# Genie Plus - Experiences and Reviews



## Rich M

We took a trip to DL and DCA on Dec 7th and 8th.  I was very excited to hear that Genie Plus would be debuting on Dec 8th.  We decided that we would get to DCA early so that we could purchase it right away and also to get in line to get the candy cane.  We walked from the Anaheim Majestic Garden Hotel at 6:45 knowing that they open the DTD security gates at 7 am.  Once we got through security with a line of about 20 people we walked to the entrance of DCA and arrived there around 7:10 and went to one of the gates.  We were first in line at that gate.  They opened up the other security line at 7:15 so that when the crowds starting getting long.  They opened our gate just before 7:30 and the cast member scanned is in while they did park opening with a family.  I was able to then purchase Genie Plus while waiting for the gate to open. Once purchased I could have booked a Lighting Lane for 8 AM but didn't want to knowing everything would be walk ons.  Its showed the Radiator Racers would be $7 and Webslinger would also be $7.  I switched over to Disneyland and say Rise would be $20.  So I figured that it would be $54 today to do everything with little wait.  I believe for myself I am worth $54 and was willing to spend it for just myself.  I think the more people you have the more you have to really think about that decision.  

After securing our Genie+ we got in line for the Candy Cane and got number 8 on the list.  We were told that they would send a text but we had to be back within 30 mins.  We walked through the shops until they let people go over to other lands and decided we would do Soarin since it was close by.  We were the first one in the theater so we got top row center.  After the ride ended we got the text saying it was time to get our Candy Canes.  We go two of them at $19.99 each.  They are huge.  We decided we would get a locker outside of both parks so we didn't break the candy canes so we walked out of the park and got the locker and came back in the park.  We decided we would go to Pixar Pier since everything was walk on. We went on TSM and Incred Coaster.  At TSM we saw a family of 4 use there Genie+ so we didn't think much of it.  We decided we would pay the $7 at this point for Webslinger since it was a 65 mins wait and that is when we found out that Genie+ was down.  It was first day and I figured something would happen anyway so we took advantage of the Photo Pass and took photo while waiting to see if it would come up.  After it didn't come up we decided to get an early lunch at Flo's and wait around the area.  

After eating it was still down and decided to do Mater for the Christmas overlay.  Then saw the huge line at Guest Services and knew everyone was complaining so we get walking over to do rides not on LL so we could have those done.  We went to see the 3D Mickey film and check out stores.  After that Genie+ still was down and we had gone on everything we wanted to do so we decided we would go put purchases in locker and go to World of Disney to shop and grab a Jamba Juice.  We saw the line at Guest Service wasn't terrible so we asked for an update on the way out and was told they were resetting the service and hoped it would be up by 1:30 and to try again.  They said while we waited they gave us 2 paper FP good for 6 people.  

Disneyland Experience next to come


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## Rich M

We got into Disneyland around 1:45 and the parade was getting ready to come down the street and they were filming it for the network show on Christmas so tried to avoid it by going into stores.  I tried Genie+ for Indian Jones and it worked finally.  It was for 5 mins away so we walked that way.  When we got there they told us they LL was down and we told them it was working and they were shocked it worked.  We scanned in and it worked.  While in line I tried again to see if it would work again and got a Smugglers Run for 5 mins away.  You have 1 hour to get to it so we knew we would be good.  After IJ we went to Smugglers Run and scanned in and tried for another one but this is where it went down again.  We had Parade Viewing Dining Reservation at 3:30 so we figured we would just see what happens after that.  While walking we got an alert on the app saying to come to City Hall for Genie+ resolutions so we decided to go check it out.  We were told they would be refunding everyone with a Disney Gift Card but to keep trying the app as it might come up later.  

We went to lunch and kept trying as we rested at ate slowly.  Around 4:30 we were able to get Genie + to work again and grabbed Haunted Mansion Holiday.  When we got over to HM the CM told us Lighting Lane was shut down for the evening.  We told them that they said to keep trying and we scanned in and it went Green.  They were shocked again and said please don't get upset if it doesn't work later and that they are refunding people at City Hall.  We thanked them for the information.  After this we had to pause trying to get any more because we had the parade at 5:30 and wanted to get a spot at the reserved area so we headed there to arrive by 5.  While waiting though we noticed that Genie+ was getting better and looking nicer as time went on.  When the parade started we grabbed a Guardian LL since I needed to grab a gift over at DCA.  The app worked so quick and looked great.  

After GG we grabbed a LL for Monster Inc just because its included but they use a portable device that would not make the LL pass go away so they said go to Guest Service or wait until the time expires which was an hour.  We had other stuff to do so we waited and was going back to DL.  Once the hour was up we got BTMM and SM.  They only LL that seemed to be getting booked up at this point was Small World as everything else we got 5 mins or less to get on.  So we used a paper FP for Small World.  There was only 2 of us and the wait was over 60 mins so we found 3 people who were about to enter the queue and asked if they wanted to join us.  After that it was time for SM.  We were very tired and said we would do that and maybe ST but we wanted to be to the train station before Fireworks.  

We got to SM and still had one Fast Pass left and knew we wouldn't use it so wanted to give some Disney Magic to someone else instead of them waiting for 50 mins for the ride.  We saw a family of 4 so offered it to them.  They were skeptical about it but followed us.  After scanning in we got a ST LL but ended up not using it since it was only 15 mins until fireworks.  We walked out to the front and watched the Fireworks as we walked to Earl of Sandwich to get one last sandwich before they are gone.  Overall it was a very long tiring and sometimes frustrating day  but turned out get the refund for the Genie+ and still go to use the LL.  We didn't pay extra for any rides as they turned it off.  Overall we did 8 LL rides and loved it.  Next I will right an overview of the line experience and if its worth it for LL.

Overview up Next


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## Rich M

Overall even with all the bad stuff we loved Genie+.  Having access to get photos and getting in FP lines again was great.  Here is my views on each ride we went on and if the LL was worth it:

Reminder you can only use LL for each attraction one time only.  That is the biggest difference from MP to LL.  

Indian Jones - I wish they had more of a LL once you get in side.  Overall your not getting much of an advantage here and its the longest wait we had with LL once in line.  Got LL and was able to use within 5 mins of getting it

Smugglers Run - Great use of LL for this ride.  You bypass all the way to where you go in to see preshow.  We also got pilots which was a major plus.  I hate this ride as anything else. 

Haunted Manion Holiday - Great Use of LL.  Get to the merge where you just wait to get into the house.  

Guardians -  Great for LL.  Right into the preshow area.

Monsters Inc - Right into the building.  

BTMM - Seemed like more people where using the LL at this point but still on quickly.  

Small World - Right to the line that goes down to the boats.  Great use

Space Mountain - Always a great use for LL.   Get inside building quick

Overall again I loved Max Pass and because of this Genie+ is not as shocking to us DL folks as DW.  I will purchase it every trip as a MK holder unless some how I see a very low crowd or if I am with my GS who doesn't go on the rides that offer it.  With getting the Photo Pass with it and skipping lines its worth it to me.  Even if I save 10 mins.  The one time only is a bummer but I honestly don't really go on rides more than once a day anymore.  Now I am not sure if I will get Genie+ for more than one day of my trip though.  I would probably just get it one day and do all the rides using it and then use another day to ride the rides that aren't included.  

Thank for your time in reading.  I would be happy to answer any questions.


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## BrianL

Good overview. It sounds like it was rough early but got better. You are right about Indiana Jones- the merge point is way too early, so unless there is a huge line in the outdoor queue, it is not all that valuable.

My biggest takeaway from your posts was that I hadn't realized that Earl was going to go away (again) with the new changes for DTD! Why, Disney? They need to move them and give them a choice spot somewhere else - Earl is too good to lose!


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## dieumeye

Do you have any idea how long you waited after you got in the lightning lane for each ride?

I’ve heard some people complaining about the length of the wait on some attractions, especially Indy… something like a 30 minute LL wait when stand by was 50 minutes.

In the FP days Indy, Space Mtn, and Soarin’ could all have long FastPass waits at times, so I’m hoping that since it’s now a paid service, they manage the merge points to mitigate that.


