brandonbr
Fantasmical!
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2006
- Messages
- 102
A little background first. I'm a software engineer and while I may not know the exact backend details of how Genie+, Touring Plans, and Thrill-data.com work, I can probably guess close enough to fill in some key areas. Also, there's the entire human psychology involved with picking when/where that I believe is really the key factor in getting the most out of Genie+ that is heavily dependant on crowd levels.
We were last at WDW for 10 days in fall of 2019. Our son is now 5 and due to some sleep characteristics, being in the park after 6PM doesn't work for us right currently. Because of this, we have to fit what we can in by about 5PM and while we're used to 10 days normally, we're a little shorter on this trip with 7 day park hopper.
Starting on Monday the 5th, we did HS, MK, MK, EP, AK, MK, EP/HS and only used park hopper one day (not worth the cost and we didn't use park hopping like we used to, before park reservations were required, when we'd pick what we'd do when we woke up). We picked these days due to touring plans crowd calendar as the lowest crowds for those days. We did find touring plans was off as much as 2 levels so my suggestion is if the parks only show 1 level different, pick the park you'd prefer on that day and don't purely go by minimal crowd level value. We originally had HS, MK, HS, EP, AK, MK, EP but changed our second HS day for a MK day because we got everything in at HS we wanted the first day, and our son liked MK more. We also would have switched our last MK and EP days around, but the park reservations were full on Sat/Sun for both MK and EP so we couldn't swap.
I know people often refer to Genie+ being useful as crowd dependant. But even days that touring plans reported as a 2 ended up being 3's to 5's this last week in a long, historically, 'low' time of year. I do wonder if there will really be a 'low' time like there was years ago. I don't think so and there will very unlikely be low days like 10 years ago, short of 1-2 days before/after hurricanes and here's why. Parks keep getting busier as of course the world population keeps growing and the number of people who can visit WDW increases. The number of people researching and planning also is increasing and I don't think historically low will remain that way because everyone is trying to beat the crowds/numbers.
Also, I think Genie+ is worth it if you don't want to wait in lines. Sure, you can skip Genie+ if you want to be there all day and I'd strongly recommend touring plans as I found it pretty good for that. In fact, I'd say skip Genie+ and only do touring plans if you're there all day and want to save money. What I found is for about $7.50/person, you can save an hour of waiting in a line. Whether that's ILL that cost about $8-$15 for about 60-120 minute standby's or Genie+ for $15. We saved 1.5-3 hours with just Genie+ depending on the park and day.
We could usually spend over $100 on food for a single sit down, so switching over to quick service that cost about $40-$60 per day, made up for the Genie+ cost and "gave us" more attraction time in the park vs eating time.
For those who are used to favorite rides like people mover, pirates, small world, etc being near or at walk-on by 6PM it's just not there. Genie+ appears to guide people to those later in the night so our typical plans of hitting those in the evening are gone now. People mover never had less than a 20-30 minute wait posted, and when we went at a 20-minute posted wait at 6PM it was 27 minutes.
Our plan for lines was use lightning lane or ILL's and we only waited for 5 standby lines over 10 minutes. Slinkly (posted 80, waited 75), *** (posted 20, waited 22), People Mover (posted 20, waited 27), and Lion King (waited about 30 minutes). We'd get 7-12 rides in each day, and here are the three strategies we used.
1: Get the busiest first at 7am. We stayed off property this time, our first time in a dozen trips. This means going for Slinky, Test Track, Kilimanjaro, Jungle Cruise first if we could get a time before 6PM. Then 2 hours after the park opens, book the next busiest like Smugglers, Sorrin', Peter Pan.
