Disney Genie service deeply unpopular among fans before it has launched

Jeff said:

...and there are no shortage of ways to avoid I-4.

But when that one time pops up where you can't avoid I-4, I sometimes consider just not going to wherever it is I need to be.

That being said I would rather have screwed up ways of getting around with drivers who can drive vs. an easy freeway system with moron drivers. I don't mind LA traffic when I am there because those people know how to drive. Driving on I-4 is only awful because of the type of drivers that use it.

Because I know of so few shortcuts, I have dealt with I-4 construction issues for what?, ten years maybe? Seems so. But when I was there in February of this year it was like magic- it all seemed very close to being done and traffic delays weren’t nearly as bad.
What was unbelievable was the amount of drivers high speed racing across there. And that happens everywhere, even here in Columbus, Ohio, but down there it was crazy how many each and every night and the risks they were taking.

RCMAC said:

But when I was there in February of this year it was like magic- it all seemed very close to being done and traffic delays weren’t nearly as bad.

I lived in Kissimmee for a month in April and while it was better than when all the construction was happening, it still seemed pretty terrible. We couldn't go anywhere without hitting obscene, unpredictable traffic. North, south, east, west. Every road was congested and bottlenecked leaving the area. I went to Alafia State Park to mountain bike and it took about an hour to get there in the early morning, but almost two on the way back!

It certainly could have been pandemic related because Universal was pretty slammed as well.

99er said:

Driving on I-4 is only awful because of the type of drivers that use it.

I witnessed some downright foolish behavior on that road at all times of the day.

The one time I was in LA I drove from Magic Mountain to Disneyland in some moderate to heavy traffic. The volume was bad, but the behavior of the other drivers and overall traffic patterns made it a better experience than driving on I4 from Orlando to Tampa.

My quick take on the genie +. It averaged out to right around $42 per day person. You can only use Lightning Lane once per day per attraction(That was biggest disappoinment for me.) It doesn't work as well at Epcot and Animal Kingdom for me because they don't have enough attractions(unless little kids are along.)

It worked really well at the Magic Kingdom, and enabled us to get through the park relatively faster than the old system. They allow you to overlap your lightning lanes, and that allows you to schedule Lightning lane ride selections almost back to back, or just the time of walking from one attraction to the other. That was the best advantage. Some attractions(Avatar,) we'd pay for more than once because we like them so much. Shortest wait we had for that ride was right around 70 minutes.

Got up at 7. Signed onto Genie + for Hollywood Studios, and paid. I got the pop up to buy additional lightning lanes for Rise, and Runaway. Make sure you pick Rise first. By the time i picked the time for Runaway and went back to Rise we got a 1630 return time.

Also got on right at 7 to Virtual quene for Ratatouille, and all the boardings times were gone within 5 seconds. I was able to buy a lightning lane for it without paying for the genie +, and that was nice because we were going to Universal, but wanted to get to ride. We got a 7:30pm time which was perfect to make it there in time.

Thanks for your insight. The whole wake up at seven and starting mapping out your day doesn't appeal to me at all.

I thought you couldn't buy individual lightning lanes for the same attraction more than once. Do you mean you paid for Avatar multiple times on separate days?

It is sort of silly that you need a college degree to figure out when/how to get onto each ride at this point. The fact that there are multiple things you want to be doing at 7am (boarding groups, ILL's and first G+) is already all you need to know about how confusing things are. It's also interesting how different the value propositions are, per park. Animal Kingdom G+ is basically useless and Epcot isn't much better. But DHS has a lot of high demand rides and MK just has so many eligible rides in general.

That said, if you have the right info., you can definitely max the heck out of this system as much as the old FP+. We had no trouble getting boarding groups for RotR or Web Slingers at Disneyland this summer (we actually got BG1 for Web one of the days), so that takes care of Remy's and presumably Guardians when it opens. And some of the loopholes that have been discovered are downright ludicrous.

For those who care for such things:

On G+, you can book a new lightning lane when (a) 120 minutes are up after you booked, (b) the window expires, (c) you tap in. These are probably designed to be OR, but they're programmed as AND. You can actually get all 3 to trigger for the same booking.

e.g. If you book Slinky for 10:20-11:20 on a 9:00 opening. You can book a new one at 11:00 (condition (a)), another new one at 11:20 (condition (b)), then immediately tap in to the ride through the grace period, then book a third (condition (c)). Each of those three can then rebook once used, so you can run with 3 concurrent reservations for the rest of the day.

Yeah that sounds like too much work even for me, and I didn't stop with just one degree.

(Plus, I have a feeling it won't be AND for very long.)

It takes a surprisingly long time for Disney IT to fix stuff like this, depending on how prevalent it is. There were loopholes and weirdness with the old FP+ system that lasted years and years.

Sure, but now you've pointed them right to the loophole. Thanks.

Anecdotally, I've noticed that most attractions now seem to have shorter standby lines compared to the FP days. However, the big hitters, the standby lines are even worse. What they're giving up is the forced distribution of guests that they had before. I know some fan sites have reported "known" LL to standby ratios, but I think they're wrong.

And yes, MK is really the only park where I think LL makes sense.

hambone said:

Sure, but now you've pointed them right to the loophole. Thanks.

This information has been published on much more popular blogs, sites, and podcasts than this one. As were the old tricks that stuck around for years. My point is not that this loophole in particular is relevant. It's that there are always loopholes and so the curve of knowledge to value has a high starting point but also a very positive slope.

Andy you can only use one lightning lane per attraction a day. As others have said about fastpass, on slow days I'd enjoy multiple rides on toy story Mania or tower of terror at the end of the because they'd keep giving us fast passes. They don't do it that

The other thing I forgot to mention about being on at 7am is that you have a full choice of available times for the lightning lanes you are selecting. There were days that I slept in(7:38,am.) When I got on to make our selections for Animal Kingdom all the paid lightning lanes for Avatar were already sold out. They can go that fast.

I can't imagine trying to use the system not staying on Disney property. It wouldn't be worth it.

I agree with you Brian, After going to Universal and using their express pass, I feel like Disney is buying some time to figure out how they want to implement a full skip the line system. Its just a matter of time. We paid $190 for a 2 park express pass on Thursday at Universal, and I know Disney would double the price of that at least.

I want to learn more loopholes in the new system, and I don't have time to read all those Disney fan sites.

This just makes me miss the days of paper Fastpass even more. I remember finding ways to get multiple Fastpasses on big ticket rides like Space Mountain or Rock N Roller Coaster on slow to medium-ish crowded days simply because the demand wasn't really there when the standby lines were 20-25 minutes. I just can't justify paying if I am still essentially limited to one trip on each ride/attraction.

What is the on property advantage wrt G+ and ILL?

G+ none. ILL can buy at 7 onsite, park open offsite.

(But, that's not clearly an advantage. See: https://touringplans.com/blog/fluctuation-in-lightning-lane-return-times/)

This is fantastic. Sounds like Disney PR is not interested in what fan sites think they're entitled to from the CEO. So many LULZ.

https://wdwnt.com/2021/11/disney-cites-schedule-conflict-as-reason-...a-new-low/

I find WDWNT insufferable, and I'm not in their crosshairs. I can just imagine how TDO feels.

I had to look up what that is. I love fan communities that use inside baseball terms but couldn't be more outside.