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## Rich M

dieumeye said:


> Do you have any idea how long you waited after you got in the lightning lane for each ride?
> 
> I’ve heard some people complaining about the length of the wait on some attractions, especially Indy… something like a 30 minute LL wait when stand by was 50 minutes.
> 
> In the FP days Indy, Space Mtn, and Soarin’ could all have long FastPass waits at times, so I’m hoping that since it’s now a paid service, they manage the merge points to mitigate that.


 
I would say Indy is the most for sure.  It was about 15 mins I believe maybe 20.  They rest was less then 10 mins or less.


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## gatorfreud

thanks for the review!  Can you tell me where you get in through security on the DTD side?  We are staying more harbor side, but wondering if it is worth it to go around to the DTD side....  Thanks!


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## Rich M

gatorfreud said:


> thanks for the review!  Can you tell me where you get in through security on the DTD side?  We are staying more harbor side, but wondering if it is worth it to go around to the DTD side....  Thanks!


Right next to the Disneyland Hotel


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## Jaina

I'm going to get a trip report started in the next few days (while it might be useful for some) but I thought I'd report the basics here. I was there all day yesterday park-hopping, (by myself) and rode 22 attractions (including SM, IC, and Guardians twice), but could have easily fit in 7-10 more I feel. I didn't attempt Rise or Webslingers, since I've ridden them both a lot, and didn't feel like waiting in a long line. My brother was also there with his in-laws, and we just chilled on the benches and chatted for close to 2 hours while he held his sleeping baby. Also, there were some Genie+ options I never used for different reasons, I never went anywhere near Galaxy's Edge (I was there a lot recently) or Toontown, and didn't even try some rides that were pretty short (or long) waits. Genie+ worked perfectly (after I figured out how to buy it; my app was being weird), I felt, and was worth the $20 to me (even though once I chose not to redeem it, because the single rider line was non-existant, and the LL looked like a 6-10 min wait at least. And I didn't even rope drop - I didn't make it in from the airport until 8:30 local time, and only got 2 rides in in the first 90 minutes due to some slowdowns and issues in the ones I picked. I miss MaxPass, but this isn't the worst thing ever. It's kind exhausting to run all over the park trying to ride all the rides over and over like you could if you knew how to use MaxPass. With G+ you really have to think about "is this when I want to use this, or would later, when the line is longer, be better?" But also, not run out of day.
Crowds were busy, but not insane. I didn't witness any meltdowns, and just a touch of whining/crying. The weather was beautiful (since I like it cool)! I was awake for 21 hours (flew in early Friday morning, slept from 12:30-7, and flew back home this morning!) and got 31k steps. Slept at America's Best Value Inn. Suuuper basic, and a little iffy, but it was just me, and I literally _just _slept there. The guy at the window/desk held my bag behind the desk all day for me, and was kind. I'm glad I brought my own pillow and speaker for white noise though.





(Admin, if this should just go in the ongoing thread, can you move it? I don't think I can delete it...)


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## disneycat321

Sounds like a successful day, and I'm glad to hear G+ isn't so bad. I'm just glad to have _something_ back, though I do wish it was MP. 

Your solo trips (I guess this one was solo + a visit) inspire me. One of these days I'm going to finally do one of my own. (I'm about a 7-8 hour drive away.)


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## ButterflyKisses77

disneycat321 said:


> Sounds like a successful day, and I'm glad to hear G+ isn't so bad. I'm just glad to have _something_ back, though I do wish it was MP.
> 
> Your solo trips (I guess this one was solo + a visit) inspire me. One of these days I'm going to finally do one of my own. (I'm about a 7-8 hour drive away.)


I do it all the time! It’s great, I love it


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## Jaina

disneycat321 said:


> Sounds like a successful day, and I'm glad to hear G+ isn't so bad. I'm just glad to have _something_ back, though I do wish it was MP.
> 
> Your solo trips (I guess this one was solo + a visit) inspire me. One of these days I'm going to finally do one of my own. (I'm about a 7-8 hour drive away.)


MP was awesome, but I would also love to see if Genie+ could be a positive thing that doesn't impact standby lines SO much like I feel MP did. I was actually a big fan of standby-only the last several months and loved how much the lines kept moving. BUT if I was there with 3- and 5-year-olds (which I have been), I see how something like Genie+ could make the day so much more doable! 
And the random thing about my brother being there was that he lives 2 hours from me, and this was his first visit to Disneyland in like 4 years, haha! (He's been busy, and a broke student, but his in-laws helped pay for this trip for all of them, which was super fun)

I'm going to get started on my trip report, and try to get it done quickly, before I go back to my Nov. trip report!


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## Pluto468

Sounds like a great day! Make me a bit more optomistic about Genie+. Also I love your outfit. Is that a Mint chocolate chip cone from Gibson Girls? That was always my go-to order


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## Jaina

Pluto468 said:


> Sounds like a great day! Make me a bit more optomistic about Genie+. Also I love your outfit. Is that a Mint chocolate chip cone from Gibson Girls? That was always my go-to order


It was mint chocolate chip and cookie dough. But the mint was best! I just couldn't decide between them...


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## JC1984

Jaina said:


> It was mint chocolate chip and cookie dough. But the mint was best! I just couldn't decide between them...


Your only a true baller if you remember Fantasia ice cream


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## Astylla

Solo trips are the best ! Sorry we didn't get a chance to meet up this time and I also was one of the few who got to purchase Genie+ on release day even though it didn't work majority of the day.
I also ended up purchasing it on Friday when I was mostly solo and got a lot done. I know I may be unpopular but I miss the Rise VQ , and rode it over 30 times across both coasts that way so not to the point where it breaks anything but also can't justify the 1.5 hr line especially with my PTSD and anxiety/ achilles tenditis issues.

I do hope they eventually offer an add on to Magic Key holders , even if it was limited to a certain number of uses per year or month.


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## Jaina

JC1984 said:


> Your only a true baller if you remember Fantasia ice cream


I don't remember it, but as one of 5 kids, we never got treats when we were at Disney!  Way too expensive, when we could go back to the hotel and pick up a few gallons on our way!  It's okay, I've made up for lost time in that department as an adult!


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## JC1984

Jaina said:


> I don't remember it, but as one of 5 kids, we never got treats when we were at Disney!  Way too expensive, when we could go back to the hotel and pick up a few gallons on our way!  It's okay, I've made up for lost time in that department as an adult!


Same here. I never got to enjoy treats at DL till I worked there. It was a flavor of ice cream they had and it went away. It was cherry, pistachio, and banana swirled. Guess it comes back on occasion. Unfortunately I am never around for that


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## matt101980

We went to Disneyland on Sunday and got to try the new genie +, I was not optimistic at all. But it turned out to be amazing. We got into the park a little before 9am at Disneyland and switched over to California Adventure at 1pm then back to Disneyland a little after 5 and walked out of the park at 8pm.

All in all we were able to do 14 rides and still have a sit-down lunch. We were always able to make a new LL immediately after we scanned into a ride and just did that over and over again. We did end up paying for Rise of the Resistance, Web Slingers and Racers. It was expensive on top of the price of a ticket but for a 1 day trip completely worth it.


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## mdmost

You got 3 ILL selections? I thought the system only allowed you to book 2 ILL selections even if park hopping.


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## matt101980

mdmost said:


> You got 3 ILL selections? I thought the system only allowed you to book 2 ILL selections even if park hopping.



I read that also. But it allowed me to book 3. Right after I scanned into web slingers I opened the app and immediately booked racers. So I can confirm it allowed me 3.


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## Malcon10t

mdmost said:


> You got 3 ILL selections? I thought the system only allowed you to book 2 ILL selections even if park hopping.


2 per park is my understanding, but since DL only has 1, you can only book one in DL.  Off to make sure I read it right.

From the Disney website:
"
*When to Select Attractions*
You can purchase individual selections for up to 2 different attractions per day upon entering a theme park. Note: Lightning Lane entry for these attractions will only be available to purchase individually and are not included with Disney Genie+ service."

Reads to me as 2 per day per park.


