It is better not to park hop with Genie+?

[Greensp53]

Hi,
We are going for the first time with our 4 and 6 year old boys and it's my first time to Disney with Genie+ (I had the Fastpass system down). Now with Genie+ are there any advantages to NOT park hopping? We are going in August and likely going early in the morning, coming back for some pool time and then heading back to the parks. Would love some advice! We are used to park hopping but not sure if it was better not with now with Genie+.

Thanks!

 

[coasternut22]

It really depends on the park you are hoping to. Each park has its own Genie+ strategy. Most people say not to get it for AK or EP because of the lack of attractions. HW books out really quickly. Hopping doesn’t factor too big into this, but you have to plan carefully. And Genie+ can be great to stack evening LL’s. It’s just one big strategic game.

For example if you rope drop AK and plan on going to EP for evening hours, it may not be worth it because future world attractions tend to have lower waits in the evening. But if you book Slinky Dog and MMRR in the morning in HW, and plan to hop to MK in the evening, then you can start stacking those evening LL’s and it makes it very worth it. Again, strategy in very specific situations. If you give us examples of your park hoping days we’d be able to give more specific advice.

Edit: the only advantage to not hopping is if something goes wrong and you don’t get a time you like or a ride breaks down and you get an anytime LL, at least you are still in the park to use it.

 

[Greensp53]

It really depends on the park you are hoping to. Each park has its own Genie+ strategy. Most people say not to get it for AK or EP because of the lack of attractions. HW books out really quickly. Hopping doesn’t factor too big into this, but you have to plan carefully. And Genie+ can be great to stack evening LL’s. It’s just one big strategic game.

For example if you rope drop AK and plan on going to EP for evening hours, it may not be worth it because future world attractions tend to have lower waits in the evening. But if you book Slinky Dog and MMRR in the morning in HW, and plan to hop to MK in the evening, then you can start stacking those evening LL’s and it makes it very worth it. Again, strategy in very specific situations. If you give us examples of your park hoping days we’d be able to give more specific advice.

Edit: the only advantage to not hopping is if something goes wrong and you don’t get a time you like or a ride breaks down and you get an anytime LL, at least you are still in the park to use it.

Thanks so much! So we have 7 full days there, plus one 1/2 day. Which parks are best to do in the morning and which are best to do in the evening? Sounds like EP is a good one for evenings and AK for morning (we likely will just do one AK day). Are there any other good combinations? Is EP not worth it for the morning, maybe only one morning there?

Some of the combos we were going to do were: HS to EP, HS to MK, AK to EP or MK, MK to EP, and EP to HS.

This seems so much more stressful that Fastpass, I don't know why!

 

[thanxfornoticin]

We found the best use came through hopping, and grabbing some LLs for later in the day at another park. I know AK is one folks tend to shy away from with G+, but we took advantage of it as our 'first' park of the day and used it effectively for the attractions we like - safari, EE, and even Navi. Then we hopped to an EP or MK and got a couple more LLs. But the truth is, and we have learned this - you need to experience it and experiment yourself to see what works for you. After we got the 'hang' of most of it, we didn't find it to be overly stressful. We also didn't purchase it everyday - just the days we were spending a good bit of the day in a couple parks.

 

[3gr8boys]

We hopped 4 of our 6 park days last month....once Epcot to AK and also to Epcot from AK, MK and HS. In each case we used Genie+ to our advantage in our first park and then to get LLs in our evening park. For us Genie+ was a big time saver in every park... partially because we played the refreshing game if no desired LLs were available. We snagged rides like JC, TT and FEA (twice) late in the day. For AK we were able to skip long Safari and NRJ lines but still ride when we wanted to accommodate other plans. I felt like Genie+ gave us options and some control over our day. We stood in two real lines (40 and 45 minuts) the whole trip. Definitely study the first posts in the pinned everything Genie thread and then peruse recent experiences. Crowd levels can make a difference. I spent some time on the app the week before our trip getting an idea of availability. One key thing is to pin the rides you potentially want next to the top of your tip board.

ETA because we hop, we didn't have to worry about missing out. If a LL with a good time wasn't available for something and the line stayed up, we would just make that attraction a priority later in the trip. For example, we RDd Peter Pan during ETPE our second MK day after not having a convenient LL pop up on our first MK day.

 

[DebLovesPooh]

We found hopping to be essential to ride everything we wanted to ride. ROTR was down most of our HS day, so being able to hop there on our Epcot day was key. Also, loved having the LL booked for Safari and AK and then being able to stack Epcot for the evening.