The Genie Usage, Tips and Strategy ONLY Thread

[dmunsil]

You get a reservation after you tap into a ride, only if you tap in before that ride's eligibility time would have arrived.

What do you mean by this?

Whenever you book a reservation, an eligibility time is calculated, which is typically 2 hours from the time you booked, or that reservation's end time, whichever is earlier. I'm suggesting that if you tap into that reservation during that time, you get to book again immediately (and the timer is cleared). If you wait for the eligibility time instead, you get to book when the time comes. But once the timer has expired, then when you tap in, you are tapping in AFTER the eligibility time, so it doesn't return your booking eligibility.

Intuitively, it's because you already got your booking returned for that ride, which is what Princesswahooey said.

Examples:

• It's 10:00. You book a reservation from 11:30-12:30. Your eligibility time is set to 12:00 (two hours after booking).
  • If you tap in between 11:30 and 11:59, your eligibility returns immediately, and the timer is cleared, so the eligibility time is no longer relevant.
  • If you wait until 12:00, the eligibility time arrives and you get to book. If you tap in AFTER that time, nothing happens, because you already got your eligibility back at 12:00.
• It's 10:00. You book at reservation from 10:10-11:10. Your eligibility time is set to 11:10 (the end of your reservation window)
  • If you tap in between 10:10 and 11:09, you get your eligibility back immediately and can book again. The timer is cleared and the eligibility time is no longer relevant.
  • If you wait until 11:10, the eligibility time arrives and you get to book. You have 15 minutes grace period to tap in still, but nothing happens to your eligibility when you tap in because you already got it back at 11:10.

Basically, tapping in can only get you the ability to book if you do it before your eligibility is up for that specific booking.

But all of this is still speculation. I think it might work this way, but we need more testing and reports to see.

 

[dmunsil]

I wonder if they also closed the loophole on making a new lightning lane after the ride expired, tapping in during the grace period, and then making another.

They definitely did. Every report makes that clear.

 

[g-dad66]

One thing that helps simplify the whole procedure once you are at WDW and doing real bookings is that whenever you try to reserve an LL, it will tell you if you are not eligible, and it will give you the time when you are next eligible.

Knowing the time when you are eligible for your next booking is the key thing you want to know, and Genie+ will give you that information.

 

[dmunsil]

I wonder how many used this concurrant stack method and, if it has been eliminated, what kind of affect it will have on LL pass availability tomorrow.

It certainly isn't going to fix the sellout of Slinky Dog reservations at 7:01 am. It might help make reservations last a little longer in the late morning or afternoon.

 

[CJK]

First off, we really don't know exactly what change Disney did. I think I have a good guess based on the least-histrionic posts on Facebook that seem to have documented clearly what they tested and how. But there are a few options. Here are the top two contenders:

A. You get a reservation after you tap into a ride, only if you tap in before that ride's eligibility time would have arrived. This is my guess, largely because it would be a very simple change to the system behind the scenes. A tiny bit of math and one extra test in the main code path.

B. You get a reservation after you tap into a ride, ONLY if you don't already have a ride booked already in the future. Several folks on Facebook are suggesting this, but I don't think anyone has a clear reason why they think it, other than it kind of makes intuitive sense. I think it's unlikely because it would be a bit more complicated for Disney to implement in terms of database accesses.

I'm an old systems engineer, so my preference for A may just be my bias showing. It's certainly totally doable either way. I've seen at least one report that clearly contradicts B, but you have to take these reports with a grain of salt, since usually people are reporting what they remember, hours after the fact in their hotel room. It's super easy to misremember a time or something. So we just don't know.



It depends on which of these you booked last at 1pm. If you booked the 4pm one at 1pm (and the other two at 7 and 11), then you will have to wait until 3pm (2 hours after your last booking), because under either rule A or B, you don't get to book after tapping in to the 2pm reservation.

If you booked the 2pm one at 1pm, then it depends on whether A or B is the right answer (or maybe some other algorithm C we haven't thought of). Under rule A, you can book as soon as you tap into the 2pm booking, since it's inside that booking's eligibility time. Under rule B, you couldn't book until 3pm (2 hours after you last booked), because you still have a booking outstanding.



Same answer as above. 5pm is clearly wrong, because the under any system anyone has proposed, the longest you would ever have to wait between bookings is 2 hours. No matter what, you'll be able to book at 3pm.

Thank you for this wonderful explanation. I think I'm truly starting to get it. I understand wh you said in scenario #1, we could book at 3pm. However, what if I booked the 2pm ride, at 1pm. Wouldn't I still have to wait until 3pm to book another?

