The Genie Usage, Tips and Strategy ONLY Thread

[Grasshopper2016]

We have an upcoming trip the week before Christmas.

I understand why they eliminated the ability to double-stack. I don't approve of that change, since I think it was a good idea to build into the system an ability for regular, loyal customers -- the kind who obsessively follow Disney blogs and forums -- to get more out of their vacations. I hate that Disney seems only to be catering to the once-in-a-lifetime guest these days. But still, I understand the change and I can live with it.

(I can't respect the decision to make the change in the middle of one of the biggest weeks of the year, without any announcement or explanation. I feel terrible for the people who are there now and were sandbagged by that. But that's a different matter.)

What I can't abide is the significant possibility that the system won't perform as intended. I have spent hours carefully planning out my days, agonizing about exactly how to approach my G+ and ILL$ selections so as to maximize my chance of getting everything that I want. If I log in at precisely 7:00 on the first day of my trip, and find that MDE no longer recognizes my Swan reservation and/or that the system gets stuck in a loop of asking me over and over again to reenter my username and password and useless confirmation codes that it keeps emailing me, so that, by the time I can actually attempt to make a reservation, the ILL$ rides and the top G+ rides are gone, and the second-tier G+ rides are already showing return times in the evening, I will be beyond livid. It won't just be that my $16 (actually $320 for the four of us for the five-day trip) was wasted. I spent thousands of dollars on this trip, and if I can't ride many of the best rides (or have to stand in line for hours on end to do so), I will feel like that money was wasted.

Disney had better get its act together between now and Christmas!

 

[fflmaster]

Trying to search and get the "stacking" option down, but couldn't find a post that if you have multiple people doing the LL selections in your group.

So, if I select a LL selection for Tower of Terror, can I put everyone in my party as included? If someone else, for example, my wife, were to go into her account and try to select a LL for Slinky Dog, would it allow her to select or say she is not available due to the 120 rule?

 

[Juventus]

I found that if the email code requirement would come up only if I was using Disney wifi and I speculated it was because I'm Canadian and my MDE account address is Canadian and that it did not like that I was using my account using US wifi as if I had hacked the account from far away. It may be that it didn't help that I was also using a US sim card with a completely different cell number than what my account has. I theorized that it was the discrepancies between my account details and the device and location I was using it in.

This doesn't hold any water in Americans with American phones and accounts and addresses are also experiencing the code-required glitch.

I didn't ever have to enter a code if I was not using Disney wifi - which I tried my hardest to never use. It's the worst and being from Canada I KNOW bad, expensive wifi!!!

Also, during my one night stay in a ground level room at Saratoga Springs, I had neither access to wifi or even internet service AT ALL and had to leave the room and go out into an open space in order to find any internet. It was like I was back in the stone ages of the internet and soooo frustrating when the success of the day depends on your access.

Fellow Canuck here. The "my tips" board will not work from home unless I use a VPN (and choose an American city). You can get a cheap VPN (some have 30 day trials I believe...) and see if that makes a difference.

 

[Grasshopper2016]

On crowded days, how fast are the Remy ILL$ selling out? I plan to purchase it for later in the day -- around 5:00. And I want to try to get a G+ LL for TT as early as possible. I'm thinking try to book TT first, and then purchase Remy. But I don't want Remy to sell out -- or be available only in the late evening, when it would conflict with my ADR -- by the time I am able to buy it.

 

[Jrb1979]

According to a few sites the expire hack has been closed by Disney.


The hack was that if you let your LL1 expire, you could book LL2, then redeem LL1 during the 15-minute grace period and then book LL3.

 

[MikeandReneePlus5]

According to a few sites the expire hack has been closed by Disney.


The hack was that if you let your LL1 expire, you could book LL2, then redeem LL1 during the 15-minute grace period and then book LL3.

Well that's that then. Can't say I am troubled by it.

They really should just go back to full stand by for everything.

 

[mab2012]

I wonder if they are applying the same eligibility check to cancelled LL reservations?

If yes, it would be important to understand that, otherwise you could risk losing a reservation entirely. eg. Book a late LL, wait 2+ hours, book a second LL. I paid my 2h eligibility "penalty", so I'm entitled to hold and ride two LLs. But if the system applies the same eligibility check to cancellations, and I decide to cancel my late LL and replace it with something earlier, I will be out of luck. I don't get to rebook it, because my eligibility timer for that ride has already passed, and I also don't get to ride it, since I cancelled. Poof, gone.

If no, rebooking that cancelled LL to an earlier time would, in effect, reset the eligibility timer for that particular LL, thus leaving a path to creating a second rolling stack. Albeit one that comes at the very high "cost" of sacrificing your first LL pick of the day.

@dmunsil, have you seen anything yet that could confirm this either way?

 

[Jrb1979]

Well that's that then. Can't say I am troubled by it.

They really should just go back to full stand by for everything.

