Disney overhauls virtual queue and planning system for domestic parks with Disney Genie and upsells

I think unlike Universal, they're looking for crowd distribution as well as some VQ system. Disney has been trying to figure out a way to get people out of line for Space Mountain and into line for Philharmagic for decades. (If you're not familiar, Space is one of the longest lines and Philharmagic never, ever has a line).

ETA: On my recent DL trip, I noticed that line lengths on the app. would randomly spike right about the time they got "a little unwieldly" and magically, the line would file right back into the queue. For example, I was waiting for Guardians and the line was spilling out of the full (including overflow section) queue onto the midway. The app said 35 minutes (which was probably just a shade under the actual waiting time). We got in line and 10 minutes later it was all the way down the midway, but the app changed to say a 70 minute wait (which was probably a 20+ minute overestimate). Within 10 minutes, the line was back to being contained within the queue.

Nothing will get me in line for Philharmagic...

FWIW, Universal has been running a virtual queue on Hagrid's exclusively for a few months. I used it twice in July and our wait was < 10 minutes once our return time was available.

eightdotthree said:

Nothing will get me in line for Philharmagic...

Not even the new Coco segment? (don't be Poco Loco!, try it)

eightdotthree said:

Disney keeps catering to the filthy casuals because of course they are.

So now Disney likes poor people? I can't keep up.

No. It just doesn't seem designed for passholders who know what they want to do and when they want to do it.

One thing you can be sure of, is that the app will suck your phone battery dry. The existing app is terrible, and it always has been. Part of the problem is that unless you deny it permission, it has location on all of the time. There's no universe where you need to constantly ping location.

And at least at DL, if you turn off location, it constantly asks you if you want to turn it back on. Anytime you try to access a Play feature or anything like that it pops up a dialog that says, "You're missing out if you don't turn on location services. Just tap here."

Jeff said:

One thing you can be sure of, is that the app will suck your phone battery dry. The existing app is terrible, and it always has been. Part of the problem is that unless you deny it permission, it has location on all of the time. There's no universe where you need to constantly ping location.

There's the universe of "we want to track people movement" for whatever reason. Seems like almost more data than they could use, but what do I know?

I also was thinking, I'm clearly going to have to get a new phone before next year. I'll just roll it into the cost of the trip, I guess.

I also got a new phone this spring in anticipation of an eventual return to Disney (which happened late July). It felt a little bit wasteful, but then I remembered I was dropping $2500 on the the tickets and lodging and upgrading a 4 year old phone for $400 was a drop in the bucket. I'm sure Disney appreciates my mentality because we went on to blow through $1500 worth of gift cards for food, merch, and upsells in 3.5 days (granted this was 18 people).

Our group for our trip in May was 8 or so people loosely visiting the parks together. You have my utmost respect for being able to tolerate a group of 18.

I'll rarely go to a park in a group larger than 3

I view it as Disney is raising their ticket prices by $15 per day, unless you want to lock in your prices for a potentially lesser experience. My initial take on the upsells was "F**k that noise!". But then again Six Flags is selling 25% lesser wait time for $60 per person per day, which jumps up to 90% reduction for $135 per person per day. $15 seems like a bargain for the day guest.

Our last visit to WDW was when Fastpass+ was relatively new so fast passes weren't super hard to come by. From what I've gathered from trip reports since then, the marquee attractions are super hard to come by. Maybe I'll have a chance to pick one up since they won't be booked months in advance.

I can't believe I'm actually posting in support of a pay to cut system. What has become of me?!

Mulfinator said:

I view it as Disney is raising their ticket prices by $15 per day, unless you want to lock in your prices for a potentially lesser experience.

I try and look at it like this as well. Back in the day I went and bought a ticket for a flight. Now I have several options from bare bones where I'll likely get a middle seat and can't bring any luggage to higher priced options that allow me to sit in the aisle up front and bring bags. So many experiences now have multiple levels of options, it only makes sense for amusement and theme parks to do it too.

That said, I still think Disney is making it way too complicated and overthinking it.

bigboy said:

You have my utmost respect for being able to tolerate a group of 18.

It wasn't the greatest, but the trip was pitched as "Andy knows what he's doing. Follow his advice or get left behind." Most of the morning rope drops people just did what I said and ran where I told them. Around 11ish we split up depending on desires, hunger, height etc. and then regrouped after the nap/break around evening and just kind of intersected each other as we went and did different things. It actually worked out okay and we didn't spend a whole lot of time waiting for people to go to the bathroom or whatever.

The real drawback was we didn't get to hang out with the other people nearly as much as we'd have liked. There was a lot of Sophie's choice between ride what we wanted to in a strategic way and see people who traveled to be with us who were touring in a haphazard way.

I'm reserving judgement on whether it is too complicated yet as we have imperfect information. As of right now we don't know which attractions will be part of Genie+ and which will be further purchases. We also don't have much of an idea of what the upcharge costs will be unless we use Disneyland Paris as an example. I'm not convinced what's going on in France provides us any reliable information.

I think the leap from a paper Fastpass to the app was a much bigger leap than this will be.

Without knowing the lineup I'm leaning towards this may be a good value for our family. For the price of a counter service meal we could potentially experience shorter lines and experience more. Or we could cut a day or two off heading to the parks and do something else.

Rumor (on the typical WDW news sites) has it that the following attractions will be paid LL only:
MK: 7DMT, Space
Epcot: TT, Remy's
DHS: RotR, SDD
AK: Safari, FoP

Seems like it doesn't leave much for Genie+ at AK or Epcot especially. I mean, I love Soarin' and Frozen is worth a lap, but I don't know that I need much help after that. I presume RotR will not drop to standby, but will still use boarding groups and if you strike out then you can resort to paid LL.

Given that lineup I would be a definite for Genie+ and possibly at DHS but a hard pass at AK and Epcot. We are planning a trip in June, hoping that one of Guardians or Tron is open but won’t be heartbroken if neither is. I’m curious if they will have a similar reservation system like RotR or go straight to the Lightning Lane.

I have a hard time believing that would be the case for Kilimanjaro Safaris. That ride has enormous capacity (in excess of 3k per hour), and nothing else would help control people distribution like it would. We did it the other day, and I was stunned at how fast it moves people without the FP line.

Yeah, it seems odd, but would you use as the "other" LL attraction at AK?

Everest?

I am amazed at how bad people are at reading lines, though. When we went in July, the standby line for Incredicoaster was 15 minutes most of the time (that thing cranks through people). The single rider line, even if it were run efficiently, was probably 20-30 minutes (at least 30 people in it). It was being run poorly (maybe one person every other train) and probably easily exceeded 30 minutes. And yet, people kept getting in it.

It would not surprise me if people bought paid LL without thinking about how long the actual line is. We've all seen people waving around Flash Passes at Six Flags on a dead day...how much more for the family that's taking a once-in-a-lifetime trip and just wants to splurge on something to lift their nose at the unwashed masses.