Just when you thought you had the Disney tickets nailed and there couldn’t possibly be any more options or costs, you come across Disney Genie+ and Lightning Lane entry!
Genie+ is an optional, additional, on-the-day daily charge that, in effect, upgrades your ticket on the days that you choose, to enable you to skip the queue (or line as it’s known) on a number of rides in each of the parks.
Genie+ gives you the ability to significantly reduce the amount of time spent queuing for rides and attractions in the parks. On the majority of rides and attractions you can book a time slot to take the ride, and then you enter through a different (Lightning Lane) entrance at the ride to skip the line.
A quick summary of the Genie+ process:
In our opinion, Genie+ is, regrettably, worth it for SOME of your Disney days. You can significantly reduce queuing across a number of rides in most of the Disney parks. But it’s not perfect: being only able to book one ride at a time is a little limiting, and when you book a ride you may be given a time anything from 5 minutes ahead (perfect!) to many hours in the future (horrible!).
And sometimes Genie+ time slots can run out! There are only a set number of Genie+ slots for each ride and attraction each day and when they’re gone, they’re gone, and you’re left with the good old Standby entrance.
There will be many people who baulk at shelling out additional costs (albeit not on all of the days) on top of the already significant ticket outlay.
And bear in mind that, once purchased, Genie+ and Lightning Lane entries cannot be refunded.
If you do have any issues with these services (or any other Disney-related activity) whilst you’re in the parks, just go to Guest Services or look out for Disney cast members located under or around blue umbrellas. They will always do what they can to help.
Undercover Tourist has a good blog on Genie+ here.
There is also a basic, free Genie service that comes with the My Disney Experience app to help you get the most out of your day in a Walt Disney World park. Genie can help put together an itinerary for you, make ride and activity recommendations, literally guide you to an attraction, and order food.
This basic service is fine and has some good information, but the value of Genie comes through the extra cost Genie+ skip-the-line service.
Lightning Lane entry is the second optional, extra cost, skip-the-line-type service that is unrelated to Genie+. Lightning Lane entry is a pay-per-ride service that enables you to skip the line for the top two or three rides in each of the four Disney parks.
These top rides are of course the most popular rides in each of the parks – and these top rides are NOT included in Genie+!
The actual rides that you can buy Lightning Lane entry for do vary across the year, as do the costs, which currently vary between $7 and $15 per person per ride, depending on the time of year.
Even though these Lightning Lane entry rides are not included in Genie+, you can of course queue up in the usual Standby entrance, though the queues will be significant, even just after park entry.
We mention Genie+ and Lightning Lane entry here (in the second step of planning, before you leave for Walt Disney World) to provide you with all of the data to help you put together an itinerary for your vacation that includes a rough plan of what rides, activities and attractions that you want to do for each day that you’re in a park.
And whilst you can’t purchase and schedule rides through Genie+ and Lightning Lane entry until the day of your park visit, you can at least begin to think about which days you think that investing in Genie+ or a Lightning Lane entry ride may be appropriate.
Whilst we may not be considered normal (!), we do schedule in advance into our itinerary spreadsheet 3 or 4 rides that we would like to do for each of our park visit days.
We may not always achieve these rides, but it enables us to have a plan for each day, rather than wandering around the park deciding which attraction to ride on the fly.
This helps us plan for the days that we feel investing in Genie+ and Lightning Lane entry will help us get the most out of our time in the park.