Genie+ Stacking Strategy?

[lynch34]

i don’t know. It feels like my only choice is to stay onsite to get early entry or stay offsite and buy Genie+. It is likely cheaper for me to stay onsite with early entry vs Genie+ for all of us. I was hoping to stay offsite next but early entry is pushing me back onsite.

I am staying offsite and I have an AirBnB for 9 nights at a great resort 15 mins away from the Parks and it's $1750. Onsite prices are ridiculous and I don't know how you would be pushed onsite with the way the parks work now. If anything - it pushes people OFFsite.

 

[ambula603]

I have a question:
I keep hearing that the big rides (like SDD) give return times later in the day, even at 7:00 on the dot. Does that mean that some people DO get return times that are early? I have yet to read about anyone getting something big before 10 AM. Do they release fewer because of rope drop or something?

 

[Westerner]

My reservation is at Animal Kingdom...Park Opens at 7:30 AM. I was planning to park Hop to Magic Kingdom at 2:00 PM later that day. I was also planning on stacking LL reservations at 7:00 AM , 9:30 AM (7:30 + 2 hours), and 11:30 AM - ALL LL reservations would be for Magic Kingdom afternoon attractions. Will this work?

Also...could I buy a individual purchase lighting lane at 2 different parks in the same day (Flight of passage and 7 dwarfs)???

Please Help???

The one twist is that when hopping you can book your 2nd LL after park open + 2hours of the park where your 1st LL was booked irrespective of where your park reservation is or where you are hopping to.

So in your example above if you book an LL at 7AM for MK you can book your next at 11AM (9AM MK opening + 2), the one after that at 1PM. 730 park open at AK doesn't help you in this case.

 

[iheartglaciers]

I have a question:
I keep hearing that the big rides (like SDD) give return times later in the day, even at 7:00 on the dot. Does that mean that some people DO get return times that are early? I have yet to read about anyone getting something big before 10 AM. Do they release fewer because of rope drop or something?

On 3/10 I did initially get a 9:30am Slinky Dog! Which made me scramble because I wanted an afternoon or later time. I had to cancel and rebook.

On Thanksgiving week, every ILL I purchased said a morning time when I clicked but changed to an evening time by the time it went through.

 

[Gentry2004]

I too am struggling with whether to stay onsite and attempt to rope drop most mornings, or stay off properly and stack Genie+ for the afternoon (but not hopping, just one park a day.) and stay until closing.

 

[gorkt]

This thread has been immensely helpful. Seems like to minimize wait times, its best to do early entry for a few hours at your reserved park, leave mid day to the resort, all while stacking rides at your evening park. My question is, does everyone in your party have to tap into the morning park in order to be able to make ride reservations at the hop park later in the day? I am a morning person but my husband and son definitely are not. I can see a scenario where they sleep in while me and my daughter go to the park in the morning. I would hate to have him miss out on the second park.

 

[flipflopmom]

My question is, does everyone in your party have to tap into the morning park in order to be able to make ride reservations at the hop park later in the day?

If you have park hoppers, you have to tap into first park in order to enter second park. This does not affect your ability to MAKE reservations, to my knowledge, but they’d have to enter the park you have PARK reservations for before hopping to a second park. My husband plans to sleep in, and I’ve told him he has to enter morning park for a bit, anyway. The goal is to join us for lunch in morning park if nothing else.

 

[Westerner]

This thread has been immensely helpful. Seems like to minimize wait times, its best to do early entry for a few hours at your reserved park, leave mid day to the resort, all while stacking rides at your evening park.

Yep, this is a good approach and probably one of the lower stress ways to use G+.

 

[Gentry2004]

This thread has been immensely helpful. Seems like to minimize wait times, its best to do early entry for a few hours at your reserved park, leave mid day to the resort, all while stacking rides at your evening park. My question is, does everyone in your party have to tap into the morning park in order to be able to make ride reservations at the hop park later in the day? I am a morning person but my husband and son definitely are not. I can see a scenario where they sleep in while me and my daughter go to the park in the morning. I would hate to have him miss out on the second park.

Except from what I've noticed, wait times are already quite high within 1 hour - 90 minutes of early park opening. Meaning, 45+ minute waits for all of the second tier rides. That doesn't sound very fun to me.

 

[Gentry2004]

Also, I think specifically at MK and HS, you could start stacking rides for the afternoon without having park hoppers. You just need to make your first reservation for something that pushes out return times really quickly, like Jungle Cruise/Peter Pan and SDD/MFSR. Then at your next reservation time, book the next most popular ride whose return time has now been pushed out to the afternoon.

 

[gorkt]

Yeah, I would almost say that it makes the most sense to do early entry, ride a headliner immediately, then another 2nd tier ride as the park opens to regular guests, then leave or eat breakfast somewhere. It does seem that early entry isn't going to get you very far these days.

 

[zillayen]

I too am struggling with whether to stay onsite and attempt to rope drop most mornings, or stay off properly and stack Genie+ for the afternoon (but not hopping, just one park a day.) and stay until closing.

