Genie+ Stacking Strategy?

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

I am trying so hard to figure all of this out and come up with our best plan for our upcoming trip. My general planning so far is in line with what USED to be our go-to schedule - which was parks in the morning, afternoon break at the resort, and then back out (park hopping) for dinner, fireworks, more rides. But with Genie+, I'm wondering if maybe we wouldn't do better by spending our mornings at the resort while using Genie+ to stack up a bunch of LL's for the late afternoon/evening. Has anyone tried this method? I mean, if we don't even plan on going to to the park until 3, that means we can have 5 LL's lined up (plus potentially an ILL) by the time we even walk in. Then we could spend the morning rope dropping elsewhere and just relaxing at the pool.

 

[Trinity88]

I don't have any advice, but I'm thinking about doing the same for our summer trip. Sleep in (except get up to book genie etc), swim, shop, during the day, then hit the parks around dinner time with a bunch of stacked rides (plus after hours for deluxe resort guests).

 

[Marionnette]

I am trying so hard to figure all of this out and come up with our best plan for our upcoming trip. My general planning so far is in line with what USED to be our go-to schedule - which was parks in the morning, afternoon break at the resort, and then back out (park hopping) for dinner, fireworks, more rides. But with Genie+, I'm wondering if maybe we wouldn't do better by spending our mornings at the resort while using Genie+ to stack up a bunch of LL's for the late afternoon/evening. Has anyone tried this method? I mean, if we don't even plan on going to to the park until 3, that means we can have 5 LL's lined up (plus potentially an ILL) by the time we even walk in. Then we could spend the morning rope dropping elsewhere and just relaxing at the pool.

Stacking works best if you're doing it for the park that you're hopping to. That means you would still have to visit the park where you have a reservation and enter it before you can hop to the other park where you G+ reservations are.

 

[KimWDW]

If it's busy, I wouldn't count on Genie + having much left to choose from in the afternoon. You book your first one at 7, but without using that one up, you can't book your second until two hours past park opening. So that would be 11 in most cases (noon at EPCOT). Then when it's time to book a third at 1:00, I honestly don't know what will be left. Depends on how busy things are. And that seems unpredictable lately.

At least with the old MDE, we knew we had 3 guaranteed. And good ones. Not, like, a 6 PM Tomorrowland Speedway. Sigh.

 

[lockets]

On one hand it can make sense depending on the rides you are interested in. On the other hand if you watch fireworks or wait in a line for a snack then it knocks even more time off night schedule.

Also have to factor in the money spent on an all-day ticket to only go half the day. They used to sell cheaper tickets for entry after noon. I miss those days!

On a related note there have been three posts on here in the last week (that I recall) of people who rope drop and take mid day breaks determining that something like what you proposed will now be their new way to try G+. One of the threads had at least 10 responses from families saying they have already changed to focus on night time stacking or that they plan to do it in the future instead of using G+ for morning or day rides. There’s a PP here that says they will try this too. Based on that I think there will be more competition in the future for the night time slots. Or maybe there already is as another PP said.

I do agree that perhaps coupling the strategy with extended evening hours is a game changer and safer bet.

Mathematiclly your post mentioned 5 rides. As a comparison I was there last month and used both ILL and G+ to get 2 ILL rides and 4 G+ rides at MK. We don’t rope drop. But I did start stacking at 7 am. We were there from 11ish and it took all day on my phone every 2 hours to get all those rides plus we had time to do standby ones too. At Epcot we just did ILL for Remy and Frozen and standby for everything else. Animal kingdom just ILL for Flight of Passage. Standby for everything else.

 

[DavidNYC]

The main problem with stacking is involves luck. If you could choose your own times, it would work great. But because you cannot, you have to hope that when your two hours are up and you can make your next reservation the time they want to assign you works with your strategy. Might work - might not.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

Stacking works best if you're doing it for the park that you're hopping to. That means you would still have to visit the park where you have a reservation and enter it before you can hop to the other park where you G+ reservations are.

Yeah, that's basically my plan. Either we rope drop somewhere else or just take it easy at the resort in the morning, and then stack until around 2:00 and head over at that point.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

On a related note there have been three posts on here in the last week (that I recall) of people who rope drop and take mid day breaks determining that something like what you proposed will now be their new way to try G+. One of the threads had at least 10 responses from families saying they have already changed to focus on night time stacking or that they plan to do it in the future instead of using G+ for morning or day rides. There’s a PP here that says they will try this too. Based on that I think there will be more competition in the future for the night time slots. Or maybe there already is as another PP said.

This is exactly why I'm looking at this option - we are a family that usually takes a mid-day break. We physically cannot be in the parks all day, it will not work for us. We are planning on buying Genie+ but for us the value isn't necessarily in the NUMBER of rides we use it for ... it's in the shortening of whatever lines we find ourselves in. I just can't do hour long waits with a not-quite 2 year old who refuses to sit still EVER.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

The main problem with stacking is involves luck. If you could choose your own times, it would work great. But because you cannot, you have to hope that when your two hours are up and you can make your next reservation the time they want to assign you works with your strategy. Might work - might not.