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## SherylLC

SO excited to try Genie+! You did A TON!!! Impressive!


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## PirateBrigade

JC1984 said:


> Your only a true baller if you remember Fantasia ice cream





Jaina said:


> I don't remember it, but as one of 5 kids, we never got treats when we were at Disney!  Way too expensive, when we could go back to the hotel and pick up a few gallons on our way!  It's okay, I've made up for lost time in that department as an adult!



Oh you guys are amateurs 

Bet your parents didn't bring an unplugged rice cooker full of rice and cans of corned beef (sometimes spam) to eat in the Disneyland parking lot out the back of your van


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## JC1984

PirateBrigade said:


> Oh you guys are amateurs
> 
> Bet your parents didn't bring an unplugged rice cooker full of rice and cans of corned beef (sometimes spam) to eat in the Disneyland parking lot out the back of your van


The good ole days when outside food was banned. No we had to go home to eat lunch


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## Jaina

PirateBrigade said:


> Oh you guys are amateurs
> 
> Bet your parents didn't bring an unplugged rice cooker full of rice and cans of corned beef (sometimes spam) to eat in the Disneyland parking lot out the back of your van


You are so right! But I remember leaving the park to go back to the room and eat or driving to find a cheap McDonald’s! I also remember staying at the Jolly Roger, whatever hotel that is these days, and hopping on a different hotel’s shuttle bus to get a ride into the parks, ha ha!


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## ociana

PirateBrigade said:


> Oh you guys are amateurs
> 
> Bet your parents didn't bring an unplugged rice cooker full of rice and cans of corned beef (sometimes spam) to eat in the Disneyland parking lot out the back of your van



I could never forget the avocado green and cream colored cooler that my mom packed with PBJs and carrot sticks for our lunch.  We would go back out into the parking lot to eat before heading back inside.  Sometimes my mom would make us go sit in the picnic area for a while, but we preferred to scarf it down and get back to the rides.  If the trip was a total splurge, we got one mint julep and a fritter to share between the 3 or 4 of us.

On that note, does anyone remember when they served a single fritter and it was the size of a large navel orange?  They were so eggy and light on the inside - my food sense memory of those is super strong!


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## jordan13402

we used Genie+ on our three days (this past sat through monday) and it was WELL worth it....the photopass add on was fantastic...this was a couples trip for me and my wife and we took a ton of pictures


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## DC in DC

Hello- Is there still a possibility that the LL will "run out" for Rise such that we need to get to DL as early as possible?  We are not morning people and it would be an extreme effort for us to get there at rope drop.  But if we roll in later, is there a possibility that we would be shut out of Rise?  I might be getting confused with the prior iteration where there were posts about all the slots getting taken in the virtual queue?


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## mdmost

DC in DC said:


> Hello- Is there still a possibility that the LL will "run out" for Rise such that we need to get to DL as early as possible?  We are not morning people and it would be an extreme effort for us to get there at rope drop.  But if we roll in later, is there a possibility that we would be shut out of Rise?  I might be getting confused with the prior iteration where there were posts about all the slots getting taken in the virtual queue?



Maybe on the weekend or really busy days but right now you can get a 6:50 PM ILL for Rise. I would bet the $20 price tag is a real breaking point for people who got to DLR but not so much for WDW since it's primarily all vacationers with limited time who are already paying a heavy premium to be in the parks. 

Looking at CA, both ILL are still available at $7. RSR is closer to running out with a 7:35 time you can purchase right now. 

This would be an interesting thing to track starting next week when school is out and the parks get busier.


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## DC in DC

mdmost said:


> Maybe on the weekend or really busy days but right now you can get a 6:50 PM ILL for Rise. I would bet the $20 price tag is a real breaking point for people who got to DLR but not so much for WDW since it's primarily all vacationers with limited time who are already paying a heavy premium to be in the parks.
> 
> Looking at CA, both ILL are still available at $7. RSR is closer to running out with a 7:35 time you can purchase right now.
> 
> This would be an interesting thing to track starting next week when school is out and the parks get busier.




Thanks for your quick reply.  We will indeed be there in the last week of December where we are prepared for crowds.


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## WebmasterMaryJo

Sticking this thread at the top of the forum


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## GabrielMom

We were limited to only 2 ILL purchases yes dec 17 and today dec 18.  

Today was busiest day of our trip (Saturday).  We were able to purchase a 1pm lightning lane for Rise at 10am.


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## pindecisive

I love solo trips too. I always have more fun with my DH, but there's something nice after jumping on a flight and spending a day at DL and flying back home in the evening.

I loved MaxPass, so Genie+ isn't a reach for me. The only downside is I can't be on a ride after checking in, to set up a pass for the same ride right after. I'm hoping that comes back with Genie because I love doing Buzz a few times before everything else.


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## chezcurrie

Thought I’d add some of our experiences using Genie+ on our recent Dec13-17 trip. Used it 2 out of 3 days and found it well worth the price point for our family of 5, even during lighter crowds in the am. Our boys are 12, 8 and 5 for reference, so our 5 year old couldn’t ride everything and we used Rider Swap.

- Rider Swap + LL was inconsistent. At Indiana we did not need to show all 5 lightning lanes, for Incredicoaster once we did, second time we did not. I wish they would clarify this because I would have preferred to use my son‘s LL for an attraction he would enjoy (instead we got dole whips and rode the carousel, really can’t complain but it can be confusing.)

- If you cancel a reservation, you are able to immediately rebook one, assuming there is availability. Our dinner at Lamplight was running later than expected so I was able to cancel and rebook TSMM for a slightly later time. Also did this one night when we decided to book it to DCA before close and cancelled our space mountain for incredicoaster. 

- I do wish it allowed a re-ride option like MP, as often the LL for my 5-year old was not used, and I could have easily taken him on another ride using his LL (like Toy Story when the big boys rode Incredicoaster), but then still re-rode TSMM as a family. 

- The instant return times we saw might make you think Genie+ is not necessary, but with a 5 year old this was GOLD. It made the day feel very spontaneous as I could say: what do you want to do next? Then book it immediately. Made the morning VERY productive and we were able to take a longer mid day break. 

- That said, I wish you could choose your return time even if there is instant availability. I would have loved to stack our PM park like the good ole MAxPass days. In the former times that meant I could do that on our break, and not be chained to my phone when we went back. 

Hope some of this might be useful. In truth my favourite day of all was when I took my 5-year old to do Fantasyland and the tiki room in the am and his big brothers and dad went to DCA. That morning was magic.


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## goodshepherd

Just a review, we just did genie + in DCA and in disneyland on 24, 25, 26th of december.

DCA genie plus? i want to say this was almost a waste of money...... i mean they had a few things closed for the day like goofys roller and jellyfish i think........ but it still saves us a few hours of line time........
we got a multipass for goofys sky school, and it wasnt good for toy story mania, or web, or radiator.

so DCA genie plus was nice to skip lines on monsters, soaring, and toy story...... hmmm thats about it i guess 
we hit radior springs 1st thing to wait in line and it wasnt bad at 8 am, like 30 min.
web slingers they said was flooded on the 24th and closed down for an hour and we didnt get a pass for waiting in line for 40 min lol 


for genie+ at disneyland, this is a whole nother strategy here  we hit disney on 25th and 26th.
going in at 8 am, all the rides are 5-10 min lines so we hit the old school rides in the middle 1st, peter pan, cinder, pinochio, alice, mad hatter and u can konk those out really fast at 8 am 

then we used genie+ only when the lines were too long to wait, later in the day.


this worked well for us.

so hands down, definately worth it at disneyland, and maybe save the money at DCA depending on what you wanna ride


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## Martenique

To add another genie plus experience, here are my measured wait times versus posted wait times for our recent trip. I started the timer when we entered the line for standby and when we entered the line to scan for lightning lane, and I ended it when we sat in our seats. We bought genie plus 4 days and bought two ILLs, and I thought they were all worth it for two people who visit Disneyland every 5 years or so. Lightning Lane saved us time on nearly every ride, possible exceptions being the times we used it for Splash Mountain and Roger Rabbit. (We saved time against the posted wait time, but I think standby was much shorter at those times.) The grace period of 5 minutes before and 15 minutes after worked for us. Note that around 10 minutes after, the reservation disappeared from my app but our tickets still worked up to 14 minutes 30 seconds. (I definitely don't recommend cutting it that close though, lol.) Also, we were able to book LLs for the other park in the morning before we could hop and it gave us a 1:00 return time even though the posted return time was much earlier.

