Disney trips are so complicated now that you need a class to plan one

Saw this article and thought of you guys. We've discussed it. Here's a more mainstream look.

https://www.washingtonpost....s-webinar/

For the average Joe, the nomenclature of a Disney World trip can befuddle. Lightning lanes let you bypass longer standby lines to get faster entry to a ride. Genie Plus is the way you get access — unless you’ve paid for an individual lightning lane, which is only available for certain rides and doesn’t require Genie Plus. Those can be booked at 7 a.m. for resort guests and at park opening time for everyone else. Virtual queues for the newest, hottest rides are free, but also open for booking at 7 a.m. and often fill up quickly.

Got all that?

“I knew it would be complicated, but I don’t think I could have imagined the Disney-industrial complex was this complicated,” Theresa Brown, a New York City resident who took a family trip to Disney World in August, said in an email. “The sheer brain power just to figure out the Disney lingo and landscape is monumental.”

Cue the "you don't have to do any of those things and even if you do, they aren't that hard to figure out" folks disagreeing with the "Disney isn't the same anymore because you can't just wing it" folks in 3... 2... 1...

The same old arguments > Rip Ride Rockit

Glue for everyone.

*Matt Ouimet enters the chat*

Genie shouldn't even be a thing. It adds zero value and has nothing to do with line skipping. If they ditched that, I suspect it would be easier to understand.

It is sort of silly that you need a chart to figure out how to get on each ride.

My simplest summary is:

-Every ride has exactly one of the two free options : Virtual Queue or Standby
-And exactly one of the three paid options: N/A, Genie+ LL, or Individual Lightning Lane

And the fact that I still probably need to define each of those terms aside from N/A means it's way too complicated.

Jeff:

Genie shouldn't even be a thing. It adds zero value and has nothing to do with line skipping. If they ditched that, I suspect it would be easier to understand.

In this ongoing dead horse beating expedition, I always come down on the side of believing that the complexity is overblown. You can choose not to overplan and still have fun. I believe a lot of people don't plan because they either don't know or don't care about using the system. That said, ^this^ is spot on. The language they've evolved to after simply having Fast Pass for years totally mucks it up for the average visitor. Hell, I think I've been on 3 trips since Genie became a thing and I've never used it. It's pointless. I'll also concede that the 7:00am launch time each day is a total pain in the butt. I'm not a late sleeper and I'm generally moving in the direction of heading to a park by that time, but I do not really want to have to go through that sort of hoop jumping in the middle of my vacation. If I'm going to book that sort of thing, I would rather do it from home a month or two in advance.

I still like the Universal “fast pass” system the best.

You can either wait on line or pay a decent up charge to skip the lines….which is really more of “wait in a much shorter line”.

Easy to follow. Easy to understand. Easy to feel like you are getting good value despite the high price point.

I used Genie+ at Magic Kingdom on Friday. Longest line we had all day was about 30 minutes (when we didn’t use Genie+ on second trip on Pirates. It wasn’t an incredibly busy day but we did a LOT and spent relatively little time in lines. Very relaxing day.

BrettV:

Cue the "you don't have to do any of those things and even if you do, they aren't that hard to figure out" folks disagreeing with the "Disney isn't the same anymore because you can't just wing it" folks in 3... 2... 1...

The same old arguments > Rip Ride Rockit

I would love to see stats on how many customers just visit and ‘wing it’ compared to how many people plan and use the apps.

wahoo skipper:

I used Genie+ at Magic Kingdom on Friday.

Thankfully, you had the entire weekend to recover from the stress of planning and executing even one day at Disney with Genie. Imagine the family who spends a week there. They would need a vacation from their Disney vacation just to get back to functioning. Which is why Disney's days outside of bankruptcy court are numbered. LOL. To all of that.

In an August 2022 earnings call, Chapek said about 50% of Disney visitors were buying a Genie product. At that point, Genie was just under a year old. Would expect there has been some increase but not sure if that is the case and if so, how much of an increase.

https://thewaltdisneycompan...script.pdf

When I was at WDW last fall, we saw people who did not appear to be using Genie at all. From appearances, they seemed to be enjoying their visits. Though maybe when they got home some of their Disney friends spoiled it for them. The non-Genie users may have pointed to other friends of theirs who took Disney vacations in 2022 who were still in family therapy over the Genie experience/torture. LOL

Hanging n' Banging:

I still like the Universal “fast pass” system the best.

You can either wait on line or pay a decent up charge to skip the lines….which is really more of “wait in a much shorter line”.

Or stay at a luxury hotel for the price of a Disney Moderate and have it be included in your room.

GoBucks89:

Chapek said about 50% of Disney visitors were buying a Genie product. At that point, Genie was just under a year old. Would expect there has been some increase but not sure if that is the case and if so, how much of an increase.

Maybe, maybe not. You can no longer buy it for length-of-stay in advance (which IIRC was slightly discounted), and the per-day price has gone up (in some cases by quite a bit.) I think they were actively trying to thin the herd a little bit.

GoBucks89:

When I was at WDW last fall, we saw people who did not appear to be using Genie at all. From appearances, they seemed to be enjoying their visits.

Ignorance is bliss.

I mean, that's not wrong. I am a lot happier after having jettisoned social media. It turns out that being Extremely Online is exhausting.

From much of what I see on social media (and I have next to no footprint on it), I think you may have it backwards in terms of where the ignorance lies.

I've been constantly amazed at how even very reasonable and sane people can be moved by something bizarre if they see it repeated often enough. We each like to think we are the exception, but by definition most people aren't.

Conventional wisdom often being wrong, wives tales, etc. pre-date the internet. Much of learning is through repetition. Social media just puts that on steroids. And filters allow you to skew what you see repeated. Short attention spans/character limits don't help. But those are not limited to social media. Tough to find people who talk in anything longer than elevator speeches. TLDR is real for a lot of people.

I’ve never used Genie+ at WDW. I do not see the value in getting 3 quick queues (which is what Disney says you can expect) at times not chosen by me. I park hop, nearly every day, so that’s a huge impediment as I don’t know where I’ll be from 12-4 and I really like the freedom of not having a set time I do that. Between early entry rope dropping and closing I can do the rides I want at the parks without it.

However, I’ll be going to CA this fall again and I’m guessing G+ is much more fruitful out there, especially since park hopping takes 5 min. Back in the Maxpass era I could legitimately do 30+ rides a day. I really enjoyed starting at DL, rope dropping Fantasyland, Maxpassing TL and then doing the left side of the park in standby while I loaded up on DCA fastpasses so I could walk across the esplanade and Fastpass or SRL all the good rides on that side in the afternoon and then eat and book fastpasses again in DL for the evening. If I can eek out 5-10 Lightning Lanes a day at DL I will probably use it, because the campus is just so much smaller, also DLR lacks the amount of shows or long dark rides with short waits that WDW has.

The amount of rides at Disneyland that offer a single rider line is so much better than Disney World and such a time saver. Test Track, Everest and Smuggler's Run work well but Rock N Rollercoaster usually has a line almost as bad as standby. I frequently wait 5 - 15 minutes in Test Track's single rider line when Lightning Lane takes around 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, it seems like they are getting away from offering them with newer rides like Tron, 7DMT and Slinky Dog Dash splitting up odd and even numbered groups into 2 lines after the merge points and then alternating loading a train from each line.