Important Strategies and Realities For Making the Most of Your Day

[BridgetBordeaux]

When you previously spent $0 dollars for Fastpass and got to ride more rides and more than once, YES, I expect a lot for my $15

Agree 100 percent!

 

[Miffy]

We are staying at AKL May 7-15. We have 2 Hollywood Studios days and our group agreed that we are not buying Genie+ on our second day, we will ride what we can and then leave to spend time at the pool. Our group has never seen Star Wars/don't care about the movies so we are not buying Rise so we mainly want to do Tower, Rockin Roller Coaster, Mania, MMRR and maybe Smuggler's. If we do Genie we will not get Slinky and try to ride it at park close. I'm thinking of just buying it on our first HS day but I'm also reading through the "The big G+ rides at HS gone by 1:07!" thread and seeing just how dire Genie+ looks at that park.

I do agree with snikki in that Genie+ needs to cost more than $15. Universal's Express pass probably won't work at WDW but if Genie was double what it is now I could see it having more value.

I am not a Star Wars fan and don't care at all about the movies. That being said, RotR is an amazing experience, unlike anything else in all 4 parks. To me, it's well worth paying for this--which, btw, isn't G+, it's a separate ILL attraction.

Just something for you to ponder--or ignore!

 

[Mambo Junkie]

I just got back from our Spring break trip which was very crowded. We did not use Genie+ for Epcot or AK, and were considering not using it for MK, but ended up using it. We had decided to use G+ at DHS for the wait times. For this day we stayed offsite, so we were not able to $LL ROTR until 8:30. We were also a party of 6. At 7 am, we got 2 G+ for SDD (for the granddaughters) and 4 for ToT, 8:30, ROTR, 10:30 MMRR. 12:30 MFSR. We got to the park at 1:00 pm, saw Indiana Jones at 1:15, walked over, watched Beauty/Beast at 2:00, watched Lightning McQueen show, then time for ToT (2:45-3:45). Next, walked over to MMRR (3:20-4:20). SDD was at 4:20-5:20 but it was down so we watched the Mickey/Minnie cartoon show, and headed back to ST. After ST, dinner at Mama Melrose 5:20, and had to wait a few for that. While dining, got TSMM for 8:20-9:00. After dinner, ROTR at 6:35-7:35. ROTR was down so we shopped a bit and headed to our 7:10-8:10 SRMF. (It was 6:52) The girls scanned their bands, not realizing they were using their SDD anytime passes, and when the adults tried to scan theirs, they didn't scan, but the CMs let us on anyway. Got off, ROTR was up so we rode that. Walked over to TSMM, but my oldest granddaughter realized she had left her ipod in the seat holder on Rise, and Mom/Dad walked back to get it. It was turned in, so they got it. Walked on to TSMM, parents followed a couple of minutes later. Got off and raced to MMRR, got there with 8 minutes to spare. Waited for parents, they arrived at 8:58, so we all rode again.
So, party of 6 we got: SDD, ToT (using split reservations), MMRR, SRMF, TSMM, and $LL ROTR. Saw 2 shows, plus Cars, plus, MM cartoons, sit down dinner, and ST, MMRR again. We even had Ogas after hours so we could walk through a nearly empty park.
The only thing we bypassed was Frozen Sing along, Muppets and RnRC, which is down more than it's up these days. We debated doing single rider if offered, but decided not to. We also could have done SDD instead of MMRR at the end of the night.
We opted to go this route because we debated on trying for early return times vs. must dos and the must dos won out. We also had pool time in the morning as it hadn't gotten cold yet.
At MK, we grabbed a couple of headliners BTMR and PP, plus $LL SDMT but it was worth it to us - sort of. Then we used G+ to grab a few other attraction times, but felt we didn't really need it. That said, we also had breakfast at Cinderella's Castle, dinner at the Plaza, and back to back Capture your moment. Using G+ and $LL, we got everything done that we wanted to. The only thing we didn't do well was we got SDMT for late in the evening, which we couldn't change, and we basically worked our way around the park, from Fantasyland, to Tomorrowland, to HM, then down Frontierland and ending our night at Adventureland. Except that we had to go across the park to SDMT and then back across to finish Adventureland. The other learning curve we had was we had 2 G+ reservations, and my son decided to drop 1 and try for something else and we found out the hard way that we had to wait 2 more hours to get another. With the exception of PP, I don't know that it was worth paying for G+ for MK. Our original plan was to not buy it and only $LL SDMT.
In my opinion, it's only worth it at DHS. We did $LL FoP, but not Epcot.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I am not a Star Wars fan and don't care at all about the movies. That being said, RotR is an amazing experience, unlike anything else in all 4 parks. To me, it's well worth paying for this--which, btw, isn't G+, it's a separate ILL attraction.

Just something for you to ponder--or ignore!

I've ridden it about 2-3 times and I totally agree with you, the ride is a lot of fun despite never seeing any of the films. One of my friends is joining me in May and she hasn't been to the parks since paper Fastpass was a thing and truthfully I don't think she knows that Rise is even a ride at HS. We'll most likely rope drop it because I can't see myself paying $45 for Genie+ and then ANOTHER $45 for Rise.

 

[JLTraveling]

My engineer father thinks Genie+ is designed to not work well. It's cheap enough that a certain percentage of visitors will decide to add it, which gets them to initially open their wallets beyond the cost of their tickets. Then when they see how frustrating it is and how little they can do with it, paying additional $ for ILL becomes all that much more appealing (the sunk cost fallacy). I/he certainly can't prove it, but it makes a ton of sense.

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

My engineer father thinks Genie+ is designed to not work well. It's cheap enough that a certain percentage of visitors will decide to add it, which gets them to initially open their wallets beyond the cost of their tickets. Then when they see how frustrating it is and how little they can do with it, paying additional $ for ILL becomes all that much more appealing (the sunk cost fallacy). I/he certainly can't prove it, but it makes a ton of sense.

Even if we throw our arms up in surrender and go ahead and do an ILL choice, the fact that it often shows you one time.....and sells you a different one .....is exasperating!

Hence, I am throwing my arms up just about altogether and dramatically reducing my trips to Disney.