How badly do I need Genie + or Lightning Lane?

[LuvAriel]

The individual lightning lanes are more useful than the Genie + often. Essentially Genie + is not needed in Animal Kingdom or Epcot.

If you are in a Deluxe hotel the extra hours in Magic Kingdom are better than the Genie + anyway (if you can stay out late).

Hi, haven't been to Disney in 4 years! we are staying in a deluxe hotel, my question (which is off topic) you need to make park reservations now so how do you make them until the park hours are posted????? If i wait for park hours to be posted going April 19-26 will it be too late, will i get the parks i want? SOOOOOO CONFUSED and we definitely want to take advantage of the late hours in MK. We are NOT getting Genie so hoping you are right! Thanks!!

 

[twodogs]

In our experience (week of Christmas) we couldn’t book a new one except every 2 hours. So on our MK day, we booked one at 7 am for a return time of 1030. I couldn’t book another pass until 1030 (2 hrs after posted ETPE, even though EPTE was extended that week and started at 8am. We booked another at 1030, but after scanning into BTMR, we could not book another until 1230, even though we had scanned in for a LL. This was consistent throughout the week for the days we used Genie+. We could ONLY book after 2 hours had elapsed.

We were there the same exact time as you, and it worked as billed. It does have some nuances that are really important.

*You can book another LL either 2 hours after you last booked one, or when you use that exact LL if it is sooner than 2 hours away (not when you use ANY other LL that you may have booked).
*At 7 am, if the LL you book is more than 2 hours away from regular park opening, you can’t book another for 2 hours from PARK OPENING (does not matter what time ETPE or anything else is that day, only regular park opening).
*If you booked BTMRR for 10:30 at 7am, and regular park opening was at 8:30am (based on you saying ETPE was at 8am), you would next be able to book either at 10:30am (2 hours after regular park opening) or when you used BTMRR.
*If you booked something at 10:30 and then scanned into BTMRR, your 2 hour block out was reset by your booking of that second LL at 10:30 (so then you could book again either 2 hours after booking the second LL, if that second LL was more than 2 hours away (12:30pm) OR when you used that second LL (which you had not yet done, so therefore you can’t book again yet). Using the BTMRR LL didn’t factor into your block out at this point because you had already “paid the price“ of that BTMRR LL by being blocked out from 8:30-10:30am.
*Key here is your block out is based on the MOST RECENT LL that you BOOKED. It doesn’t matter what you are doing with the ones you booked before the most recently booked one. The loophole you are referring to was closed right after Thanksgiving, so it has not worked in a month.
*We understood how it should work, and it worked just like it said. We felt we got a good value out of it, but we used it maximally and used refresh to get a lot of earlier times or LLs that seemed “Gone for the day”

 

[meclark3]

We were there the same exact time as you, and it worked as billed. It does have some nuances that are really important.

*You can book another LL either 2 hours after you last booked one, or when you use that exact LL if it is sooner than 2 hours away (not when you use ANY other LL that you may have booked).
*At 7 am, if the LL you book is more than 2 hours away from regular park opening, you can’t book another for 2 hours from PARK OPENING (does not matter what time ETPE or anything else is that day, only regular park opening).
*If you booked BTMRR for 10:30 at 7am, and regular park opening was at 8:30am (based on you saying ETPE was at 8am), you would next be able to book either at 10:30am (2 hours after regular park opening) or when you used BTMRR.
*If you booked something at 10:30 and then scanned into BTMRR, your 2 hour block out was reset by your booking of that second LL at 10:30 (so then you could book again either 2 hours after booking the second LL, if that second LL was more than 2 hours away (12:30pm) OR when you used that second LL (which you had not yet done, so therefore you can’t book again yet). Using the BTMRR LL didn’t factor into your block out at this point because you had already “paid the price“ of that BTMRR LL by being blocked out from 8:30-10:30am.
*Key here is your block out is based on the MOST RECENT LL that you BOOKED. It doesn’t matter what you are doing with the ones you booked before the most recently booked one. The loophole you are referring to was closed right after Thanksgiving, so it has not worked in a month.
*We understood how it should work, and it worked just like it said. We felt we got a good value out of it, but we used it maximally and used refresh to get a lot of earlier times or LLs that seemed “Gone for the day”

That’s awesome! Glad it worked how you expected! We encountered several people in line who were experiencing the same issues as us. Also, I traveled with two small children (3 and 6), so open to close days weren’t really an option for us. With that said, they were absolute troopers and while Genie+ didn’t work for me as I expected, we were still able to accomplish a lot in the parks. Ultimately we had a great trip, just were sad to see previously included items have more of an expense and not work as well as we hoped.