2: Pick the first LL return time for a major ride. At MK this really can add up. If you want to do BTRR, HM, SW, WTP, Pirates, Splash, etc then we found it a good idea to not go for Jungle and Peter Pan first thing. The whole 'have to wait 2 hours after park opening' to stack isn't good if the crowds are around a 3-5 I found. For example, being off-site we got to MK at 9am, went to BRTT and waited 5 minutes, went to splash at 9:30 for a 10 minute wait, then did HM at 9:50 (return window 9:30-10:30 and standby was 40 minutes at 9:50), booked a WTP for 10:30 (standby was 30 minutes at 10:25), booked SW for 11:30 and did Tiki with no wait (then SW at 11:25 that had a 40 minute wait), and we kept just getting the next available LL for something we wanted and we easily saved 3 hours of waiting that day).
3: Stacking for park hopping. This one is only mildly useful depending on the park. Our last day was at EP, but I booked a slinky at 7am and got a 2PM LL. Since EP opened at 10am, but HS opened at 9am, I could booked smugglers at 11am (2 hours after HS opened but only 1 hour after EP opened. Our day went like this. Rope drop spaceship earth at 10:10, Group 4 for Ratatoilli at 10:40, toured world showcase and mission space at 1:00. Skyliner to HS and ILL MRRR at 2:10, LL Slinky at 2:30, LL Smugglers at 3:05, 2x StarTours (walkon) 3:40 and 3:55, ABC/quickservice, 4:30 ToT, 5:00 RR (and Lighting McQeen RA during RR rider swap as our son couldn't ride it), 5:50 Rise, 6:30 TSM. I'll openly admit things just lined up for a practically perfect day at EP/HS. I'm not sure I could repeat it but here's how I did it.
Two phones, one tablet. Table had the World Clock website running so I could refresh the phones at 7PM exactly. This is critical for Remy virtual queue. One day I got group 4, the other was group 5. I focused on the Remy/Virtual phone first, second phone I was clicking for Slinky LL while waiting to click the second screen for Remy. - Had I to do it over I'd focus on LL because Remy is a MESS before 11am because they appeared to call 45 groups by the 10:45 return window at park opening, the first day it was 45 minutes to wait before boarding the ride, so I think boarding groups around 50+ would be less crazy later in the day, and first few seconds at 7am was too fast, I'd go for about 5-15 seconds after 7am next time if I were to do it again.
At HS park opening, and staying off property, you need a little luck that ILL for Rise are still available and you HAVE to get it at 9:00:01 to have a chance. If you review thrill data for our dates, some times Rise was gone before 9am, but the return window jumped from 5PM to 10PM/gone within a minute and I'll be frank that two days I was not paying attention for 9AM and had it not been for my wife, I'd have miss them, like I missed FOP in AK that day.
So while the above all sounds nice and amazing, really only that last day went well. The rest of the trip was actually a painful learning curve, really not a nice peaceful/enjoyable trip like WDW used to be, and we won't be going back for a long time. Our app often reported "unknown conflict" and we'd have to go see guest experience to have them book things, even up to 3 hours after our last booking. We never could see when our next time when we could book LL was, so I had to mentally remember when I booked each LL on each day - I miss the paper tickets that showed it). In app chat was a 4 hour response when we'd have issues. One morning I couldn't swap parks in app or via mobile website, (there was availability, but we couldn't change for some reason), so I called and after 20 minutes the rep couldn't either, the wait time for escalations went from 6 minutes to 30 minutes for him, and when he tried to add us to the 'callback window' that was full. He offered to keep waiting on with me, but parks were about to open and we just decided to stick to what we had.
I also couldn't believe the number of things not working. It's not just that splash has lights turned off on audio animatronics that aren't working (since it's suppose to be re-themed at some point), but TTBAB, SW, JC, HM, ToT, RR, Dinosour (given of course), TSS, CSS, CP, and so on and so on all had things broken. Now I probably notice more than typical guests, but never before have I seen so many and especially so many major broken parts of attractions before.
Finding stuffed animals for our son was also not like any year before, and of course a lot of stores and refreshment stands are completely closed and not opening right now. I'm a bit nervous to go back to Disneyland/DCA and if things will be like this there, as DL/DCA are often a little better looked after than WDW but I don't know.
