How is your Genie+ Experience?

[jennypenny]

I still am a rope drop person, but I can see how bad the new system is for someone who gets in the parks later. And on arrival day I'll miss not having 3 FP+ scheduled for the evening.

We were there last week. We did some afternoon arrivals with Genie+ and it worked out. Start checking at 7am and book the ride that fills up fastest for a time later in the day (SDD at HS, JC at MK, TT at Epcot). You can continue to book LL passes every two hours after park opening. We booked our first pass on arrival day on the plane, then at 11 when we landed, then 1, then 3, then went to the park. Those passes, combined with a LL$ we'd purchased, made for a full evening, and we were still able to book new passes as soon as we checked in for a previous pass.


We made Genie+ work for us. I don't think it's necessary for AK or EP, but we ended up doing them on split days with other parks so then used G+ for both. I gotta say though, I hated having to check the phone constantly (I hated carrying it -- I used to love locking it up in the safe for the day on vacations). I also hated how we'd get into gaming mode and focused too much on maximizing G+ instead of casually walking around the parks as usual. I still felt it was worth the $ if you were willing to pile up passes every two hours (set your alarm so you don't forget).

That said, we're thinking about selling our DVC. We were able to use the app and G+ to our advantage and did everything we wanted to do over the course of the week, but we didn't enjoy being on the phone all the time for passes, wait times, and ordering food. It's not our style of vacation. We also skipped most of our usual restaurants to cover the increased costs, which lessened our enjoyment as well. It's sad, but Disney is for a different crowd now. I'm not mad, but I'll miss our old vacations.

 

[Sjm9911]

We want to do it for free too!

We got a boarding group before Genie came about. #80. But it was for our last day, and we were leaving at 3. We didn’t make the ride, although if we were leaving BCV at 5, we could have done it.

This depends because it goes down a lot. We missed it on our first day , because it went down at ride time and was backed up. The second day we were there it went down again pushing our reservation for 1pm estimated to 330 pm. At least it went back up and we got to ride it. Line was about 45 minutes.

 

[kristenabelle]

Yes, we had issues because it isn't possible for you to purchase Genie+ for Friends and Family with different ticket types from your MDE. They need to purchase it from their MDE, or you need to be able to log into their MDE to purchase it. Guest Relations doesn't seem to think this is a problem. Be prepared to wait 45-60 minutes at Guest Relations each time for assistance since the lines are full of people with Genie+ and MDE problems right now.

GRRRRREAT. I'm going to have my brother link up with my aunts & uncles to try and circumvent this, because that's nuts.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

Just returned from from a 1 week stay and hate Genie+ and will not pay for it since APs are costly enough. Being ones that enter the parks in the afternoon and stay late, the experience was horrible. First day in MK about 2PM, we did Monsters, Inc. and got in the Peter Pan line since the weather was lousy and every ride said 70 minutes or longer. The line took 85 minutes. Between park entry and a 6PM dinner ressie, that was the only ride. EPCOT wasn't too bad for rides like Nemo, Figment, and Living w/ Land. Soarin' was 40 minutes. HS was horrible. First, Toy Story Mania and Little Mermaid were closed. Runaway railway took 60 minutes since not as many people do LL as Genie+, but there still a surprising number. The rest of the lines were ridiculous so again that was the only ride for the Studios that day. At AK, the Safari line took a good hour and the Avatar boat ride was 70 minutes+. At least they haven't started charging for the animal walks! However, I found the walks rather empty since I guess everyone was standing in lines.

Because of the weather and early park closures, it was our worst trip ever over the last 30 years. I have no intention of purchasing Genie+ and getting up at 7AM to make FPs when we go to bed after midnight. Further, all I desire are the 3 FP+s we are accustomed to and the ability to wait less time as the evening progresses. I don't have any desire at my age to ride every ride in the park. Further, everyone in the parks is walking around staring at their stupid phones and bumping into you. I have one more trip on my current AP. If it is anything like this trip, I intend to sell my DVC.

I agree with a lot of this.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

We got home yesterday from an 8 day trip. It was our worst trip ever. Genie+ just didn’t work well for us. I hated being on my phone at 7 am each morning trying to schedule rides, and just being on the phone all the time in general. I ended up dropping my phone and it broke! Since I was the one doing all the app stuff we were lost without it. Went to Best Buy and purchased a new phone. Lines were so long and crowds so dense it wasn’t fun for us. The extra half hour early entry doesn’t help much. We did love the extra evening hours. That was the best part of the trip. We ended up spending way less time in the parks because I had to get away from the crowds. Food and wine was miserably crowded. Also not a fan of park reservations. It doesn’t work well for our group. We found out the hard way that you have to go to the reserved park first before you can park hop at 2:00 Or change your reservation which wasn’t easy to do via the app. We wont be going back for a couple years at least. We are hopeful things may go back to normal eventually.