We stayed onsite (Dolphin) but honestly, other than the 7 am ILL time, we didn’t really get any benefit. We didn’t use EE or EMH, didn’t rope drop, and the transportation was probably more annoying to me than it was worth. Looking back, if I had already ridden or didn’t care about RotR I would totally stay offsite and save the $$.

 

[DisTXMom]

I too am struggling with whether to stay onsite and attempt to rope drop most mornings, or stay off properly and stack Genie+ for the afternoon (but not hopping, just one park a day.) and stay until closing.

We just returned from an on-site stay. Our ability to do standby and stack LL was significantly better at night (8-11pm) than it was for early entry and rope drop. So much so that we only opened the parks twice in 6 days. Hollywood studios had more benefit for early entry, and we did some ILLS attractions, which we had no difficulty getting since we were on site. The IlLS was more of a benefit than the MK early entry IMO. It’s exhausting to open AND close the parks, so my advice is consider which is a better fit for your group and make your decision based on that.

 

[DisneySyd]

If you have park hoppers, you have to tap into first park in order to enter second park. This does not affect your ability to MAKE reservations, to my knowledge, but they’d have to enter the park you have PARK reservations for before hopping to a second park. My husband plans to sleep in, and I’ve told him he has to enter morning park for a bit, anyway. The goal is to join us for lunch in morning park if nothing else.

The other option (if you’re certain they won’t go the 1st park) is to have separate park reservations. Those up early book the morning park. Those sleeping in book for the park you’re hopping to.

 

[AprilsZoo]

If you are not hopping then the 2hr rule is based on park open of where your reservation is at. Your Epcot/MK examples would be correct.
If hopping it's more complicated.

Why does hopping make it more complicated?
“2 hours after park open” is before 2 p.m. at every park, afaik…

 

[ngl]

I am not sure if the OP already had their visit since this post was from a couple months ago but thought I would throw in my 2 cents! We are AP and DVC and live 1 hr from WDW and have been many times since they launched Genie+. I would love to give advice such as yes stacking at night will definitely work but it really depends on crowd level. We go to WDW often so not rope drop family so generally do the late stacking and will say sometimes it works well and others you really do not have much left after a few 2 hr windows and that simply is based on how many people are at the park using Genie+. I know those who have visited the park during the past 2 Easter weeks and by noon there was literally nothing left to pick for late evening except for the ones you really don't need Genie+ for.

 

[Gentry2004]

I am not sure if the OP already had their visit since this post was from a couple months ago but thought I would throw in my 2 cents! We are AP and DVC and live 1 hr from WDW and have been many times since they launched Genie+. I would love to give advice such as yes stacking at night will definitely work but it really depends on crowd level. We go to WDW often so not rope drop family so generally do the late stacking and will say sometimes it works well and others you really do not have much left after a few 2 hr windows and that simply is based on how many people are at the park using Genie+. I know those who have visited the park during the past 2 Easter weeks and by noon there was literally nothing left to pick for late evening except for the ones you really don't need Genie+ for.

Even at MK?

 

[SL6827]

We did this last week for our second DHS day. Slow morning (after booking 7AM SDD LL), pool time, went to DS for lunch then to DHS.

Arrived at 2:30 and did a ride we didn't have a LL for. At 3:00 we hadn't used any of our LL's and had the following stacked:

3:35 - 4:35 Star Tours (booked at 1:00)
3:45 - 4:45 Toy Story Mania (booked at 11:00)
3:55 - 4:55 Slinky Dog Dash (booked at 7:00)
6:00 - 7:00 Tower of Terror (booked at 3:00)

The thing that worked well for us the few days I purchased Genie+ was to set an alarm for 5 mins before we were eligible to book the next LL. That way we weren't spending all our time clock watching. Also, in the 5 min window we would look at return times to determine what we were going to try to book when our window opened. We could have booked more LL after 5:00 but there wasn't anything available we wanted to book.

It was a bit of a learning curve but for the crowd levels we experienced last week, Genie+ worked well for MK and DHS. We did not purchase for the other parks or purchase any ILL$. The only 2 ILL$ we wanted we rode at rope drop (Remy) or park close (RotR and SDMT).

Did you wait in line very long in the evening for Remy, RotR and SDMT?

 

[SL6827]

So the rides that are ILL, are not eligible to be picked up for a LL with Genie+? Or possible?

 

[JennCa]

Stacking works best if you're doing it for the park that you're hopping to. That means you would still have to visit the park where you have a reservation and enter it before you can hop to the other park where you G+ reservations are.

Can you explain? Say if I had a ressie for MK that opened at 9am and then plan to hop to AK (which had opened at 8am) around 2pm does that mean at 7am I can request a lighting lane at AK for 2pm and then at 10am request a lightning lane at MK? Then if I use my 10am one at MK, then get another one? I thought I could only request one for the park I had the ressie for.

Jenn