 

[Figment1990]

I haven’t read the last 3 pages because as soon as I opened Dis and jumped to the new posts and saw that they DID change things, I had to post! We were at the park today and 100% experienced this change. Here’s what happened to us.
At 7:30 booked 10:15-11:15 Peter pan
At 10:01 booked 6:25-7:25 jungle cruise.
At 11:16 tried to book an “expired” LL and could not.
checked into Peter Pan and tried to book a LL, my eligibility was still showing 12:02
I COULD NOT BOOK ANYTHING UNTIL 12:02. I thought it was just me messing up the expired loophole that I was testing anyhow. Or that because it expired it lost my eligibility. But now I feel better knowing they changed things bc I knew we 100% checked into our ToT LL late on Saturday and then still pulled a LL right after even tho we had others booked.
At 12:02 I booked 1:40 it’s a small world, bc I wanted to test this mess again.
At 1:39 I checked into IASW and tapped in to the first tapstile. I was refreshing and my new “you are not eligible til” time jumped from 2:02 to 2:40??? What??? Then I tapped into the second and it let me book one right then at 1:39 for Haunted mansion (for 7:20).
At 3:44 I booked pirates for 6:25.

I have no idea what the new rules actually are. I was giving it the benefit of the doubt after pan. Then I was seething in the small world line when it reset temporarily to 2:40. But now I am so angry and frustrated that they changed this system during my trip after I literally spent days and hours upon hours in the weeks leading up and ON vacation trying to understand how to use it during a very busy time in the parks. I’m done. Totally done. Did we get a lot done today with G+ and in general? Yes. But we were there from 8-8 and that is not our usual touring plus we were all over the park, we had to fit in eating when we didn’t want to really eat, I recharged my phone 3 times and we spent SO much time trying to figure out what we were doing wrong and trying to figure out what to book. Every other time that it was my time to book on the 120 hour that lined up with park opening my app crashed. It was insane. I’m considering pulling the plug on our future G+ plans for this trip and we have already decided to go to universal next summer instead. After 20+ trips in the last 12 years. I don’t want to spend my whole trip on my phone.

I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating and flipping out but I just can’t do this for this money (not the $15- the $600 per night rooms with the worlds worst toilet paper). Did we have “fun”? Yes we made the best of all of it. But it was far too stressful for me to consider it a vacation. I’ll be back if they ever bring back advanced FP booking.

 

[princesswahooey]

I haven’t read the last 3 pages because as soon as I opened Dis and jumped to the new posts and saw that they DID change things, I had to post! We were at the park today and 100% experienced this change. Here’s what happened to us.
At 7:30 booked 10:15-11:15 Peter pan
At 10:01 booked 6:25-7:25 jungle cruise.
At 11:16 tried to book an “expired” LL and could not.
checked into Peter Pan and tried to book a LL, my eligibility was still showing 12:02
I COULD NOT BOOK ANYTHING UNTIL 12:02. I thought it was just me messing up the expired loophole that I was testing anyhow. Or that because it expired it lost my eligibility. But now I feel better knowing they changed things bc I knew we 100% checked into our ToT LL late on Saturday and then still pulled a LL right after even tho we had others booked.
At 12:02 I booked 1:40 it’s a small world, bc I wanted to test this mess again.
At 1:39 I checked into IASW and tapped in to the first tapstile. I was refreshing and my new “you are not eligible til” time jumped from 2:02 to 2:40??? What??? Then I tapped into the second and it let me book one right then at 1:39 for Haunted mansion (for 7:20).
At 3:44 I booked pirates for 6:25.

I have no idea what the new rules actually are. I was giving it the benefit of the doubt after pan. Then I was seething in the small world line when it reset temporarily to 2:40. But now I am so angry and frustrated that they changed this system during my trip after I literally spent days and hours upon hours in the weeks leading up and ON vacation trying to understand how to use it during a very busy time in the parks. I’m done. Totally done. Did we get a lot done today with G+ and in general? Yes. But we were there from 8-8 and that is not our usual touring plus we were all over the park, we had to fit in eating when we didn’t want to really eat, I recharged my phone 3 times and we spent SO much time trying to figure out what we were doing wrong and trying to figure out what to book. Every other time that it was my time to book on the 120 hour that lined up with park opening my app crashed. It was insane. I’m considering pulling the plug on our future G+ plans for this trip and we have already decided to go to universal next summer instead. After 20+ trips in the last 12 years. I don’t want to spend my whole trip on my phone.

I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating and flipping out but I just can’t do this for this money (not the $15- the $600 per night rooms with the worlds worst toilet paper). Did we have “fun”? Yes we made the best of all of it. But it was far too stressful for me to consider it a vacation. I’ll be back if they ever bring back advanced FP booking.

Yikes. I would have been so frustrated, convinced I was doing something wrong. It would have totally stressed me out, too. Thanks for the report. It's really not cool for them to "change the rules in the middle of the game."

 

[Kmilos1024]

As much as people on here liked the loophole, I think closing it will help all lines in general and hopefully make the system now perform like it was designed.

