readjust pricing and value in every aspect of the company. He has made no qualms about reducing spending on the parks in shareholder calls since becoming CEO.
Fair to assume that this is something Chapek wants and has wanted for years, I don’t challenge you there. My point was simply that this decision is not that of one single person and that this would have happened regardless of who was at the helm. As parks CEO he reported to Iger, and still does report to Iger and the rest of the board.

I don’t listen to the earnings calls myself but from what I read on them you are correct - I don’t think he as CEO has any issue increasing costs to the customer(or should he in my opinion).

That said adding a paid fast pass option in addtion to the “complimentary” selections would make zero sense. Either they would have to take away capacity from the “free”side to add to the paid side, which people would be up in arms over. Or the additional optional paid selections added on top of the already over offered “included with ticket” selections would mean that on busy days fast pass windows for in demand attractions would be disappearing faster than Will Smith’s acting credibility.
 
Still confused. Can you reserve a park let's MK and use your 2 Genie passes, then park hop elsewhere and use Genie (maybe plus to book rides there?) Or are you stuck using Genie only at the first park of the day and it becomes useless if you move to another park?
 
Still confused. Can you reserve a park let's MK and use your 2 Genie passes, then park hop elsewhere and use Genie (maybe plus to book rides there?) Or are you stuck using Genie only at the first park of the day and it becomes useless if you move to another park?

From their description, it looks like you can be in Magic Kingdom and purchase a ROR a la carte lightening pass for later in the day at Studios if you have Park Hopper. And just use Genie+ for other rides in Magic Kingdom (excluding Mine Train and Space Mountain). Is that what you're asking? Once you are done using Genie+ at Magic Kingdom, you can start using it at Studios also (provide there are any passes left).
 
Right now, $15 per head for our party of three is $45 a day, times four = $180.00 for our next trip. Just think when that $15 a day is up to $30 or $35 a day. Whewwww, this will really cost much more in the future. What if a family has 4-6 people in the party. Cha-chinnnnngggggg!!!!
Or 8… for my family, it would cost $120 more per day (*not inc the top tier rides, obvs)!! We are taking our first-ever 2-wk vacation to WDW next year. We’re all so excited!! Flights and (DVC) rooms have been booked for months… half of us already own AP’s and the others will be getting theirs as soon as sales restart… Genie+ would add $1,680 extra to our trip. That’s a lot of money. & That is not going to happen. (I would much rather splurge on fine dining than to pay for that… but I won’t be trading costs- I will be keeping that money).

The toughest call will admittedly be for my youngest daughter. She has a rare disease and canNOT overheat (amongst other things). We’ve timed our vacay to hopefully be good for her, while not causing her to need bundling up either… it’s like walking a tightrope. Anyway, she usually can’t be in the parks more than a few hours at a time. She does use the DAS, but if this genie+ makes the standby queues terribly long (& therefore DAS return times equally insufferable)… I’m really not sure what we’ll do for her. For her sake, I would be tempted by genie+ but I won’t be paying for the whole family to go with her- especially since she’s barely in the parks. It just wouldn’t be worth it. 😔
 
I like the idea of calling this service Jafar like someone suggested. Cheapek probably found Jafar found Jafar's lamp and his wish was: I want higher per person guest spending.
598853 :jester:

Seriously, though... as I've alluded to on other Genie-related threads, I don't mind spending a little extra IF I get value in return (i.e., shorter waits on a sufficient number of the rides we want to ride). To me, the biggest question is whether G+ will be "worth" the $15 or if we won't get enough for our money with this new system.
 















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