This is my one concern. I hate that you can't choose a time. On the other hand.... we are only planning to try two days like this. One evening at Animal Kingdom, which I'm not too worried about because how much competition is there really for those. And one for Hollywood Studios. We'll be staying at Beach Club, so we can get back and forth pretty easily, and I'm keeping the whole day as just basically a back and forth as needed between the resort and HS. That way if the return times get wonky, I don't have some strict schedule I'm trying to adhere to.

 

[lockets]

This is exactly why I'm looking at this option - we are a family that usually takes a mid-day break. We physically cannot be in the parks all day, it will not work for us. We are planning on buying Genie+ but for us the value isn't necessarily in the NUMBER of rides we use it for ... it's in the shortening of whatever lines we find ourselves in. I just can't do hour long waits with a not-quite 2 year old who refuses to sit still EVER.

Makes sense. What rides are you targeting?

 

[Orsino]

We were there last week and ditched mornings at WDW in favor of evening. When at MK or HS in the evening we did Genie+ and got 4 or 5 G+ for the day, which worked well for us. By the way, at 3pm you would be booking your 4th G+, not 5th. The 5PM G+ can be iffy, but for us it was iffy in the 'don't really need it' point of the day instead of not being able to get it at all. YMMV based on how busy the park is. I think we had moderate-to-busy days.

One caveat, if it *isn't* busy, your first booking might not be late enough, so keep an eye on that. For Slinky, you won't have to worry (more have to worry about not getting it at all). at MK we would book Jungle Cruise at 8:55AM to get as late a return as possible.

 

[Mango7100]

We did stacking in November when it wasn’t busy and it worked well for us at MK and HS for the evening, but the pickings may be slim on a busy day. If you stack you really probably only get to pull 3, maybe 4 rides before going (pull at 7 am, 11, 1, 3). At HS there wasn’t much left at 3 when we went beside Swirling Saucers and Star Tours even with refreshing. We are going over Easter and expect To stack 3 rides for the evening and anything else we get after tapping into a ride is a bonus…

 

[scrappinginontario]

I am trying so hard to figure all of this out and come up with our best plan for our upcoming trip. My general planning so far is in line with what USED to be our go-to schedule - which was parks in the morning, afternoon break at the resort, and then back out (park hopping) for dinner, fireworks, more rides. But with Genie+, I'm wondering if maybe we wouldn't do better by spending our mornings at the resort while using Genie+ to stack up a bunch of LL's for the late afternoon/evening. Has anyone tried this method? I mean, if we don't even plan on going to to the park until 3, that means we can have 5 LL's lined up (plus potentially an ILL) by the time we even walk in. Then we could spend the morning rope dropping elsewhere and just relaxing at the pool.

I don't have any advice, but I'm thinking about doing the same for our summer trip. Sleep in (except get up to book genie etc), swim, shop, during the day, then hit the parks around dinner time with a bunch of stacked rides (plus after hours for deluxe resort guests).

We did this last week for our second DHS day. Slow morning (after booking 7AM SDD LL), pool time, went to DS for lunch then to DHS.

Arrived at 2:30 and did a ride we didn't have a LL for. At 3:00 we hadn't used any of our LL's and had the following stacked:

3:35 - 4:35 Star Tours (booked at 1:00)
3:45 - 4:45 Toy Story Mania (booked at 11:00)
3:55 - 4:55 Slinky Dog Dash (booked at 7:00)
6:00 - 7:00 Tower of Terror (booked at 3:00)

The thing that worked well for us the few days I purchased Genie+ was to set an alarm for 5 mins before we were eligible to book the next LL. That way we weren't spending all our time clock watching. Also, in the 5 min window we would look at return times to determine what we were going to try to book when our window opened. We could have booked more LL after 5:00 but there wasn't anything available we wanted to book.

It was a bit of a learning curve but for the crowd levels we experienced last week, Genie+ worked well for MK and DHS. We did not purchase for the other parks or purchase any ILL$. The only 2 ILL$ we wanted we rode at rope drop (Remy) or park close (RotR and SDMT).

 

[Kirsti]

My wife and I did something really similar to what @scrappinginontario describes above on our trip last week. She's not a rope drop/morning person, so I set my alarm for 6:55am, grabbed any ILLs for around 5/6pm, and our top priority Genie+ ride. Occasionally that meant I had to keep refreshing until around 7:05/7:10 for the return time window I wanted. Then we would go back to sleep, have a leisurely morning, and get to the parks most days around 10:30/11:00am. For the rest of the day I would juggle our ride priorities, the available return windows, the length of standby lanes and our location in the park at that moment to sort of cobble together the rest of the day. It helped that she's not a "ride or die" kind of person, so we could move at a slow pace and focus on enjoying the atmosphere, eating the snacks, people-watching etc. Plus her favorite rides are the Carousel of Progress and the Hall of Presidents, so it's not like there's much difficulty in getting on those...