12/26 (in park 4 pm)
Pirates posted 35 actual 17
RSR posted 120 ILL 20
Guardians posted 40, actual 47

12/27 (in park 8:10 AM)
Space Mountain posted 10 actual 13
Alice posted 5 actual 3
Snow White posted 10 actual 3
Mr Toad posted 5 actual 5
Pinocchio posted 5 actual 2
Storybook Land Canal Boats posted 10 actual 14
Teacups posted 5 actual 3
Small World posted 10 actual 16
Star Tours posted 35 LL 9
Buzz posted 45 LL 6
Guardians posted 90 LL 17
Incredicoaster posted 40 LL 11
Space Mountain posted 70 LL 10


12/28 (in park 7:45 AM)
Guardians from RD actual 16
Guardians posted 15 actual 14
Maters posted 15 actual 12
Toy Story posted 40 LL 5
Pixar Pal Around Non-Swinging posted 5 actual 15
Soarin posted 65 LL 12
Incredicoaster posted 80 LL 8
Monorail posted 5 actual 4
Indiana Jones posted 75 LL 19
Haunted Mansion posted 50 LL 14
Jungle cruise posted 35 actual 30
Railroad posted 25 actual 18
Matterhorn posted 40 LL 7
BTMRR posted 25 LL 10

12/29 (in park 8:45 am)
Jungle Cruise posted 5 actual 10
Pirates posted 5 actual 8
Winnie posted 5 actual 4
Millennium Falcon posted 90 LL 18
Haunted Mansion posted 50 LL 10
Splash posted 30 LL 5
Grizzly posted 5 actual 3
Indiana Jones posted 55 LL 11
BTMRR posted 50 LL 9
Rise of the Resistance posted 80 ILL 15
Splash posted 20 actual 5
Space Mountain posted 55 LL 10
Peter Pan posted 35 actual 36
Guardians posted 30 LL 12
Soarin posted 30 LL 11
Incredicoaster posted 15 LL 5
Monsters posted 5 actual walk on
Matterhorn posted 20 actual 5
Splash posted 5 actual walk on

1/1 (in park 8:45 am)
RSR posted 60 SR 4
Incredicoaster posted 20 actual 14
Goofy posted 5 actual 3
Silly Symphony Swings posted 5 actual 4
Little Mermaid posted 5 actual walk on
Grizzly posted 5 actual 2
Grizzly posted 5 actual 3
Soarin posted 50 LL 10
Haunted Mansion posted 45 LL 19
Indiana Jones posted 70 LL 20
BTMRR posted 20 LL 6
Canoes posted 5 actual 1
Guardians posted 70 LL 18
Roger Rabbit posted 20 LL 3
Gadget posted 20 actual 2
Rise of the Resistance posted 200 actual 108
BTMRR posted 25 LL 5
Pirates posted 15 actual 6
Pirates posted 15 actual 3
Space Mountain posted 30 LL 7

Edited to add: the second BTMRR on 1/1 was from a multiexperience pass we got when Roger Rabbit was down during our original window. We were able to use the pass for BTMRR and also rebook another lightning lane for Roger Rabbit.
To summarize, we waited in a total of 779 minutes (about 13 hours) of ride lines on this trip. We waited 433 minutes for standby vs. a posted 640 minutes, so standby lines were on average 68% of what was posted. We also waited 342 minutes for lightning lane vs. a posted 1590 minutes. If we assume posted times were correct, we saved 1248 minutes (20.8 hours) with lightning lanes. If we assume the posted standby wait for lightning lanes would have a similar knockdown to what we saw (68%), we saved 734 minutes (12.2 hours). This was about $10 per person an hour (or about $7.50 per person an hour not including the ILLs). Another way to look at it is that we saved 12.2 hours and spent 13 hours in line, so lightning lanes allowed us to do roughly twice as much as we otherwise would have been able to.

Edited again to add some more statistics:
Although standby waits were on average less than what was posted, in 8 out of 35 cases (23%), the standby wait was longer than what was posted. The worst case was the Pixar Pal Around on 12/28, when we waited 10 minutes longer and 3x as long as was posted (15 minutes vs. a posted 5). In contrast, for lightning lane we never waited in a line longer than even half of what was posted. The worst case was Haunted Mansion on 1/1, when we waited 19 minutes to get to a buggy for a wait posted at 45 minutes, or 42% of the posted wait. (Note: we got on the HM elevator relatively quickly, but there was a huge buildup between the elevator and the vehicles.)
The max we waited in a lightning lane was 20 minutes, and the average was 10.7 minutes.
The max we waited in standby was 108 minutes (for Rise), and the average was 11.9 minutes. Keep in mind that we mostly only rode standby at the beginning or end of the day and for less-frequented attractions (with a few notable exceptions), while we mostly used lightning lane for the popular rides during the busier times.


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## chezcurrie

Martenique said:


> To add another genie plus experience, here are my measured wait times versus posted wait times for our recent trip. I started the timer when we entered the line for standby and when we entered the line to scan for lightning lane, and I ended it when we sat in our seats. We bought genie plus 4 days and bought two ILLs, and I thought they were all worth it for two people who visit Disneyland every 5 years or so. Lightning Lane saved us time on nearly every ride, possible exceptions being the times we used it for Splash Mountain and Roger Rabbit. (We saved time against the posted wait time, but I think standby was much shorter at those times.) The grace period of 5 minutes before and 15 minutes after worked for us. Note that around 10 minutes after, the reservation disappeared from my app but our tickets still worked up to 14 minutes 30 seconds. (I definitely don't recommend cutting it that close though, lol.) Also, we were able to book LLs for the other park in the morning before we could hop and it gave us a 1:00 return time even though the posted return time was much earlier.


 Nice to see the return times for park hopping worked - I got immediate returns earlier in Dec. That makes it so much nicer to be able to stack in the PM!


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## disneylover102

Can anyone confirm that you can hold an ILL for both WEB Slingers and ROTR at the same time? I’m starting in DCA on Friday and want to do WS shortly before park hopping and I want to do ROTR shortly after park hopping but since ROTR runs out way faster I’ll need to hold both at the same time


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## JohnR5101

I really appreciate the data you collected. This makes it easier to evaluate whether to get G+ or not. Of course, its not purely a data driven decision. My wife would go for saving any amount of time in line. Her threshold is about 30 minutes wait time. So its nice to see that its quite practical to have G+ just to have that more relaxed experience (or do more things).

Also, I read in another thread that yes you can hold 2 ILL's at the same time.


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## sosoready

Yes, and you can have a regular LL on top of two ILL.The app will tell you that you have overlapping plans, but allows it.


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## sosoready

We did one day only on 1/4, I think the crowd forecast was for 8 and it felt very crowded and congested for several periods during the day. We have been to DW several times but never DL. My kids are young adults and we focused on coasters and thrill rides, trying to do things that are unique to DL and CA, and wanted to be able re-ride so did some standby early. 

We wanted a ROTR guarantee and had a debate about whether to ILL Racers or WS. The decision was to do Racers so we could go as a group and then we'd standby WS if the line ever shortened. I regret that a little, looked like WS was down from late afternoon on, but could be my lack of knowledge. Rise also looked to be down a good portion of late afternoon/early evening.