 

[Grasshopper2016]

I haven’t read the last 3 pages because as soon as I opened Dis and jumped to the new posts and saw that they DID change things, I had to post! We were at the park today and 100% experienced this change. Here’s what happened to us.
At 7:30 booked 10:15-11:15 Peter pan
At 10:01 booked 6:25-7:25 jungle cruise.
At 11:16 tried to book an “expired” LL and could not.
checked into Peter Pan and tried to book a LL, my eligibility was still showing 12:02
I COULD NOT BOOK ANYTHING UNTIL 12:02. I thought it was just me messing up the expired loophole that I was testing anyhow. Or that because it expired it lost my eligibility. But now I feel better knowing they changed things bc I knew we 100% checked into our ToT LL late on Saturday and then still pulled a LL right after even tho we had others booked.
At 12:02 I booked 1:40 it’s a small world, bc I wanted to test this mess again.
At 1:39 I checked into IASW and tapped in to the first tapstile. I was refreshing and my new “you are not eligible til” time jumped from 2:02 to 2:40??? What??? Then I tapped into the second and it let me book one right then at 1:39 for Haunted mansion (for 7:20).
At 3:44 I booked pirates for 6:25.

I have no idea what the new rules actually are.

dmunsil, can you run this this through your theory and explain why the booking windows opened when they did? (This experience seems to disprove my hypothesis. I think it might be consistent with yours, but I'm having trouble seeing how it all fits together.)

 

[princesswahooey]

As much as people on here liked the loophole, I think closing it will help all lines in general and hopefully make the system now perform like it was designed.

It will certainly help my brain stop trying to figure out the best way to maximize our time. There were way too many variables to consider with the different stack hacks, for sure.

 

[Luisfba]

-12:15p I booked a Alien SS at HS for 7:50p. I had never really paid attention to anything prior to today on how G+ works with park hopping, but when I made the LL the app said it booked my late LL at that time due to park hopping. Later on I started playing with genie and found how to let it know at what time I was going to switch parks.

Something you say here that may be new to me. I thought when you select a LL for a park that’s not the one you have a Rea you automatically get your LL pushed to 2pm (assuming the time on it is before 2). Are you saying there’s a way to change that to later than 2pm?

 

[Figment1990]

One thing that helps simplify the whole procedure once you are at WDW and doing real bookings is that whenever you try to reserve an LL, it will tell you if you are not eligible, and it will give you the time when you are next eligible.

Knowing the time when you are eligible for your next booking is the key thing you want to know, and Genie+ will give you that information.

Then I have no idea why it let me book my haunted mansion LL at 1:40 when my app was saying my next booking was at 2.

(I did go back and read the previous pages and whoever said that Disney is going to have a huge mess trying to explain why the “book another after you’ve used it” doesn’t always work to the average guest. This system is WAY too complicated to explain.

and if it is supposed to “fix” LL‘s ‘selling out’ too quickly it certainly didn’t help today.)

 

[DisneyPanthersFan]

Maybe a silly question but - where does it say the time you are eligible for your next booking? Somehow I never noticed it.

When I was there and tried to book another when I wasn't yet eligible, each member of my party was listed under the heading "Not Eligible". And under each member of my party, it said "Unknown Conflict." Does it not usually say that?

 

[Figment1990]

We've spent all this time learning the new system and I think they just flipped it to be more like Maxpass was. Maybe even think of it like the old paper fastpass. It's very linear.

You select a LL. If it is less than 2 hours away, you can redeem & get another as soon as that one is done.

If your return time is over 2 hours away, you can select another LL after 2 hours. But once you tap into that original selection, you don't get to pick a "next" one because you already picked your "next one" at the 2 hour mark.

Here's a very convoluted Example:

7:00am you pick SDD for 3:00-4:00pm (LL#1)

At 11:00 (120 from open) you pick TSMM for 1:30-2:30pm (LL#2)

At 1:00 you are eligible to pick again (120 min). You choose Aliens for 2:30-3:30pm (LL#3)

(At this point you have stacked 3, but you will not get to "roll" each stack. Here's why

At 2:00 you tap into TSMM, but you are not eligible to pick again, b/c it is LL#2, and you already picked LL#3.

At 2:30 you tap into Aliens and are eligible to book again, SINCE THIS IS LL#3 and you haven't picked #4 yet. You pick Star Tours for 5:00-6:00pm (LL#4)

At 4:00 you tap into SDD, but you can't select a new LL b/c this was LL#1 and you already picked LL#2.

At 4:30 (120 minutes since you booked LL#4) you can select again if there's anything left. You maybe refresh and score RnR for 7:30-8:30pm return (LL#5).

At 5:00, you tap into Star Tours, but are not eligible to book because that was LL#4 and you already picked #5.

