No the Magic isn’t gone but it’s at 25%

[mercuryvenus]

That's why it works. Skip the line systems aren't meant to for everyone to have it.

So let me be clear: Let’s say you’re going to Disney for a week. You would pay $700 per person to skip the line, on top of everything else?

 

[mercuryvenus]

I agree. I still stand by a previous statement that I made on another thread that Genie+ is the worst skip the line service I've used in a theme park and it is because it is priced too low and too many people have it. If anything, having the service be more expensive will help the standby line flow much better than how it is now.

We’ve used Genie+ on 2 trips now and we’ve had no problems.

 

[NavyDad]

It wasn't so much about gaming the system. Back then the parks could handle the smaller crowds more successfully. Just look at DHS today, it's a total disaster because it does not have enough ride capacity to handle the crowds. There's no way they should be selling day of tickets to that park our front.

Our first trip in 2009 MK attendance was 17.5 million people, our second trip in 2012 when we still did paper FP but were also testing the new FP+ system MK attendance was 18.5 million and right before COVID MK attendance hit 20 Million. It looks like attendance in 2021 was 21 Million and people flocked back to the parks.

That is a pretty steady increase but I'm not sure a few million over 13 years is really a large enough increase that it changes the dynamics of how to game capacity management system.

Now, DHS is very unique. I can't find good data on DHS but that park has certainly has had it's ups and downs the last 10 years as they tore down half of it and built a bunch of headliner Star Wars and Toy Story attractions. I can't speak to that park and how their capacity has changed from 2009 to 2022.

 

[mercuryvenus]

Our first trip in 2009 MK attendance was 17.5 million people, our second trip in 2012 when we still did paper FP but were also testing the new FP+ system MK attendance was 18.5 million and right before COVID MK attendance hit 20 Million. It looks like attendance in 2021 was 21 Million and people flocked back to the parks.

That is a pretty steady increase but I'm not sure a few million over 13 years is really a large enough increase that it changes the dynamics of how to game capacity management system.

Now, DHS is very unique. I can't find good data on DHS but that park has certainly has had it's ups and downs the last 10 years as they tore down half of it and built a bunch of headliner Star Wars and Toy Story attractions. I can't speak to that park and how their capacity has changed from 2009 to 2022.

DHS is by far the most difficult park to navigate. It’s small and, like you said, has a large number of big ticket attractions. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Tron opens. Will some of the crowds shift from DHS to MK + Epcot, since they’ll have the newer rides at that point?

I think AK is due for a refresh, to take the pressure off the other parks. The obvious place is Dinoland.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Some of the comments I can tell they are different types of park touring people. If you're leaving mid-day for the pool or just mid-day entirely not to go back to the parks at night you're in a different type of park touring than others.

My perspective is from opening to close experiencing each park in the morning and each park in the afternoon through close. It's a different experience than someone who misses many hours in the parks because they are either back at their resort for a long time and then come back or they leave and don't come back.

 

[Smugpugmug]

We’ve used Genie+ on 2 trips now and we’ve had no problems.

I'm happy that you were able to use Genie+ successfully. For me, I say it's the worst because in my head I'm comparing it to similar services I've used. The simplicity of Express Pass in that you can walk up to any ride you want (minus the newest E-tickets), have an employee scan your pass and you're in trumps the 7 am rat race to grab 1 good ride and then have your time change on you any day of the week. I even feel like my local Six Flags has a better skip the line pass than Disney does.

Now I don't know what Disney should do to solve their Genie+ problems. I'm not an expert on that stuff. I do think Disney is aware that Genie+ as a system has issues and them not letting you buy it in advance is the first step in them fixing it.

 

[Jrb1979]

So let me be clear: Let’s say you’re going to Disney for a week. You would pay $700 per person to skip the line, on top of everything else?

I think the disconnect is that you need it to enjoy the parks.

 

[NavyDad]

That's why it works. Skip the line systems aren't meant to for everyone to have it.

It's so hard to compare the two because Universal employs a "skip the line" system while WDW has used various versions of a virtual queue. They are actually 2 completely different things.