 

[CarolMN]

. We wont be going back for a couple years at least. We are hopeful things may go back to normal eventually.

Sadly, I think the "normal" we want back is gone forever.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

Sadly, I think the "normal" we want back is gone forever.

I’m afraid your right. At the very least I need to figure out a less crowded time. I’ve been a huge Disney fan since I was a little girl. My husband and I honeymooned at Disney. Our kids are grown now so we were looking forward to a more relaxing vacation. This last week was not relaxing at all. We also had a group of 8 adults this time. So just trying to coordinate with the genie was confusing. Maybe it would work better with just 2 of us.

 

[Matty B13]

I’m afraid your right. At the very least I need to figure out a less crowded time. I’ve been a huge Disney fan since I was a little girl. My husband and I honeymooned at Disney. Our kids are grown now so we were looking forward to a more relaxing vacation. This last week was not relaxing at all. We also had a group of 8 adults this time. So just trying to coordinate with the genie was confusing. Maybe it would work better with just 2 of us.

But at least it was "Spontaneous"!!!!!!!

 

[kilik64]

I have no intention of purchasing Genie+ and getting up at 7AM to make FPs when we go to bed after midnight. Further, all I desire are the 3 FP+s we are accustomed to and the ability to wait less time as the evening progresses.

I get not wanting to spend the money for g+, but if you are an afternoon park goer, depending on what rides you want to stack, you dont have to be up at 7am to start making a res. G+ works pretty well for afternoon park goers too, like someone else posted above, book a ride with afternoon return time, wait 2 hours, book another that fits in schedule, and so on. Having 3ish stacked g+ ready to go for the afternoon/evening seems like a pretty good strategy and experience. So book at 9am 11am and 1pm, stack 3 rides starting at say 3pm, soon as you do the first ride you can look to book another and so on.

New system so gotta learn how to make it work for you. Unfortunately if you dont wanna buy it, you'll get stuck with longer stand by lines since theres a decent (per the latest earnings call, about 1/3 of guests are buying g+, would think that will increase as more people learn how to use it) number of people like me who are happy to pay for it and use it to our advantage.

 

[Sjm9911]

I get not wanting to spend the money for g+, but if you are an afternoon park goer, depending on what rides you want to stack, you dont have to be up at 7am to start making a res. G+ works pretty well for afternoon park goers too, like someone else posted above, book a ride with afternoon return time, wait 2 hours, book another that fits in schedule, and so on. Having 3ish stacked g+ ready to go for the afternoon/evening seems like a pretty good strategy and experience. So book at 9am 11am and 1pm, stack 3 rides starting at say 3pm, soon as you do the first ride you can look to book another and so on.

New system so gotta learn how to make it work for you. Unfortunately if you dont wanna buy it, you'll get stuck with longer stand by lines since theres a decent (per the latest earnings call, about 1/3 of guests are buying g+, would think that will increase as more people learn how to use it) number of people like me who are happy to pay for it and use it to our advantage.

The problem with that is you have no way of knowing when the return times will be. If the park is busy it may work, if its busy and 2 rides go down it will not work at all. You don't get to pick the return times. If the park isn't crowded, you will get times right away. I found that stacking early worked a little. The few times we left the park and went back, it was a lot harder to get rides that were together geographically or times that were usable.

 

[kilik64]

The problem with that is you have no way of knowing when the return times will be. If the park is busy it may work, if its busy and 2 rides go down it will not work at all. You don't get to pick the return times. If the park isn't crowded, you will get times right away. I found that stacking early worked a little. The few times we left the park and went back, it was a lot harder to get rides that were together geographically or times that were usable.

Yea its a crapshoot if/until they give option to pick return times, but thats why i said start looking at like 9am or so, more popular rides by that time should start showing afternoon return windows.

 

[Dizzydizney]

I’m afraid your right. At the very least I need to figure out a less crowded time. I’ve been a huge Disney fan since I was a little girl. My husband and I honeymooned at Disney. Our kids are grown now so we were looking forward to a more relaxing vacation. This last week was not relaxing at all. We also had a group of 8 adults this time. So just trying to coordinate with the genie was confusing. Maybe it would work better with just 2 of us.

We have no intention of buying Genie+ any time soon. What is it...$15 per day per person? On top of park admission. I think part of your dissatisfaction had to do with having 8 adults. That’s a lot of coordination and trying to please too many people. We mostly travel alone, just the two of us, and doing rope drop works for us....we are up early anyway. We don’t have the need to do everything every trip since we go often enough. I feel your frustration though. So disappointing.