Indiana Jones RD
BTMRR
Space Mtn (standby was 30 min)
    long snack break Holly Jolly
Matterhorn LL
Smugglers SR (tried to LL but returns got too far out, figured we could LL later if anyone wanted repeat)
ROTR ILL (kept an eye on return times until 10:30 popped up, took until 9:30 maybe?)
    lunch DD
Racers ILL
Guardians LL (booked by 8 after entered park)
Soarin LL (took almost an hour for LL and ride, figured it was different bc so popular, should've skipped)
Monsters 
    snack/coffee break
Incredicoaster LL
    more coffee
Holiday Mansion LL (broke down, got weak multi  experience which we just used when it went back up)
BTMRR LL
Small World LL plus 6:30 light show
Buzz LL then Castle lighting
   DD dinner
Incredicoaster
Incredicoaster
Midway 
  parents tapped out, CA closed
Space Mtn LL
Buzz
Matterhorn 

I'm aware we were not efficient, crazy amount of hopping and park crossing. No one wanted to wait in a line more than 30 minutes, so Genie+ and ILL were crucial for us. Even if we had more days we'd get Genie+. We don't like the one time per ride and would have bought a 3rd ILL if an option. There were 6 of us, often I would choose a LL and then it would kick us to a later return time while in the confirmation process, I finally figured out to double check each time. I spent way too much time focused on the phone screen, definitely cut down on my enjoyment.


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## disneylover102

Does genie+ not let you book until 8? I’m in the park but it says I’m not


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## Rich M

disneylover102 said:


> Does genie+ not let you book until 8? I’m in the park but it says I’m not


It lets you book once your in the parks but usually the first one isn't until park opening.


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## disneylover102

Rich M said:


> It lets you book once your in the parks but usually the first one isn't until park opening.


It wasn’t letting me buy genie+ even though I was in the park. But I just got it.


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## disneylover102

I think there was someone a while ago who said you could buy Rise, WEB, and Racers on the same day because there’s no more than 2 in each park. That is not the case. The 3 rides are all connected. You can, however, hold 2 at the same time. After entering the park I bought a pass for Rise of the Resistance that automatically changed to 1-2 PM because of park hopping. In addition I just bought WEB Slingers for 9:45-10:45 and so I am currently holding both.


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## Abbey1

I'm debating purchasing Genie+ for my family's two days in DCA. We'll be visiting the beginning of February. GRR will be down during our trip, we rarely ride GSS, and most in our group won't ride Incredicoaster. We'll be purchasing LL for Webslingers and RSR. I'm not sure that Genie+ is worth the cost for us in DCA since we'll only use it for TSMM, Monsters, GotG, and Soarin'.

Am I understanding correctly that you can get a LL for each ride once/day with Genie+? We loved being able to ride multiple times/day with MaxPass (RIP).


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## disneylover102

Abbey1 said:


> I'm debating purchasing Genie+ for my family's two days in DCA. We'll be visiting the beginning of February. GRR will be down during our trip, we rarely ride GSS, and most in our group won't ride Incredicoaster. We'll be purchasing LL for Webslingers and RSR. I'm not sure that Genie+ is worth the cost for us in DCA since we'll only use it for TSMM, Monsters, GotG, and Soarin'.
> 
> Am I understanding correctly that you can get a LL for each ride once/day with Genie+? We loved being able to ride multiple times/day with MaxPass (RIP).


Yes that is sadly correct. With the exception that if the ride breaks down for long enough of your window it changes to a multiple experience pass. Earlier today I booked Goofy’s Sky School when it was down and it changed to a pass valid on every ride (not just LL rides) except Peter Pan, Space, Indy, Rise, Toy Story, Spider-Man, or Racers. I used it on Guardians in addition to a separate LL I booked for it. I’m currently holding a pass for Monsters Inc which is down hoping it converts to a multiple experience


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## disneylover102

Dang it Monsters came back up lol


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## disneylover102

Ok so I went to Disneyland by myself all day on Friday and from 3:30 PM until the end of the day Saturday (I was at Universal before that). I bought genie+ and individual lightning lanes for Rise and WEB Slingers both days. I’m also going all day Monday-Wednesday and I’m gonna do the same thing. I figured while I have a rest day today I’ll share my experiences so far and then add to them after I go for more days. Hopefully this can be helpful for those trying to plan. A lot of this information is already known for a lot of people but I’m going to include all that I can in order to possibly be most helpful for those who aren’t too familiar with the system.
First off, this google sheet is where I’m tracking wait times and everything from each day of my trip so you can look at it if you want an idea of wait times. It includes Knott’s and Universal but there’s a separate sheet for each day: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-WVa53w4h-EIi1Ldds3iPNeOYTE1k7TTD58761uRFw0/edit

Note that these last 2 days I haven’t necessarily been getting genie+ for everything, only my biggest priorities, because Splash Mountain is one of my absolute favorite rides ever and since it’s closing for annual maintenance the rest of my trip and all of my trip next month and then is changing to PATF, binge riding it the last 2 days has been a major priority.
So genie+ is completely separate from individual lightning lanes. It includes Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Autopia, Star Tours, Matterhorn, Small World, Roger Rabbit, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Millennium Falcon, Guardians, Soarin’, Grizzly River Run, Incredicoaster, Toy Story Mania, Goofy’s Sky School, and Monsters Inc. You can purchase once you’ve entered a park. It might be a few minutes before you can purchase after entering a park or it might not. It wouldn’t let me purchase at first after entering California Adventure around 7:30 on Friday but I was able to after a few minutes. After entering Disneyland at about 3:30 on Saturday it let me buy it immediately. For the most part you can book one lightning lane (aka fastpass) at a time. When you use your lightning lane (LL) for a ride you can book another LL. There is an exception to this however. If you book a LL for something more than 2 hours away you can book another LL in 2 hours.
You can only book a LL for each ride once. If you try to book a ride again it tells you you’ve maxed out on that ride for the day. I watched a vlog a few days ago that said the system was letting them book Incredicoaster a 2nd time (but they didn’t because they didn’t want to). I think one of three things happened there: there was a glitch in the system, they saw the time available and assumed that meant they could book it, or Incredicoaster had broken down earlier during their window and turned into a multiple experience pass without their knowledge and they showed up after it had reopened.
Which leads into the next thing. There is one exception to the only one LL per ride thing. If the ride is broken down during your window, you MAY get a multiple experience pass valid on MANY but not ALL rides. Because of this, if you really want to repeat rides, I would actually recommend purposely booking for rides that are down. You will rarely get a multiple experience pass but you might get lucky. That’s what I’ve been doing. Here has been my experience with that:

On Friday morning once I was able to buy genie+ I did and got a LL for Guardians from 8-9. I didn’t know if I would actually use it then. I thought if the lines were still really short by 9 and LLs weren’t running out I would cancel it. So basically I booked it just in case but wasn’t set on using it then. I rope dropped WEB Slingers and was at the front. Then I went and did standby for Guardians which actually was much shorter an hour later so keep that in mind lol. While I was in line for Guardians I noticed that Incredicoaster was down but a LL was available in half an hour so I booked it. It did come back after a few minutes though and I knew that line wouldn’t be long for a while so I cancelled it. But then I noticed Goofy’s was down with an almost immediate LL. I booked it. Goofy’s stayed down and about 40 minutes into my window it converted to a multiple experience pass that was valid on any ride (even those without LL) except Space, Indiana Jones, Matterhorn, Peter Pan, Rise of the Resistance, WEB Slingers, Radiator Springs Racers, and Toy Story Mania. I used it on Guardians. For me it was worth waiting to see if the Goofy’s LL would convert into a multiple experience pass. But it did take time.
After that I booked Grizzly which was down. I think my pass was in a half hour. It came up though so I cancelled it. After that I was able to book Goofy’s again while it was still down but it came back up after a few minutes and since I didn’t particularly care about actually riding I cancelled it.
I kept watching throughout the day on Friday for rides to break down and actually they all stayed open most of the day. I booked Big Thunder when it was down and the return time was about 45 minutes away. It came back up shortly after my return time started so I just rode it.
Later that night I saw that Monsters Inc was down and I booked an immediate LL for it. It stayed down about half an hour into the window and it hadn’t converted into a multiple experience pass. I cancelled it because I wasn’t in DCA at the time and I wasn’t just gonna park hop for MI lol. That was the last LL ride that broke down that day
On Saturday afternoon I noticed Matterhorn was down and I was able to book a LL for it about a half hour later. Around the time the LL started the ride came up and I cancelled it because I don’t actually have the need as a single rider for a Matterhorn LL because that single rider line is pretty good at least a lot of the time