I also think the cast members are burnt out or new hires are not as often as happy to be there as pre-covid cast members. I'm sure they're struggling with changes and things as well.
I also found thrill-data.com's info pretty close, +/- to minutes but it's delayed about a half hour, so not too useful while standing in line to see current line trends, which bit us when we went into FOP that was listed as 45 minute and ended up being an 82 minute wait (on the day I forgot to book the ILL at 9am). If you want to really maximize your trip, touring plans, thrill-data and some of the strategies I talk about are useful, BUT, and big BUT, each day is different and things don't always go as you think. You could see 'Rise at 1:30PM' and by the time you click through it says 'your return window is between 7:30-8:30'. The whole 'live system' and 100,000 people trying to book rides at the same time at 7am is a bad idea IMO. Especially when if what you want isn't available, it's not like you can swap parks and try again on a different day. Even with 7 days it took 5 before I got the hang of things.
In closing, if anyone has questions about anything let me know and I can go into more detail, data, etc, but I'll leave it here for now. If you want to 'play the game' you can still do it but which strategy depends on the park, crowds, and human psychology.
If I were to do it over again, for the premium price of WDW now, that cost twice as much as a few years ago and you get less, I'd book a cruise or something more enjoyable for the price. We go to WDW every couple years but my wife and I decided we won't even consider it for upwards of 10 years unless something major changes with Genie+ and crowds. We'll try DL/DCA again next year but we actually regret doing this trip vs saving the money or doing something else. I don't want to be on my phone all day (this really, really left a bad taste), dealing with bugs, crowds like we got to HS at 8:30, park opened at 9, and we didn't get to the turnstiles until 9:50am. Also, others with older kids who can go longer will have better luck than us I'm sure, and without ILL's and Genie+. I think right now it's just unpredictable how each day will be, which is frustrating because you have to plan out so much of your day weeks to months in advance. For reference, our son liked the boats and Legoland rollercoasters more than Slinky, and Tomorrowland speedway. Legoland had at most a 10 minute wait and most everything was a walk-on on Sunday the 4th. Sure it's not Disney, but it was more enjoyable of an experience.
We were last at WDW for 10 days in fall of 2019. Our son is now 5 and due to some sleep characteristics, being in the park after 6PM doesn't work for us right currently. Because of this, we have to fit what we can in by about 5PM and while we're used to 10 days normally, we're a little shorter on this trip with 7 day park hopper.
Starting on Monday the 5th, we did HS, MK, MK, EP, AK, MK, EP/HS and only used park hopper one day (not worth the cost and we didn't use park hopping like we used to, before park reservations were required, when we'd pick what we'd do when we woke up). We picked these days due to touring plans crowd calendar as the lowest crowds for those days. We did find touring plans was off as much as 2 levels so my suggestion is if the parks only show 1 level different, pick the park you'd prefer on that day and don't purely go by minimal crowd level value. We originally had HS, MK, HS, EP, AK, MK, EP but changed our second HS day for a MK day because we got everything in at HS we wanted the first day, and our son liked MK more. We also would have switched our last MK and EP days around, but the park reservations were full on Sat/Sun for both MK and EP so we couldn't swap.
I know people often refer to Genie+ being useful as crowd dependant. But even days that touring plans reported as a 2 ended up being 3's to 5's this last week in a long, historically, 'low' time of year. I do wonder if there will really be a 'low' time like there was years ago. I don't think so and there will very unlikely be low days like 10 years ago, short of 1-2 days before/after hurricanes and here's why. Parks keep getting busier as of course the world population keeps growing and the number of people who can visit WDW increases. The number of people researching and planning also is increasing and I don't think historically low will remain that way because everyone is trying to beat the crowds/numbers.