At 6:30 you could then try for LL#6 (120 rule)

Hopefully this helps you visualize what I presume is happening.

This absolutely makes sense to me and I think it explains why I experienced things the way I did today. (Why I couldn’t book after Pan but could after IASW.)

I still have no desire to try to come up with a new strategy for the rest of our week and I’m still very very angry with Disney for the way they handled this today. If this had been the way it worked from day 1 at least I wouldnt have wasted my time. But I do think I can wrap my head around it. And its still going to take me a while to want to come back. And even then, I still think it’s pretty impossible during busy times.

 

[g-dad66]

Maybe a silly question but - where does it say the time you are eligible for your next booking? Somehow I never noticed it.

When I was there and tried to book another when I wasn't yet eligible, each member of my party was listed under the heading "Not Eligible". And under each member of my party, it said "Unknown Conflict." Does it not usually say that?

I don't remember ever seeing "Unknown Conflict" as the reason for eligibility. It was either below or to the right of each member of the party where it would give the time when the person was next eligible for LL booking.

 

[DisneyPanthersFan]

I don't remember ever seeing "Unknown Conflict" as the reason for eligibility. It was either below or to the right of each member of the party where it would give the time when the person was next eligible for LL booking.

I'm wondering if it was a glitch, then? And that's where it should have said it? Thank you for letting me know. Hopefully it will work as expected the next time I use it.

 

[g-dad66]

Then I have no idea why it let me book my haunted mansion LL at 1:40 when my app was saying my next booking was at 2.

(I did go back and read the previous pages and whoever said that Disney is going to have a huge mess trying to explain why the “book another after you’ve used it” doesn’t always work to the average guest. This system is WAY too complicated to explain.

and if it is supposed to “fix” LL‘s ‘selling out’ too quickly it certainly didn’t help today.)

It sounds like it was saying next booking at 2 because you had only tapped into the first tapstyle at that point. When you tapped into the second tapstyle, your booking eligibility changed to immediate.

Unlike FP+ where the tap-in at the first tapstyle allowed you to book your next FP+, with Genie+, it appears that you must tap into the second tapstyle before you can book your next LL.

I fully concur with you on the complexity of the system. I have been trying to help another family plan their first trip, and it's hard enough to figure out where to start and how detailed to get before even getting to the whole topic of Genie+. Yikes!

 

[Orsino]

Based on the most recent report above, I'm counting 5 fastpasses obtained at MK with the change, which seems reasonable to me for 16 dollars.

I understand that passes disappeared quickly even with this change, but (1) we don't know how much worse it would have been without the change and (2) it was obviously a loophole that was going to get fixed. It has only been about a month of live operation, so that was reasonably quick, I think.

 

[Figment1990]

Based on the most recent report above, I'm counting 5 fastpasses obtained at MK with the change, which seems reasonable to me for 16 dollars.

I understand that passes disappeared quickly even with this change, but (1) we don't know how much worse it would have been without the change and (2) it was obviously a loophole that was going to get fixed. It has only been about a month of live operation, so that was reasonably quick, I think.

Yes we had 5 LLs and we did get “value” out of it in terms of time saved in lines and ability to ride potentially more total rides. However,

A) it wasn’t $16, it was $48 for my family of 3.
B) we only were able to do 5 because we were there all day. We would not be able to use 5, and definitely not those 5, if we were there only in the first half of the day (like we prefer)
C) the mental work to figure this out ON THE FLY was not conducive to a relaxing day.

How did they miss this loophole and let it launch in the first place is my question? i would have so much preferred to not have to switch mid trip. It is much easier to not have to track double stacks, and I would have probably planned days differently.

I know a lot of the time some people on here get dismissed as negative. I don’t want to come across that way. im just sharing the info of the things that happen n our trip in case it helps someone else. I do think that genie can be very useful at MK on moderately busy days, useful (but with modifying your trip around it to get value) on very busy days, and I‘LL keep reporting back our experiences in their parks as we go, in case it helps others.

On that note, I just purchased genie plus for us and additional family members that will be joining us tomorrow. Because they have tickets and park passes I was able to add them to our purchase.

(I still am negative about park hopping rules though. It was raining yesterday morning and I wanted to skip going to our reserved DHS when DH and DS went to ride stuff but i wouldn’t have been able to get into Epcot for dinner later without tapping in. thats ridiculous. What if I was not feeling well and felt better later? What if I had to take a work call? What if I just wanted to sit around the pool? if they will allow hopping I shouldn’t have to go to the other park first!) sorry. It’s been bugging me since sunday night.

 

[dmunsil]

dmunsil, can you run this this through your theory and explain why the booking windows opened when they did? (This experience seems to disprove my hypothesis. I think it might be consistent with yours, but I'm having trouble seeing how it all fits together.)

Yes, it’s consistent with the rules I outlined.