The thing is, when Disney changes something, it used to be an improvement on an already good idea. Like character meet and greets....it used to be chaotic until they finally got organized lines and a “handler” for the character. The out of control south of the border tour groups with no parental supervision.....they assigned their own personnel to keep them in line. The paper fast passes...a great idea but how many people tripped or were pushed during the mad dash to the kiosks.....Toy Story Mania anyone? Fast pass plus was a great improvement. I personally loved planning in advance and organizing my day. You can’t be Helter Skelter in Disney. If I couldn’t get a fast pass I’d get to the park early for standby. But this new nonsense....it really wasn’t necessary. It should not be so complicated to figure out. I’ve read many blogs giving the step by step.....seems it takes all the joy out of vacation. And I still don’t understand it!
I remember their “reasoning” when they started charging for resort parking.......it’s the industry standard. Now with paid fast pass....well Universal does it. That’s not a good reason, you should be trying to be different than Universal.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. Next trip will experience the Genie for the first time. But will also have extra nighttime hours.

 

[The Jackal]

I get not wanting to spend the money for g+, but if you are an afternoon park goer, depending on what rides you want to stack, you dont have to be up at 7am to start making a res. G+ works pretty well for afternoon park goers too, like someone else posted above, book a ride with afternoon return time, wait 2 hours, book another that fits in schedule, and so on. Having 3ish stacked g+ ready to go for the afternoon/evening seems like a pretty good strategy and experience. So book at 9am 11am and 1pm, stack 3 rides starting at say 3pm, soon as you do the first ride you can look to book another and so on.

New system so gotta learn how to make it work for you. Unfortunately if you dont wanna buy it, you'll get stuck with longer stand by lines since theres a decent (per the latest earnings call, about 1/3 of guests are buying g+, would think that will increase as more people learn how to use it) number of people like me who are happy to pay for it and use it to our advantage.

Well you cannot choose what time the ride is available for Genie +, ILL$ you can pick your time. It is first available times for Genie +. . Then you are locked out for 2 hours as all the rides book up on busy days. If it a slow day then yes you could stack 3 good rides. There are rides that are gone in less than an hour, so you need to be on at 0700 to make selections at certain parks. Genie + you have to be on the app all the time to make selections. It works best for rope droppers. You can show up ride popular ride, then select other rides, shortly after you enter the queue you can pick another. I have to emphasize shortly. Sometimes this takes a minute or five and you could be on a ride and there is no cell service or WiFi. Lots of areas with no WiFi in WDW. We did not get it for MK since we were going to the Xmas party and we rode a ton of rides in that 4 hours and watched the parade. I will say the program is not user friendly, requires a code that is sent to your email and does take a little time to get used too. Oh ya it crashes all the time too. Thanks CHEAPek, you had years to get this to work and it doesn’t.


Get used to seeing this.

 

[Jules123]

We just returned home yesterday from our short last minute planned trip. We only visited MK and AK. We used Genie + both days and purchased ILL for FOP. We loved it! We were able to stack passes all day and got a lot accomplished even though the parks were pretty crowded. It just takes a bit to get the hang of booking.

 

[Sandisw]

We just returned home yesterday from our short last minute planned trip. We only visited MK and AK. We used Genie + both days and purchased ILL for FOP. We loved it! We were able to stack passes all day and got a lot accomplished even though the parks were pretty crowded. It just takes a bit to get the hang of booking.

I am glad to hear there are ways to stack strategically. I think we may make use of it next time as well. .

 

[kristenabelle]

Stupid question re: different ticket types. Once Genie+ is bought for everyone in a party with different tickets (however that happens), have you had trouble booking LL passes for anyone? Thinking of adding Genie+ to some folks in my party in advance since it's only a 2 day hopper and we planned on using it anyway.

 

[Lorana]

I presume you can’t see what the return times are until you purchase it, right? I think that’s the biggest reason we won’t: my husband and kids are late sleepers. Without the ability to pick return times, or be able to see what rides have availability later in the day, it’s really not worth it because the chances of us wasting that money to not have availability is pretty high.

 

[Sjm9911]

I presume you can’t see what the return times are until you purchase it, right? I think that’s the biggest reason we won’t: my husband and kids are late sleepers. Without the ability to pick return times, or be able to see what rides have availability later in the day, it’s really not worth it because the chances of us wasting that money to not have availability is pretty high.

For the LLs , you can look now on the ap to see where the return times are. Wheather or not it works for you is a diffrent story.

 

[Jules123]

You can pick and choose what time you want for the ILL. The others you get first available but I would just keep hitting refresh and letting the times change. Or I would book a time and then go back and cancel it later and it would immediately let me rebook that same ride at a later time.

 

[Lorana]

You can pick and choose what time you want for the ILL. The others you get first available but I would just keep hitting refresh and letting the times change. Or I would book a time and then go back and cancel it later and it would immediately let me rebook that same ride at a later time.

What I really want to know is whether it’s worth buying on a given day at 11am-12pm, so it would be nice if I could see what LL availability is like before I purchase. My big worry is really that the availability for rides we’d want would be gone. And while I could play the “purchase in the AM” game, since I’m up early, that’s really not what I want to be doing during my morning on vacation.