 

[starousse]

We did this last week for our second DHS day. Slow morning (after booking 7AM SDD LL), pool time, went to DS for lunch then to DHS.

Arrived at 2:30 and did a ride we didn't have a LL for. At 3:00 we hadn't used any of our LL's and had the following stacked:

3:35 - 4:35 Star Tours (booked at 1:00)
3:45 - 4:45 Toy Story Mania (booked at 11:00)
3:55 - 4:55 Slinky Dog Dash (booked at 7:00)
6:00 - 7:00 Tower of Terror (booked at 3:00)




I noticed that with three of your G+ picks, the time frames are all overlapping (between 3:30-4:55. With FP+, you weren't able to do that. What happens if you get caught up on TSM and finish up after 5. Does that mean you miss SDD?

 

[Melissa Perez]

We also had great success in stacking last week at DHS similar to mentioned above (plus Alien Swirling Saucers and RoTR and Mickey's Runaway Railway as ILL$). I really enjoyed being able to overlap because we were able to accomplish 6 rides over 3 hours after 3:30pm. We are not a rope drop family and wanted to take advantage of some nice weather so we spent the mornings at the pool and leisurely made our way to the parks for the afternoon. Then I made the whole family run around hitting the reservations LOL.

We also had success at MK with stacking + tapping in. I always booked my first Genie+ as the last ride/most popular (Peter Pan, BTR, Jungle Cruise) and then grabbed another at 11 and made my 3rd one at 1 for as soon as possible to be able to tap in and then be eligible for another one. To that end, I do like it a bit more than FP (my credit card statement disagrees though).

On average I was able to grab 5 - 6 Genie+ per day without issue. We stayed at BCV and would end the day when we could in Epcot so I could use my Genie+ there too without devoting a whole Genie+ purchase to it. That seemed to work as long as we were OK without doing Frozen or TT (which kept closing early).

 

[starousse]

With regards to using Genie+ in MK & HS, it honestly doesn't look too bad, especially if you're actually able to snag about 4 or 5 Genie+ LLs, do a bunch on standby and buy a ILL for top headliners like Space Mntn. Only downsides I can see is the waking up at 7 to grab the first one (not earth shattering, especially if not doing it everyday) and of course having to pay extra where in the past it was free. I will say that I do feel bad for the older crowd. I know many seniors, like my mom, who do not have smart phones and even if they did, would no way be able to navigate this system nor would even attempt to. Maybe people are on to something when they say that Disney is looking to bring in certain crowd and weed out the rest. It's sad but it very well could be their strategy.

 

[Melissa Perez]

I will say that I do feel bad for the older crowd. I know many seniors, like my mom, who do not have smart phones and even if they did, would no way be able to navigate this system nor would even attempt to. Maybe people are on to something when they say that Disney is looking to bring in certain crowd and weed out the rest. It's sad but it very well could be their strategy.

My parents are in their 70s and purchased DVC in '94. I had to hand hold them through getting Magic Mobile, how to use discounts, how Genie+ works, etc. It is a shame for them to feel confused/unsure when they have invested a hefty amount of money into Disney to commit to come down there regularly.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

We also had great success in stacking last week at DHS similar to mentioned above (plus Alien Swirling Saucers and RoTR and Mickey's Runaway Railway as ILL$). I really enjoyed being able to overlap because we were able to accomplish 6 rides over 3 hours after 3:30pm. We are not a rope drop family and wanted to take advantage of some nice weather so we spent the mornings at the pool and leisurely made our way to the parks for the afternoon. Then I made the whole family run around hitting the reservations LOL.

We also had success at MK with stacking + tapping in. I always booked my first Genie+ as the last ride/most popular (Peter Pan, BTR, Jungle Cruise) and then grabbed another at 11 and made my 3rd one at 1 for as soon as possible to be able to tap in and then be eligible for another one. To that end, I do like it a bit more than FP (my credit card statement disagrees though).

On average I was able to grab 5 - 6 Genie+ per day without issue. We stayed at BCV and would end the day when we could in Epcot so I could use my Genie+ there too without devoting a whole Genie+ purchase to it. That seemed to work as long as we were OK without doing Frozen or TT (which kept closing early).

That is encouraging! We're also at BCV for half of our stay and over at the GFV for the other half, so your end of day strategy might work for us too, so thanks for mentioning it!

Maybe you can answer this for me though - I was under the impression that you could book every 120 minutes beginning at 7am, but I just saw somewhere that you can book at 7am but then not until 2 hours AFTER park opening. So basically not until 11am if you're trying to stack this way. Was that your experience?

 

[DisneyFive]

Keep in mind that you will only be able to stack 3, and you are at the mercy of whatever return windows are showing at that time.

Book at 7am, 11am, 1pm. In many cases popular rides can be totally booked by 3pm so don’t count on that one being a headliner. Just stuff to keep in mind.

Dan