After that rides were in general not breaking down. But when I used my Soarin’ LL the ride broke down while I was in line. Anyone inside the building (standby and LL) got their ticket scanned by Soarin’ cast members to get a multiple experience LL. Just like the pass on Friday from Goofy’s, it was good the rest of the day on any ride (whether it had LL or not) except Rise, Indy, Matterhorn, Space, WEB Slingers, Racers, and Toy Story.
Then later that night I had a LL booked for Indy from 10-11 PM. I saw a few minutes before 10 that it was broken down so I kept watching for it to convert to a multiple experience pass. But while Indy was down the rest of the night, my LL never converted. At about 11:10 it disappeared from my genie day but I couldn’t book another LL for it because the tip board said I had it booked. I went over to Space Mountain to see if they’d let me go through if I showed them the screenshot of the tip board saying I had Indy booked but it was a walk-on in standby so there was no point of trying to “skip” a non-existent line. That was around 11:30 and I just did Space via standby the rest of the night
But also one more thing happened. After my Indy pass expired I was able to book another LL and Matterhorn was down again. I booked a LL for 11:20 PM-12:00 AM just in case it would convert to a multiple experience pass. I took a screenshot of everything I could: the tip board showing it was closed, the LL that said redeem on it, etc. It did come back up a few minutes or something before the park closed.

I wondered if I could take the screenshots of my Indy and Matterhorn LLs from last night to guest relations tomorrow. So this morning I used the chat feature on the Disneyland app and explained my situation and they said nothing could be done and that I should’ve talked to a cast member day of. I replied by mentioning that it was at the VERY end of the park day, that I wasn’t sure where exactly to go to talk to guest relations, and that I didn’t know if they would still be open or wanting someone like me to come to them that late. They replied apologizing for my experience and said that I could talk to a guest relations cast member tomorrow but there’s no guarantees. By the way in this conversation I was very polite and thanked them. Tomorrow at Disneyland I’m going to find guest relations and politely explain my situation and show them the screenshots I have and see what they can do. I don’t know if they’ll do it 2 days later but I don’t typically go to theme parks on Sundays for religious reasons so I wonder if I explain that to them and show that those LLs were basically at the last second of the day maybe they can give me a multiple experience LL or two. If I don’t get any I won’t throw a tantrum or anything lol, they would be nice to have though. I was kind of sad about Indy being down because that’s one of my favorite rides and I had every intention of using that LL. But honestly you don’t wait that long in the exterior queue for IJ. And I only booked Matterhorn for the possibility of a ME LL so we’ll just see what happens. I’ll update on here how that goes.
Ok so I’ve gone in a lot of detail on my experience with Genie+. Here’s my experience with individual lightning lanes which are completely separate from genie+:
Individual lightning lanes are for Rise of the Resistance, WEB Slingers, and Radiator Springs Racers. You can only get 2 of these per day and even though Rise is in a different park they’re connected in that you can only buy 2 out of the 3. Maybe it’s different if one of your ILLs breaks down during your window. I haven’t had that happen. But on Friday after I was considered by genie to be in the park I immediately bought one for Rise of the Resistance for $20. I think the return time was 8:40-9:40 AM or something but because I was starting in DCA it automatically changed the time to 1-2 PM (it does that with genie+ rides too). I didn’t want to do a WEB Slingers LL super early so I didn’t book it just yet. When the return time was 9:45-10:45 later I booked it for $12. I was able to book it even though I was still holding the one for Rise at 1-2 PM. I started trying to book Racers just to see what would happen (it would’ve been $12) but it wouldn’t let me because I had maxed out on ILLs for the day.

On Saturday I went to Universal in the morning so by the time I got to Disney at 3:30 all Rise LLs were sold out. I thought I might be out of luck. But when I went through the process of genie starting my day so I could tell it what rides I wanted to see first on my tip board it asked me if I wanted to buy a pass for Rise from 6:50-7:50 PM which I did. And then a little later I refreshed a couple times and bought an immediate WEB Slingers for $15. Racers was also $15.

One more thing about genie+ and ILLs. If you don’t see a time you like keep refreshing. You can select on genie which rides you want to show first on your tip board. That way you can keep refreshing until you see something you like. Soarin’ seems to be the most popular regular genie+ ride and both times I got a LL it was because I kept refreshing and got a time that worked better. The ones that seem to be the farthest ahead are Space, Matterhorn, Indy, Mansion, Guardians, Soarin’, and Toy Story (especially those last 2).

Ok now here’s what I thought about whether or not each ride was worth it.

Space Mountain: now that single rider is sadly gone genie+ was way worth it for this ride. Note standby was a walk-on at park closing so if you don’t buy genie+ you can probably still find a short wait sometimes. But both times I did a LL for Space I only waited about 10 minutes.

Buzz Lightyear: I got a LL for it on Friday but not Saturday. It wouldn’t have been worth it if I did it at the end of the day when there was nobody in the exterior queue. I did it at 7:30 when the exterior queue was pretty full and undoubtedly saved a good amount of time

Star Tours: I haven’t gotten a LL for Star Tours yet because while I love the ride I’ve been prioritizing the rides that are harder to get on with LL and riding Splash a lot. I’ll for sure get a LL for it every day I’m there this week. If the queue outside the main building and the queue in the first room of the building is pretty much empty there’s really no point in getting a LL. As I’ve walked past it the last couple days it hasn’t seemed too busy

Autopia: I haven’t gotten a LL for it and I don’t plan to lol
Matterhorn: I didn’t get a LL for this one on Friday and I only got it yesterday for the chance of a ME pass. Single rider was really short both times I did it on Friday. But if you’re in a group and don’t want to do single rider you’ll certainly save a lot of time from standby

It’s a small world Holiday: I got a LL on Friday night. The posted wait was only 20 minutes but the queue was super packed and it was nice to avoid that even if it moved pretty fast
Roger Rabbit: I haven’t gotten a LL for this yet but I’m definitely going to at some point. That queue never ends lol
Thunder Mountain Railroad: when I used it on Friday it had just reopened after being broken down so I actually didn’t save any time that time. But when I did it around 11:15 PM Saturday night the big switchback was full so I probably saved at least 10 minutes. I’m sure I would’ve saved even more had I gotten a LL earlier
Indiana Jones: the only part you skip is the exterior queue. No matter how you ride you’re waiting probably 10-15 minutes inside. If nobody is in the exterior queue you don’t save any time at all and even if there is you honestly don’t save that much time. Between Friday and Saturday I did standby three times besides my LL on Friday and got inside after about 10-15 minutes. So it’s definitely worth booking a LL if you have genie+ but don’t buy genie+ just for this ride or largely because of this ride lol


Haunted Mansion Holiday: very worth it. Lol I’m not a huge fan of the NBC theme and I would never want to wait long for that theme. But I only waited a few minutes, all past the merge point and skipped the whole queue.
Splash Mountain: booking a LL for Splash Mountain would’ve been a waste because it was a walk-on all day both days since it was kind of cold. Also the single rider line would’ve been an option if there was any line whatsoever. The single rider line isn’t always great like in the summer when it’s really hot so it could be worth it even for single riders on those days and definitely for those who want to ride together. But not in the winter. I did keep checking to see if it would break down though because of the multiple experiences possibility

Millennium Falcon: I haven’t gotten a LL for it yet although I love the ride. It did seem like they were always immediate though. The single rider line is always so short but I think I’ll probably get a LL at some point so I can ask to be a pilot
Rise of the Resistance: honestly I think $20 is very worth it even though it’s certainly annoying to pay that much. You skip many many switchbacks and walk right into the first preshow room.