Also, I think Genie+ is worth it if you don't want to wait in lines. Sure, you can skip Genie+ if you want to be there all day and I'd strongly recommend touring plans as I found it pretty good for that. In fact, I'd say skip Genie+ and only do touring plans if you're there all day and want to save money. What I found is for about $7.50/person, you can save an hour of waiting in a line. Whether that's ILL that cost about $8-$15 for about 60-120 minute standby's or Genie+ for $15. We saved 1.5-3 hours with just Genie+ depending on the park and day.
We could usually spend over $100 on food for a single sit down, so switching over to quick service that cost about $40-$60 per day, made up for the Genie+ cost and "gave us" more attraction time in the park vs eating time.
For those who are used to favorite rides like people mover, pirates, small world, etc being near or at walk-on by 6PM it's just not there. Genie+ appears to guide people to those later in the night so our typical plans of hitting those in the evening are gone now. People mover never had less than a 20-30 minute wait posted, and when we went at a 20-minute posted wait at 6PM it was 27 minutes.
Our plan for lines was use lightning lane or ILL's and we only waited for 5 standby lines over 10 minutes. Slinkly (posted 80, waited 75), *** (posted 20, waited 22), People Mover (posted 20, waited 27), and Lion King (waited about 30 minutes). We'd get 7-12 rides in each day, and here are the three strategies we used.
1: Get the busiest first at 7am. We stayed off property this time, our first time in a dozen trips. This means going for Slinky, Test Track, Kilimanjaro, Jungle Cruise first if we could get a time before 6PM. Then 2 hours after the park opens, book the next busiest like Smugglers, Sorrin', Peter Pan.
2: Pick the first LL return time for a major ride. At MK this really can add up. If you want to do BTRR, HM, SW, WTP, Pirates, Splash, etc then we found it a good idea to not go for Jungle and Peter Pan first thing. The whole 'have to wait 2 hours after park opening' to stack isn't good if the crowds are around a 3-5 I found. For example, being off-site we got to MK at 9am, went to BRTT and waited 5 minutes, went to splash at 9:30 for a 10 minute wait, then did HM at 9:50 (return window 9:30-10:30 and standby was 40 minutes at 9:50), booked a WTP for 10:30 (standby was 30 minutes at 10:25), booked SW for 11:30 and did Tiki with no wait (then SW at 11:25 that had a 40 minute wait), and we kept just getting the next available LL for something we wanted and we easily saved 3 hours of waiting that day).
3: Stacking for park hopping. This one is only mildly useful depending on the park. Our last day was at EP, but I booked a slinky at 7am and got a 2PM LL. Since EP opened at 10am, but HS opened at 9am, I could booked smugglers at 11am (2 hours after HS opened but only 1 hour after EP opened. Our day went like this. Rope drop spaceship earth at 10:10, Group 4 for Ratatoilli at 10:40, toured world showcase and mission space at 1:00. Skyliner to HS and ILL MRRR at 2:10, LL Slinky at 2:30, LL Smugglers at 3:05, 2x StarTours (walkon) 3:40 and 3:55, ABC/quickservice, 4:30 ToT, 5:00 RR (and Lighting McQeen RA during RR rider swap as our son couldn't ride it), 5:50 Rise, 6:30 TSM. I'll openly admit things just lined up for a practically perfect day at EP/HS. I'm not sure I could repeat it but here's how I did it.
Two phones, one tablet. Table had the World Clock website running so I could refresh the phones at 7PM exactly. This is critical for Remy virtual queue. One day I got group 4, the other was group 5. I focused on the Remy/Virtual phone first, second phone I was clicking for Slinky LL while waiting to click the second screen for Remy. - Had I to do it over I'd focus on LL because Remy is a MESS before 11am because they appeared to call 45 groups by the 10:45 return window at park opening, the first day it was 45 minutes to wait before boarding the ride, so I think boarding groups around 50+ would be less crazy later in the day, and first few seconds at 7am was too fast, I'd go for about 5-15 seconds after 7am next time if I were to do it again.
