Recent travellers (Jan & Feb)- crowds and Genie+ recommendations?

[tukkerlove]

We are Looking at travelling next year in January or February to WDW. Wondering what the crowd experience has been in the month for anyone who has travelled from AFTER MLK to PRIOR to Presidents day this year.

Have the wait times for standby on the big rides been ridiculous enough to make Genie+ worth it? Thinking about this way in advance but really not thrilled with having to pay.... especially at $20 or so a pop each day!!! Curious from those who went this year if I need to get used to the idea!!

 

[DCLMP]

We were there Jan 27- Feb 1. I thought it was worth it. The cost ranged from 13 to 17. Posted standby lines were long. I have no idea if the times were inflated. I think if you rope dropped you’d be fine without it. I wasn’t that ambitious this trip.

 

[Anna131517]

We went to EP and MK last Saturday. It was a busy holiday weekend and we had to start at EP because MK was sold out. We bought Genie+ - $27/person and we’re a family of five! We also bought ILLs for Guardians and SDMT. We rope dropped and made it to 9:30 pm and had a blast. We rode Frozen, Remy, Guardians, and Living with the Land in EP. (We also ate breakfast and lunch there.). We did Tom Sawyers Island, SDMT, Space Mountain, Swiss Family Robinson, People Mover, Small World, Peter Pan, Dumbo, and Barn Stormer at MK (some are just walk on attractions, some we did standby, and some we used Genie+). We had LLs scheduled for Haunted Mansion and BTMR but our feet hurt too much to close out the park - we were also dragging a 5, 7, and 9 yr old with us! Ride times were definitely long in MK. I don’t think we would have enjoyed ourselves as much without Genie+ just because my family wanted to do a lot of rides. If you’re happy with more shows and parades then you could do without it. Edited to clarify we combined using walk-on attractions, standby lines, ILLs, and LLs.

 

[philharmagic fan]

We were there February 3-7 and bought Genie+ on the 4th, 5th, and 6th. We definitely thought it was worth it and would absolutely do it on our next trip; if I remember correctly we paid $22 on the 4th and $15 the other two days. There are a couple of things from the above responses that I'm confused about. As far as I know Genie+ has never cost less than $15 per day. Some attractions including Tom Sawyer Island, Swiss Family Tree House, and People Mover don't offer lightning lanes, and Haunted Mansion and BTMRR are included in the general lightning lane list and are not individual ILL's. One nice thing not mentioned, though, is that if you park hop, Genie+ goes with you. Once we rode our last ride prior to hopping, we immediately made a lightning lane reservation for the park we were hopping to.

 

[Mango7100]

Just returned from our Presidents’ Day weekend trip and Genie is 100% worth it for MK (we did 8 LLs) and HS (we did 6 nonshow LLs between 4-9pm). Epcot one day we didn’t buy it and got most everything done between Early entry and standby except for Remy. We did buy it for our Epcot and AK combo day and used 4 LLs so not worth it as much. I don’t like buying it but I would rather stand in line less than 20 minutes and do everything we want vs. 60-140 minutes for a few things and be miserable.

 

[Mango7100]

Just returned from our Presidents’ Day weekend trip and Genie is 100% worth it for MK (we did 8 LLs) and HS (we did 6 nonshow LLs between 4-9pm). Epcot one day we didn’t buy it and got most everything done between Early entry and standby except for Remy. We did buy it for our Epcot and AK combo day and used 4 LLs so not worth it as much. I don’t like buying it but I would rather stand in line less than 20 minutes and do everything we want vs. 60-140 minutes for a few things and be miserable.

 

[CarolynFH]

We were in the parks January 25-30 and thought Genie+ was definitely worth it for MK. On the Sunday we saw the 1:30 Cirque du Soleil show so didn’t get to MK until about 4 PM. But by stacking and modifying starting around 7:30 AM (so I could see return times from the beginning) I was able to book Jungle Cruise, BTMRR, PP, and HM with return times between 3:35 and 6:40, and just after getting in line for JC I was able to book Pirates for immediately afterwards. We had similar experience in July, but being able to modify makes it even easier. We bought Genie+ for AK too, mostly to have more control over when we saw the shows and rode Safari, but usually we just buy ILL$ for FoP, not Genie+, there. Genie+ didn’t work as well when we bought it for DHS, can’t remember specifically why, we only booked two rides - but they were the two we wanted that day, and we were returning another day that week. We would probably never buy Genie+ for Epcot — we don’t ride anything there except GotG, Rémy and SE!

 

[scrappinginontario]

I would read recent experiences in the Here Now and Just Back thread.

 

[Grace&Carolinesmom]

We were there Jan 26 - Feb 5 this year. We thought crowds were very manageable. Because of Epcot FotA, the weekends were much more crowded around the WS at the food booths and some of that did spill over into the rides as well.

We used Genie+ at MK, DHS, and EP. We did not need it for AK. We did not utilize any early morning entries into the parks as we decided to sleep in a little each day and starting stacking LLs at the 7am drop. We arrived at the parks anywhere from 9:30 - 11:30am each day. The only exception was the MK early closure day for the CM party. We had the best day ever at MK arriving around midday and leaving at 4pm closing. We did not buy Genie+ and most rides were walk-on or very minimal waits. We did several rides multiple times.

If you are utilizing early park entry, you really would not need Genie+ for EP UNLESS they change the Guardians of the Galaxy ride to stand-by and regular LL but when and if that ever happens......idk.

We had a great time and decided this is our new favorite time of year to visit

 

[Jacq7414]

We were there 2/19-2/25. Genie+ was $29 on our Epcot day, and we did buy it, but IMO it was a complete waste of money. We pretty much just got 1 ride there. The better rides were sold out when we could do it a second time so we pretty much just paid $29 for Remy. We had a PH so I ended up hopping over to MK and we used it there. But if you don’t have a PH I don’t recommend it for an Epcot day.

Oops we went after Presidents’ Day lol. Sorry