Soarin’: definitely worth it. Even if LL is backed up and standby doesn’t look that long it seems like LL is a bigger priority so standby will move really slow
Grizzly River Run: Like Splash, LL is not needed here during the winter because it’s always a walk-on. But I can see it being worth it when it’s hot
WEB Slingers: like Rise of the Resistance you skip many switchbacks and walk right into the preshow room. I think $12 or $15 or whatever is worth it

Radiator Springs Racers: as a single rider it is absolutely 100% NOT worth it. On Friday morning I walked onto it twice in the single rider line. Had I bought a LL I might’ve actually waited longer. I also did single rider around 6 last night and it was a 25 minute wait. So I might’ve saved a little time had I bought a LL but not nearly enough to justify spending $15. In July and November when I was there (no fastpass, no lightning lane) the single rider line tended to be really short early in the day and grow a lot by the evening when they would close the single rider line for the night. It seems that’s still the case except I don’t know (I didn’t check) if they close the single rider line later at night. If they do close single rider at night and standby is really long (which it always is) that is the only scenario where I would even think of buying a LL because Racers really is so cool at night. But I was able to do single rider when it was dark (at 6) so if single rider is an option for you that’s way better. If single rider isn’t an option (like you have small kids, etc) I think buying a LL might be worth it but then you’re not just paying $15 or whatever, you’re paying $15 times the amount of people in your group. I’m only one person so LL isn’t “that” much for me but it certainly is for big groups 

Incredicoaster: you definitely save some time but honestly not that much. LL doesn’t seem to slow down standby all that much. Saturday night around 9 I did standby and waited 15 minutes. A lot of the queue was empty though so when it’s full (which it was Friday night when I used a LL) it’s gonna be longer. Also single rider is an option but I don’t really use it very much unless it’s pretty much empty. Single rider goes really slow and when it’s stretched up the bridge you’re actually waiting longer than in standby most of the time.
Toy Story Mania: VERY worth it. You skip the whole indoor and outdoor queue. The indoor queue was full both Friday and Saturday when I did LL. With LL both times I waited less than 10 minutes

Goofy’s Sky School: can’t say because I don’t go on this ride. I only booked a LL for a ME possibility. I’ve never ridden because I don’t like coasters like it or Primeval Whirl (formerly at Animal Kingdom) with those sharp turns that try to make you break your back every time you turn. I might try it this week though because a friend I’m meeting up with on Tuesday might force me to try it lol

Monsters Inc: I’ll probably get a LL at some point this week. It looks like on the app it gets wait times for sure but if you go at the right time you barely wait at all. I went one time in November and there was literally nobody except me in line and they were waiting for riders
Guardians: very very very very very very very very very with it. Lol I’m biased because I LOVEEEEEEEE Guardians. But obviously it’s very popular and the line gets really long. I did standby twice on Friday morning. It was so slow the first time because lots of LL people were showing up. It was better the second time because there weren’t a lot of LL people. When there’s a lot of LL people they’re a HUGE priority and they significantly slow down the standby line.

Ok wow that was a lot and I don’t expect everyone to read lol. But hopefully something I said can help somebody plan


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## disneylover102

Ok here’s my experience using genie+ yesterday (Monday the 10th). Long story short, ride breakdowns worked perfectly in my favor and I used 16 LLs yesterday, 6 of which were bonuses!




I entered the park around 8:15 when they started letting everyone in (the park officially opened at 9) and I booked Soarin’ for 1-2 PM (it changed to that time since I started at Disneyland and I figured by booking for the other park I could get a LL without wasting morning park time using a LL). Contrary to what I had heard, I could book another LL 2 hours after booking Soarin’ even though the park hadn’t opened yet. 



I would say I used my morning well not using any LLs. I rope dropped Rise of the Resistance and was the first person on so that was a tiring rush to get that close to the front for sure but very worth it to walk right on. Then I booked a Rise LL from 11:25-12:25. Then I went over to Space and did standby which had a posted 15 minute wait but I waited half an hour. Still better than later in the day. After that I did Big Thunder which was posted 20 minutes and I waited 15. While in line it was time to book another LL and since Small World was down I booked that immediately hoping for a multiple experience pass. 



After I got off Big Thunder I went to guest relations at city hall to try to see if I could get compensation for my LLs from Saturday night (basically I booked Indy for 10-11 PM and it was down the whole time and didn’t give me a ME pass and then I booked Matterhorn for 11:20-12:00 but it was down and I couldn’t use that either and I got screenshots of both of those situations). But the line at city hall was pretty long and going slow and I figured it would be really silly to wait in a long line so I could get a chance to skip a line somewhere else. I found out that city hall is only one of MANY guest relations places so I walked right up to the Fantasyland kiosk by Matterhorn and immediately started talking to the CM there. I showed her my screenshots and explained that that happened at the very very end of the day on Saturday and that I didn’t talk to someone on Sunday because I don’t typically go to theme parks on Sundays for religious reasons and then I asked if there was any way I could get a makeup LL. She was very understanding about it and actually gave me 3 multiple experience LLs good on anything except Rise and WEB Slingers including all rides without LL. She gave me 3 because I was by myself, which was AWESOME.



After that I waited not long at all in the single rider line for Matterhorn. After I got off I saw Space was only a 35 minute wait so I started heading over there. It had been a while into my Small World LL and it hasn’t come back up so I was expecting a ME pass but it can’t up on my way to Space. But Falcon was down and so I got a LL half an hour later. I got in line for Space and when there was about 10-15 minutes before my LL for Falcon even started it converted to a ME pass valid on anything except Space, Indy, Matterhorn, Peter Pan, Toy Story, Racers, and WEB Slingers (this is the normal case for ME LLs from ride breakdowns, but I assume it’s different if it’s one of those rides that breaks down). At that point I booked another one for Falcon about half an hour later but it came back up after a few minutes so I cancelled it and booked Indy, which I was fully planning to use. My Rise of the Resistance LL was also valid by this point but it broke down and converted to a pass only valid on Rise for the rest of the day. I ended up waiting about 50 minutes for Space (which I was in line for this whole time). 



After that I had a little time before my Indy LL so I did Matterhorn single rider again and got a slice of pizza at Pizza Planet. Then I did Falcon single rider and piloted all by myself, which was awesome. While I was over there in Galaxy’s Edge I was constantly checking the app to look out for Rise to come back up and hopefully get a short wait if I got there right away. It didn’t come back up while I was in GE so I went to use my Indy LL. But as I was waiting in line to scan in, Rise came back up so I rushed over there as fast as I could. The line was just a little past the caves so I thought I wouldn’t wait a ridiculously long time. But I waited 80 minutes to get on the final ride portion because LL was being prioritized a lot. Normally LL isn’t backed up for Rise but I think it was because they must’ve given everyone in line when it broke down a LL to come back later. Because it took so long I had to cancel my Indy and Soarin’ LLs which wasn’t great but fortunately I was able to rebook those later. 



While in the SLOW line for Rise, I booked a Space LL, which I used after getting off Rise. I then booked an immediate LL for Star Tours and rode that. Then I booked an immediate LL for Buzz and used that. I then booked Thunder which was down I think for about a half hour later. After doing Buzz I went and used my all day LL for Rise and while I was on it my Thunder LL converted to a ME pass but then it came back up right after that. I booked an immediate LL for it and went and rode it. Standby wouldn’t have been too long because it was still refilling from being down. I would’ve booked Indy at this point but it was down and I had 5 multiple experience passes already as well as plenty to book in DCA so I figured I might not even have time to use everything I booked lol. So I booked Soarin’ for over 2 hours later and of course couldn’t book another LL for 2 hours. 



After Thunder I park hopped and bought a LL for WEB Slingers and used my ME passes from Thunder and Falcon being down to ride Guardians twice. Then I used my LL at WEB Slingers and then rode Guardians again with one of the bonus LLs the CM gave me earlier. 



I had discovered by that point that the system was actually letting me book Racers if I wanted since my Rise pass earlier had converted to an all day pass since it was broken down. It was at this point I realized it might let me book Rise AGAIN so even though LLs were supposedly gone I refreshed a few times and got another Rise LL for right away.



So after doing Guardians I park hopped basically just for Rise. But Indy had been down for hours and came back up while I was at Rise and it was time to book another LL so I got one for Indy that was good right after I got off Rise so I went and used that. Once I used my Indy LL I booked Incredicoaster.



Then I park hopped and used my Soarin’ and Incredicoaster LLs. After using my Incredicoaster LL I booked Guardians. Then I used one of my ME LLs and re-rode Incredicoaster. Then I went and used my LL at Guardians and then re-rode with my final bonus LL. By that point it was about 8:40 when the park closed at 9. I saw on the app that while Rise had said earlier that it was gonna be open 9-8, it had changed to be open 9-9 (full park hours). So I rushed over there and waited in standby less than half an hour. 