At HS park opening, and staying off property, you need a little luck that ILL for Rise are still available and you HAVE to get it at 9:00:01 to have a chance. If you review thrill data for our dates, some times Rise was gone before 9am, but the return window jumped from 5PM to 10PM/gone within a minute and I'll be frank that two days I was not paying attention for 9AM and had it not been for my wife, I'd have miss them, like I missed FOP in AK that day.
So while the above all sounds nice and amazing, really only that last day went well. The rest of the trip was actually a painful learning curve, really not a nice peaceful/enjoyable trip like WDW used to be, and we won't be going back for a long time. Our app often reported "unknown conflict" and we'd have to go see guest experience to have them book things, even up to 3 hours after our last booking. We never could see when our next time when we could book LL was, so I had to mentally remember when I booked each LL on each day - I miss the paper tickets that showed it). In app chat was a 4 hour response when we'd have issues. One morning I couldn't swap parks in app or via mobile website, (there was availability, but we couldn't change for some reason), so I called and after 20 minutes the rep couldn't either, the wait time for escalations went from 6 minutes to 30 minutes for him, and when he tried to add us to the 'callback window' that was full. He offered to keep waiting on with me, but parks were about to open and we just decided to stick to what we had.
I also couldn't believe the number of things not working. It's not just that splash has lights turned off on audio animatronics that aren't working (since it's suppose to be re-themed at some point), but TTBAB, SW, JC, HM, ToT, RR, Dinosour (given of course), TSS, CSS, CP, and so on and so on all had things broken. Now I probably notice more than typical guests, but never before have I seen so many and especially so many major broken parts of attractions before.
Finding stuffed animals for our son was also not like any year before, and of course a lot of stores and refreshment stands are completely closed and not opening right now. I'm a bit nervous to go back to Disneyland/DCA and if things will be like this there, as DL/DCA are often a little better looked after than WDW but I don't know.
I also think the cast members are burnt out or new hires are not as often as happy to be there as pre-covid cast members. I'm sure they're struggling with changes and things as well.
I also found thrill-data.com's info pretty close, +/- to minutes but it's delayed about a half hour, so not too useful while standing in line to see current line trends, which bit us when we went into FOP that was listed as 45 minute and ended up being an 82 minute wait (on the day I forgot to book the ILL at 9am). If you want to really maximize your trip, touring plans, thrill-data and some of the strategies I talk about are useful, BUT, and big BUT, each day is different and things don't always go as you think. You could see 'Rise at 1:30PM' and by the time you click through it says 'your return window is between 7:30-8:30'. The whole 'live system' and 100,000 people trying to book rides at the same time at 7am is a bad idea IMO. Especially when if what you want isn't available, it's not like you can swap parks and try again on a different day. Even with 7 days it took 5 before I got the hang of things.
In closing, if anyone has questions about anything let me know and I can go into more detail, data, etc, but I'll leave it here for now. If you want to 'play the game' you can still do it but which strategy depends on the park, crowds, and human psychology.
If I were to do it over again, for the premium price of WDW now, that cost twice as much as a few years ago and you get less, I'd book a cruise or something more enjoyable for the price. We go to WDW every couple years but my wife and I decided we won't even consider it for upwards of 10 years unless something major changes with Genie+ and crowds. We'll try DL/DCA again next year but we actually regret doing this trip vs saving the money or doing something else. I don't want to be on my phone all day (this really, really left a bad taste), dealing with bugs, crowds like we got to HS at 8:30, park opened at 9, and we didn't get to the turnstiles until 9:50am. Also, others with older kids who can go longer will have better luck than us I'm sure, and without ILL's and Genie+. I think right now it's just unpredictable how each day will be, which is frustrating because you have to plan out so much of your day weeks to months in advance. For reference, our son liked the boats and Legoland rollercoasters more than Slinky, and Tomorrowland speedway. Legoland had at most a 10 minute wait and most everything was a walk-on on Sunday the 4th. Sure it's not Disney, but it was more enjoyable of an experience.