I disagree as I love skip the line systems. Wish Disney's was more like Universal's. Disney needs to get out of the crowd management game.

 

[Miffy]

After reading through many of the recent posts on this thread, I'm thinking the best strategy for our December trip is to RD every park, hold our breath at 7 am to hope to get acceptable-to-us times for ILL$, and spend a lot of time at the resort, sitting on the balcony and watching the animals from our savanna-view room at AKL . . . which room, btw, even with the AP discount, is still nearly twice the price it was 2 years ago at the same time, prepandemic.

The other strategy will be to purchase G+, think of it as another ILL$, and consider ourselves fantastically lucky if we get more than one desired LL at a desired-by-us time out of it.

I really really really miss FP+.

 

[mab2012]

Fellow Canuck here. The "my tips" board will not work from home unless I use a VPN (and choose an American city). You can get a cheap VPN (some have 30 day trials I believe...) and see if that makes a difference.

There are also some free, ad-supported VPN applications. They generally suck, but if you only want to use it to play around with the tip board (or make reservations on travel day), they are sometimes adequate.

 

[DisneyKidds]

Well that's that then. Can't say I am troubled by it.

I don’t think the expire hack is the only thing that changed.

I could be wrong in piecing together the info but……while you can still make a standard stack (book G+ LL reservations at 7am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, assuming a 9am open and suitable late return times), now when you tap into the first return time that comes up you can’t make a replacement selection because you already have more G+LL reservations booked. So you can make the stack, but you can’t work the stack or make another selection until you tap into the last return in the stack. In the past you used to be able to replace each reservation in the stack once you used it. This change will lessen the total number of G+LL reservations you are able to secure via stacking, but the MK is probably the only park with enough G+ rides for it to be a factor.

I think….

 

[ComeToSocialize]

It sounds like now that they eliminated the double stacking loophole it now works like Maxpass, which I suspect was always their intention.

They probably realized a small minority of G+ guests were consuming the majority of LL reservations and made this change to make it more balanced.

 

[katyringo]

I think for those there right now your frustration in something you studied and then the rules
Changing is totally valid.

when Genie came out many comments were made about how vague DisneyWorld on how it worked and someone said they do that so they can tweak it. And that's exactly what happened.

I do believe how it works right now today was always the intention. I said it from the start it was rebranded maxpass without re-rides.

The difference is the amount of rides and this is why we see this system struggle at DHS. Super high demand and not enough rides.

 

[leeniewdw]

They probably realized a small minority of G+ guests were consuming the majority of LL reservations and made this change to make it more balanced.

Could that even be possible? If it was a "small minority" and people only had a stack of 2 LLs during morning touring, just how many slots was that? Especially when the return times are so far out by mid/late morning. I don't think the math works out that a small minority could take the majority even if they tried this week.

If people are stacking 3 or 4 LLs for afternoon/evening, then nothing that changed yesterday would impact those stacks.

 

[emilymad]

So would it now be better to take the earliest time possible and keep getting a new LL after riding or is the 2 hours always in effect? I thought I understood all this but back to the beginning and we leave on Friday. Really thinking about skipping G+ all together.

 

[mab2012]

None of us will ever know, but personally, I think they knew exactly what they were doing when they launched, and how it differed from MaxPass. What they probably didn't have a great handle on was how inventory would hold up to the changes. So they would have had this modification in their back pocket, ready to deploy if they found that the inventory couldn't keep up on high-crowd days. And here we are.

 

[lorenae]

Hearing reports now that today’s Genie+ again allows stacking and booking another LL after tapping in to one.

 

[boop0524]

After reading through many of the recent posts on this thread, I'm thinking the best strategy for our December trip is to RD every park, hold our breath at 7 am to hope to get acceptable-to-us times for ILL$, and spend a lot of time at the resort, sitting on the balcony and watching the animals from our savanna-view room at AKL . . . which room, btw, even with the AP discount, is still nearly twice the price it was 2 years ago at the same time, prepandemic.

The other strategy will be to purchase G+, think of it as another ILL$, and consider ourselves fantastically lucky if we get more than one desired LL at a desired-by-us time out of it.

I really really really miss FP+.

I would love for one of the vloggers to do a video testing how many rides you can get done between early morning and evening extra hours, no Genie+. You could take a break mid day and maybe do an ILL$. Sounds a lot less stressful and probably more productive too

 

[AnnaKristoff2013]

As of 2:20 PM today every single lightning lane in animal kingdom is gone. Not just the rides, every show too. Even animation experience, for which the fastpass is usually not even worth it, is gone. Every. Single. One. I would love to see what Disney castmembers are going to say to people who showed up in the park for the afternoon and paid money for Genie+ only to not be able to use it at all. This system is a disaster. Maybe they'll start offering LL's to kite tails.

 

[AnnaKristoff2013]

Hearing reports now that today’s Genie+ again allows stacking and booking another LL after tapping in to one.

From where?