Comparing the two is not like comparing your preference between an escalator and an elevator. It's more like saying "I prefer to fly in airplanes than sit in a waiting room". You can read a magazine in each but they are two different entities trying to accomplish different things.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Looking at Memorial Day weekend for example, the data shows that RotR, SDD and ToT all sold out of capacity in the first couple of hours. RotR looks like it sold out first but still had availability for about an hour after park open so you could either try to RD it or just buy the $ILL. SDD and ToT showed availability to around 10 or 10:30 so yo may have to make a choice on those two. Most of the other rides showed available capacity will into the day with the rest of the big attractions showing availability all the way into the evening hours.

I read an article where at least they were in MK on Memorial Day itself and it was a ghost town but there were no available reservations for MK (at least per this article).















There's a ton more photos and at least some from the HUB were around 11am when you would expect crowds. The article pondered if locals had passes but no-showed/cancelled but I think perhaps it's possible that due to the Holiday Disney lowered capacity allowance through the park reservation system. All parks showed as sold out for Memorial Day itself but the article didn't mention the other parks that you were talking about in your comment.

One thing I think we have to keep in mind is because the reservation system is at play Disney can choose to lower or raise just how many people can get in and as far as options for Genie+ or ILL that can also be impacted. It's this information that is hard for us to know. It makes sense to me why someone could come on and say "I couldn't get virtually anything for Genie+ when we went" and yet someone else be like "Huh? worked great for me" even if both people saying it had the same number of people in their party too. Disney can alter someone's experience just based on background system manipulations.

And looking at those pictures by the way MK was also sold out (at least the TTC alerted to say that) every time we parked there during our early-mid-may trip and it sure was a lot more crowded than these pictures are showing.

 

[mercuryvenus]

I'm happy that you were able to use Genie+ successfully. For me, I say it's the worst because in my head I'm comparing it to similar services I've used. The simplicity of Express Pass in that you can walk up to any ride you want (minus the newest E-tickets), have an employee scan your pass and you're in trumps the 7 am rat race to grab 1 good ride and then have your time change on you any day of the week. I even feel like my local Six Flags has a better skip the line pass than Disney does.

Now I don't know what Disney should do to solve their Genie+ problems. I'm not an expert on that stuff. I do think Disney is aware that Genie+ as a system has issues and them not letting you buy it in advance is the first step in them fixing it.

Your local Six Flags—and Universal for that matter—don’t have millions upon millions of visitors every year at 4 parks.

These are 2019 figures, but:

Magic Kingdom: 20.9 million
Disneyland: 18.6 million
Animal Kingdom: 13.9 million
Epcot: 12.4 million
Hollywood Studios: 11.5 million
Universal Studios: 10.9 million
Islands of Adventure: 10.4 million

The highest ranked Six Flags location is Magic Mountain with 3.6 million/year.

You simply can’t compare capacity management at WDW with these other places that have a small fraction of the crowds.

I’m also not sure what you mean by your time changing on you. That never happened to us.

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

This trip has been our worst ever. Genie plus has been a waste of money everywhere but MK. It’s glitched and canceled things and we got less than 3 rides at both Epcot and. DHS. They’d be better off doing paid lightening lane than this. It has put me in a horrible mood every day of what is supposed to be a fun vacation. They won’t be getting my money again my time soon.

What a mess! We had good luck with Genie+ during our last trip back in April and I was worried given how busy the parks were. It's definitely not for everyone anymore and overall, I think it's just frustrating given we now have to pay for a subpar service when it's used to be included. It's all frustrating.

 

[Smugpugmug]

Your local Six Flags—and Universal for that matter—don’t have millions upon millions of visitors every year at 4 parks.

I’m also not sure what you mean by your time changing on you. That never happened to us.

I get that. I was sharing my opinion that I believe Genie+ is inferior to other theme parks' skip the line service.

What I meant by that is that if for example, if I tried to book Remy at Epcot for 9 am and then when I click on the time, the time has moved out towards 9:45 and then when you click confirm on that page, the time you have now is 10:15. That happened often when I used Genie+ and is my main gripe with the system.

 

[mercuryvenus]

I get that. I was sharing my opinion that I believe Genie+ is inferior to other theme parks' skip the line service.

