What can we expect if we go without G+ or ILL?

[DisneyDreamer2325]

Hello fellow travelers!

We are in the very early stages of planning a family vacation for the week of November 5 (our kids have a fall break). We will definitely be staying offsite.
We are a family of four, children will be 13 and 15 by then.
We have visited Disney World in 2013 and 2014, back then we had bought No Expiration passes with park hoppers and still have 3 park days left (lucky us !)


We are from Canada so the exchange rate is already not working in our favor and this trip would already be a splurge, a post-pandemic treat.

I've been reading a lot on G+ and ILL. Since we are staying offsite, I don't think that the quality/price of this extra expense would really be worth the hassle.

What could we expect if we decide to just wing it without any of that? How bad is it really? We are early risers, so rope drop is not a problem and neither is staying until park close. Depending at what time the parks close in November, we might do a midday break and hop to a different park after.

Any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you and have a great day!

 

[g-dad66]

November is quite a ways away, so it is hard to predict things in this post-pandemic world compared to previous years.

But early November definitely won't be a peak time, and you can probably get by OK without G+ and/or ILL. But if you are willing to spend the money, you will definitely save some time waiting in lines.

I would wait until you are there to decide which days to purchase G+ and/or ILL for (if any). You don't want to add G+ in advance, because you will be required to purchase all days. I think it would involve replacing the tickets you have with tickets that include G+, and you might have to pay an upgraded ticket price (we never had non-expiring tickets, so I don't know how that would work).

 

[Her Dotness]

We never bought either last November and didn't find the standby lines unbearable.

However, we were two adults, neither that distressed by waiting in a queue.

Toy Story was only about 45 minutes. We've actually seen longer waits for that in prior years.

The virtual queue for Remy wasn't much longer, not sure how long because we were playing games or reading an ebook on iPhones.

You can add Genie+ on a day by day basis once there if you find standby too hard to do.

 

[Jadyreen1282]

With kids and the current crowd levels you can expect long lines for a lot of things. We were there in February and hit half the rides we usually do and that is WITH G+ and ILL. Just not worth it to us to wait 75 minutes for rides. We plan on taking our niece and nephew in June. They are 15 and 17. We expect to set them free to do their own rides while we just eat, drink and watch the chaos. Keep in mind people are curtailing European travel and such due to that catastrophe and covid so more people are staying home and vacationing in the States

 

[lovethattink]

Parking prices at the parks has gone up a lot. Being offsite you’ll be paying those unless where you’re staying has a shuttle.

If you keep an eye on park attraction wait times before you go, you’ll have an idea of what the wait times will be.

 

[Lady Hiss]

It depends on your tolerance for waiting in lines. I won’t wait longer than 30 minutes so that resulted in not riding much at all. Rope drop might be your best bet. That plus staying until park close might work out well for you.

We just returned from a 4 day adults only trip, stayed onsite, only bought Genie+ & ILL for one day (reserved a few rides at Studios). We were able to ride a few rides using those paid options but were annoyed that we didn’t get good choice of times, couldn’t figure out if we could ‘modify’ somehow, had to go through the confusing 2 hour rule, & one ride (Rise of the Resistance) went down as soon as we entered the queue so we had to come back later (A big pain since we’d planned to park hop elsewhere). We won’t be purchasing those again unless Disney makes them more guest friendly. Not worth it to us.

All told, we went on fewer rides than we’ve ever done on a Disney trip. we decided to sleep in a bit, knowing we might not get on much. Magic Kingdom - didn’t ride anything; AK - rode TriceratopsSpin; Epcot - rope dropped Remy, rode Soarin’ afterwards, single rider for Test Track; Studios - did Muppets; Star Tours.

Good luck!

 

[Westerner]

I've been reading a lot on G+ and ILL. Since we are staying offsite, I don't think that the quality/price of this extra expense would really be worth the hassle.

Offsite and onsite guests are identical for G+ purposes. For $ILL, offsite has to wait til park open to book. This really only matters for FoP and RotR. Offsite and onsite are a lot more equal with G+/$ILL than they used to be under FP+.

 

[loves to dive]

As others have said it depends on your tolerance for waiting in lines and if you are focused on riding as many rides as you can. I was there the week of Dec. 17, solo, and while it was crowded it was doable. I am not focused on rides but rode everything I wanted to ride. I was a WDW resort guest so could do early entry but was lazy and when I tried it, usually got there right at the end of it so was really the same as a regular park guest rope dropping. I had hoppers (an AP) so usually went early(ish) in the morning, left around 1 or so and went back to the room then back to a different park later in the day. I found by doing that I was able to catch rides at night I wasn't able to catch in the morning. The only ride I didn't ride that I sort of wanted to was Rise. It was actually down the morning I got to HS in the WDW guest early opening and by rope drop was already up to a 2 hour wait. I've ridden it a number of times so it wasn't a big deal. I think the longest line I waited in was SDD, which was about 50 min. and that was at night. Most were around 30 to 45 min. I don't mind waiting in line, I just pull up on my Kindle on my phone and read.

 

[Disturbia]

By Nov after hours events might be back. In Nov you can also book Halloween parties (MK closes early on those days). Avoid the parks on the extended evening days for deluxe guests. Don’t forget to check out all the food booths during Epcot’s Food & Wine festival (didn’t realize they had this during our first few trips).

Most importantly: please convince the Canadian food booths to add a coffee crisp based dessert/coffee and butter tarts please!

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/events-tours/hollywood-studios/hollywood-studios-after-hours/