03/25/2022
Disney 2022 - Post #27
Genie+ and Individual Lightening Lanes
Let me start by saying that this is just my opinion based off of my own family's experience. People seem to be pretty divided on the topic of Disney's new Genie+ and Individual Lightening Lane (ILL for short) options and the expense they add to an already pricey vacation. Let me say up front that I'm not going into too great of detail about what these services include and how they work. There are plenty of places online to find those explanations. I'm trying to keep this post as short as I can and just tell about our experience.
I will tell you that I actually make a higher commission if my Disney family's choose to add Genie+ to their package before they travel. This means that I'm literally cutting my own paycheck to be completely candid with all of you. I hope everyone reading will always remember this detail. I will never try to get you to spend money on a Disney trip paying for something you don't need just to bump my commission.
Before our trip I had read all the things, watched all the videos, and talked to all the people. I was still completely torn about whether to add Genie+ to our trip. The cost is $15 per person per day. For my family of six, that's $90 per day. Times five park days, that's an extra $450 that I wasn't sure would actually be a good investment. If I added Genie+ to our entire trip I would make a commission on that addition. If I waited and just added it day by day in the app as we learned more about whether it was helpful, I would just be letting Disney keep that bonus. In the end we decided to wait, and we're all SO GLAD we did!
Since Hollywood Studios was our first Disney park day, and the one where we anticipated the most long lines, we decided to add Genie+. That meant an additional $90 for my family to be able to skip some lines. Since Genie+ didn't offer Rise of the Resistance or Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway (those are ILL rides that would be an additional expense if we wanted to skip the line) we planned to be at the park for rope drop and head straight to Rise of the Resistance. We figured we'd ride it early without too long of a line, wait for Runaway Railway, and then be able to use Genie+ to skip most of the other lines.
Here's how that went. I got up early and started refreshing the app by 6:50am. At 7am all Lightening Lanes were already gone for the whole day for Slinky Dog Dash. I went ahead and booked a Lightening Lane for Smuggler's Run right after lunch. That was the earliest option. We got to the park and headed straight to Rise of the Resistance. It was closed for repair. So, we walked on over to Smuggler's Run which had a ten minute wait. We decided to hop on that one since we were right there. We thought we could just cancel that Lightening Lane and rebook for something else while we waited. There was really nothing available that we all wanted or felt was a good use of a Lightening Lane, so I went ahead and booked one for Rockin' Roller Coaster for right after lunch, even though only three members of our group wanted to ride it. After Smuggler's Run, we walked over to Toy Story Land. Slinky Dog already had a super long wait, so we headed to Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. We only had to wait about half an hour. After that we were able to walk on Toy Story Mania with virtually no wait.
After lunch, our thrill riders went on over to Rockin Roller Coaster to use that Lightening Lane pass. Then they just got in line for Tower of Terror because they were right there and the only Lightening Lane time available had been late enough in the day that it would interfere with our dinner reservation. I kept checking for a Slinky Dog Lightening Lane to open up (people say that happens) but we never got lucky. After spending way more time than I liked on my phone refreshing the app trying to find a Lightening Lane for something we wanted to do, I finally just got one to ride Toy Story Mania again. We waited in line for Slinky Dog and we waited in line for Rise of the Resistance.
By the end of the day, that $90 we'd spent got my husband, son, and cousin on Rockin' Roller Coaster saving about 20 minutes, and it let us ride Toy Story Midway Mania for a second time, saving us about 20 minutes there. In theory, paying $90 for Genie+ would let us skip MORE lines for MORE rides, but in reality it saved about 40 minutes, and 20 of those 40 were to ride something we'd already ridden earlier in the day. We'd have actually been better off spending that $90 on Individual Lightening Lane for Rise of the Resistance. That's assuming I could have purchased it before it sold out. If we'd done that it would have cost the same, but saved us about an hour and would have potentially let us leave the park a little earlier that night.
In summary, the Fulton family agrees that unless everything works out perfectly and you get lucky snagging what you want in the app before it's gone, Genie+ is really not a great way to spend your Disney dollars. This is especially true if you plan to be at the parks early for rope drop. If you do want to try pay a little bit to skip the lines, I would suggest going ahead and purchasing an Individual Lightening Lane for one of the longer lines. As for us, we didn't even look at that part of the app again. I didn't want to spend that much time in the parks looking at my phone and we knew we would be rope dropping, so we planned our park strategy based off of that. This worked well for us through the remainder of our trip.
A lot of Disney guests feel very differently than we do about Genie+ and Lightening Lane. I'm dying to hear your thoughts on this new system. Please tell me about your experiences in the comments below. In my next post we'll be headed to Epcot! Make sure you check back for all the adventures!