What I meant by that is that if for example, if I tried to book Remy at Epcot for 9 am and then when I click on the time, the time has moved out towards 9:45 and then when you click confirm on that page, the time you have now is 10:15. That happened often when I used Genie+ and is my main gripe with the system.

I think you need to be faster with it, then. That only happened to us when I hesitated. If I clicked through immediately, the time stuck.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

This was May 9th at 9:15am:


This was May 13th at 11am:


And May 13th at 12:30pm:


Now I've seen it more crowded than my photos in years past but these were certainly two different "no park reservation" experiences someone would have.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think you need to be faster with it, then. That only happened to us when I hesitated. If I clicked through immediately, the time stuck.

You probably should read a lot of threads because that PP's experience is a common one with LL.

 

[mercuryvenus]

This was May 9th at 9:15am:
View attachment 674463

This was May 13th at 11am:
View attachment 674464

And May 13th at 12:30pm:
View attachment 674465

Now I've seen it more crowded than my photos in years past but these were certainly two different "no park reservation" experiences someone would have.

Yeah, we were at WDW from May 28th-June 4th and honestly didn’t feel like it was nearly as crowded as it was when we were there in November 2021. Of course, there were crowded moments, but we didn’t feel crushed by people.

Lines were still long, though, and having Genie+ was critical.

 

[mercuryvenus]

You probably should read a lot of threads because that PP's experience is a common one with LL.

I guess we’re just lucky, then, because we’ve used it constantly over two separate weeklong trips and it’s happened to us maybe once.

 

[Smugpugmug]

Some of the comments I can tell they are different types of park touring people. If you're leaving mid-day for the pool or just mid-day entirely not to go back to the parks at night you're in a different type of park touring than others.

My perspective is from opening to close experiencing each park in the morning and each park in the afternoon through close. It's a different experience than someone who misses many hours in the parks because they are either back at their resort for a long time and then come back or they leave and don't come back.

Going in for the morning and knocking out a few rides without a long wait, leaving for a mid day pool break and coming back at night or not going back at all is my plan for attack at the parks. I can't do opening to close. I did it at Universal and nearly passed out in the Uber on the way back to my Disney resort.

Stacking LLs while lounging at the pool was the most success I had with the system. I feel like Genie+ works especially well with that touring style in mind. But I agree that different touring styles lead to different perspectives when at WDW.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I guess we’re just lucky, then, because we’ve used it constantly over two separate weeklong trips and it’s happened to us maybe once.

It did happen to you then. There's a thread where someone unveils Disney's hidden cart system whether or not that is true people's experiences do seem to align with it and I wish I had known about it because the time where I had actually snagged a Space 220 Lounge reservation but the app timed out on me I may have been able to have used the advice there to "get it back".

Be it an app glitch at times where it times out for the person or something else is going on it's def. the case where people have started the process with a selected time and then as they got to the end after submission their time was different or it kept changing as they were going through the screens for submission. For a while a lot of people were reporting going to Guest Services either to get a refund or see what they could do for them and its been reported that Guest Services is basically not doing as much on their end these days but Disney also did put an alert on the app about Genie+ experiences with 2 or 3 attractions as the wording something like that.

Being faster didn't seem to be the answer (especially if the hidden cart system is accurate). But there were enough reports from people even an entire thread about it where this was happening.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Yeah, we were at WDW from May 28th-June 4th and honestly didn’t feel like it was nearly as crowded as it was when we were there in November 2021. Of course, there were crowded moments, but we didn’t feel crushed by people.

Lines were still long, though, and having Genie+ was critical.

Yeah I wouldn't say ours we felt crushed per se but lines were still long. Jungle Cruise we kept commenting was stupid long a phenomenon our local DISers have seen. They speculated the movie brought in more interest but seeing almost a 2 hour wait is nuts and it was consistently long with few exceptions all throughout the day. My DISer friend (a local) had gotten 11:40-12:40 return time at 7am exactly on May 15th and she was super excited about that given what the waits normally are but she said "what I wanted in time but wow that went fast"

This was a screenshot I had sent our DISer friends in our group chat on our trip (we all were able to tour the parks together at different points of the trip)

This was 7:18pm on May 11th