 

[g-dad66]

Hi, haven't been to Disney in 4 years! we are staying in a deluxe hotel, my question (which is off topic) you need to make park reservations now so how do you make them until the park hours are posted????? If i wait for park hours to be posted going April 19-26 will it be too late, will i get the parks i want? SOOOOOO CONFUSED and we definitely want to take advantage of the late hours in MK. We are NOT getting Genie so hoping you are right! Thanks!!

You can check park availability here:
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/availability-calendar/?segments=tickets,resort,passholder
As you can see, everything is wide open after January 5, so it shouldn't be necessary to make park reservations very far in advance.

 

[ZanyToes]

As an update..
We ended up not only doing genie + but also paid ILL for all those rides. Our first magic day worked out well enough, but we decided to bring food in in our stroller and pay for genie+ instead and it worked out so well. Our last 3 days we actually slept in, arrived at around 11-12 while I had been stacking genie+and ILL rides for the afternoons/ evenings and were able to ride everything at a super relaxed pace. We'd pull our stroller into a nice quiet corner and have a picnic dinner, watch shows while we waited for our ride times, got snacks, etc. I would 100% use both again. It did take me about 1 full day to get a grasp on how the genie+ worked. I probably should have done an ounce of research before showing up, but it still worked out really well and we had a blast

 

[tgarre06]

We haven't went to Disney in over 10 years and it's um.. changed a bit lol. I obsessively planned for those trips 12 and 10 years ago. This trip was originally planned pre-covid and fell right after lockdown so we postponed. Then we postponed again. Through a combination for being scared to plan, our first kid starting college, building a house and moving 2 months ago, another kid now applying to colleges, teaching another to drive, and homeschooling 3 of our 5 kids I have planned NOTHING except tickets and a vrbo. We leave in um.. 5 days lol.

None of us are obsessive with needing to ride specific stuff. We don't mind missing things and don't want to feel stressed keeping up with stuff, but I'm wondering how important lighting lane or Genie + is. I will do LL for our last day to ride ROTR, and I know my kids want to ride Remy but we'll try to virtual queue that. With 7 people $20extra per person adds up REAL fast.

We went over Thanksgiving and bought both Genie+ and LL. I have been to Disney many times and own DVC. I will not buy Genie+ again for any park other than MK, which is only a very slight maybe. Waste of money IMO at the other parks. If Disney limited the number of people who could buy Genie+ (Like Universl) I think it may be worth it. It could be because we were there during a major holiday but we only got on maybe 2 rides at each park with Genie+ that actually had any sort of wait. I again will spend the money on LL for the rides I must go on because we will not wait in line for more than 30 to 45 minutes, and there are some rides that we would not be okay missing, like FOP. We are on vacation and waiting in lines for over an hour or hours for a must ride is not my idea of a vacation. I personally would just never wait in line 5 hours for a ride like ROTR. There are some rides we would never spend the money to ride LL again for, like M&M Runaway Railroad. Not worth the money, again IMO. Getting up at 7am for the LL just plain sucked though. I didn’t enjoy setting an alarm each morning on vacation. Our favorite day of the trip was actually Thanksgiving when we spent the day at the Polynesian where we were staying and visited the other hotels on the monorail. With the park changes and no more FP, my husband and I both agreed we will only spend a few days of each trip in the parks. The value isn’t there for us anymore with how much a day at the parks is costing. We don’t want to not go at all, we just won’t be going in the parks as much as we have in the past. Just my opinion though!