So clearly this was not a typical genie+ day… you’re not typically gonna get 3 bonus LLs from a previous day or get 2 bonus LLs from ride breakdowns. But what I recommend is booking rides when they are down. They will hopefully convert to a multiple experience LL and you can book the ride again. The point at which you’ll get a bonus LL is always different. Sometimes it’s 20 minutes before the window starts and sometimes it’s 40 minutes after it starts. But you SHOULD be able to get one if the ride is down the whole window. And if it’s down the whole window and it DOESN’T give you a bonus LL go talk to a guest relations CM and they can help.

I typed this all up way earlier and forgot to post it lol. Now I’ll type up my experiences from today


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## disneylover102

K here’s my genie+ and individual lightning lane report for yesterday (Tuesday the 11th). I arrived at Harbor Blvd security at around 7:45 and around 8:10 they opened security and let me in around 8:15, at which point I quickly bought genie+ and reserved Soarin’ for 1-2 PM (the available time was 9-10 AM but it changed it due to park hopping). I did this to allow time to take advantage of shorter lines at park opening but still have some LL advantage. 
I rope dropped Rise and was again the first person on. Then I went over to Space and waited about a half hour. While in line I got a LL for Rise from 10:40-11:40. When I got off Space it was time to book another LL and I booked for Space for about 20 minutes later. Also my time to do Rise was about 20 minutes away but it was broken down and it converted it to an all day pass which meant I could book Rise again, so I got one from 12:15-1:15. I saw that the posted wait for Peter Pan was only 25 so I headed over there but decided to not do it just yet because the wait looked like a lot more than that. So I did the teacups really fast instead. Then I waited about 15 minutes in Matterhorn single rider (which is a lot more than it has been the other times I’ve done it the last few days but it still wasn’t bad). 
Then it was time to use my LL at Space. I did that and then booked an immediate Star Tours. I used that and then booked an immediate Buzz. After that I booked one for Indy about 20 minutes away (note that must’ve been a cancellation because Indy has been 1-2 hours out today). I had a little time before Indy so I did Falcon single rider and then headed to Indy and used my LL. 
It was getting close to park hopping time and I noticed that Grizzly was down so I booked a LL for it hope for a multiple experience pass. I also booked a WEB Slingers LL for 1:20-2:20. After doing Indy I headed to Rise to use my 12:15-1:15 pass. I saved the all day one from when it broke down earlier to use later since I was about to use LL for Soarin’ and WEB Slingers and need to park hop. 
I used my LL for Soarin’ and was about to get on when it broke down. They gave me a multiple experience pass to make up for it. After that I used my WEB Slingers LL. Then I did single rider at Radiator Springs Racers which took about 15 minutes. At some point during all this my Grizzly LL converted to a multiple experience pass so I reserved Grizzly again. But it came back up so I booked Toy Story Mania for about an hour and a half later.
I ate that amazing mac n cheese from the cozy cone motel and then used my ME pass from Grizzly on Guardians. Since I had a bit of time before my Toy Story LL I bought a jack jack num num and ate it in the Incredicoaster standby line which was only about a 15 minute wait. Then it was time for Toy Story so I did that and booked an immediate Goofy’s Sky School because I’ve never tried it and figured I might as well. But it broke down and I wanted to do the Pixar Pier area all in one go and I hadn’t gotten an Incredicoaster LL yet so while I was waiting for my Goofy’s LL to convert to a ME pass or come back up I tried out the single rider line for Incredicoaster because it wasn’t as long as it sometimes has been and I was curious if it’s as slow as it has been before. It was worse just because I think the CM giving out the single rider passes had lots of things to take care of and so there would frequently be times where no single riders were at the loading area. The posted standby wait was 35 and the entire queue was full (when I waited 15 minutes earlier only half the queue was full) and I waited a little more than 20 minutes in the single rider line. So I think I probably did save a little time but not much. I got in line when the SR line was backed up to the white door almost to the single rider sign. 
Toward the beginning of my wait in the SR line my Goofy’s LL converted to a multiple experience pass and I booked Incredicoaster immediately. So when I got off I rode again much faster in the LL. Goofy’s was up by the time I was done but the LL was half an hour away which I didn’t want to wait for so I booked Guardians for about half an hour later. 

After that I did the Racers single rider line again and waited about 20 minutes. By the time I got off it was time for Guardians so I used my LL there. I then booked Monsters for a few minutes later and by the time I got off Guardians it was time to use that so I did. Then I booked Thunder for a little over an hour later (it was weird that Thunder LLs were so far ahead yesterday). 

After Monsters I did Guardians twice, once with the pass from Soarin’ going down and once with the pass from Goofy’s going down. I got there just in time cause half the gantry lifts broke down when I got there and then lightning lane backed up a TON. However I got on pretty fast because of the minute I got there. The standby line was posted 2 hours and they told everyone they would be highly prioritizing lightning lane. So long story short don’t do standby when the ride is operating at very low capacity 

After that I park hopped and it was just about time to do Thunder and since the LL works 5 minutes early I scanned in a minute early and went right through. I booked Roger Rabbit for about 15 minutes later. I didn’t know that I actually wanted to do it that late in the day but I figured I could make a LL for it just in case. But it broke down after I did Thunder and converted to a ME pass a couple minutes before the return time started. 

At that point I went to Rise and used my all day pass there and got on super quick. And then I noticed that Indy had come back up from being down and it was only posted 40 minutes so I went over there. I waited a little more than 20 minutes. Then I went and used my ME pass from Roger Rabbit on Thunder. 

At this point there was about 20 minutes until the park closed so I thought I would have time to do Falcon single rider before finishing at Rise. But they had closed the SR line and even though standby was only posted 15 minutes I didn’t want to risk missing a short wait at Rise so I headed there and got in line about 15 minutes before the park closed. I waited a little less than half an hour. 

So this was another pretty successful day with genie+. I felt like this day was more enjoyable than Monday in that I started using LLs earlier and ran out of the big ones to get earlier so I wasn’t as stressed to use all my LLs before the park closed. It worked great to reserve Soarin’ as soon as I scanned in and allow that to give me a nice genie+ advantage but still not use LLs when the standby waits were short and then actually start actively using LLs when I could start booking more LLs. 
I have one more day on this trip (today, Wednesday) where I once again plan to buy genie+ and ILL for Rise and WEB Slingers and I’ll share my experiences on that after


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## disneylover102

Last one for this trip 



Ok so I once again bought genie+ and lightning lanes yesterday (Wednesday the 12th). Here’s my experience with that.



I was scanned into the park at 8:14 (at the front of the line to get in, the park officially opened at 9) and immediately bought genie+ and booked Soarin’ for 1-2 PM (time changed due to park hopping which was the plan), which meant I could book another LL at 10:14. I did this purposely so I could do short standby waits in the morning and LLs later in the day.



After rushing to the rope by Frontierland I saw LL for Rise was for 9:50-10:50 and I booked that. I also went ahead and bought WEB Slingers for 1-2 PM (again I got that time because of park hopping). 



I was at the front of the mad rush to Rise and was 18th in line and 1st on the ride (I strategically placed myself close to the door on the space shuttle). After that I did standby for Thunder which was posted as 5 minutes but was almost 15. Still not too bad though. While in line my Rise LL converted to an all day pass because it was broken down so I was able to book another one for 12:50-1:50. I was planning on using the next part of the morning to do the rides I want to do that don’t have LL: Pirates, Jungle Cruise, and Peter Pan. However, all 3 of those were down after I got off Thunder. So I got in the posted 45 minute wait for Indy hoping it would be shorter and that by the time I was off Jungle Cruise or Pirates might be up. It only took about 10 minutes to get inside which was great with the only downside being that I was in the building with no service for the last portion of the wait during the time I could get a new LL so I had to wait until I got off the ride and out of the building to get another LL.



I got off Indy around 10:30 and booked a LL for Space for 11 and went and did Jungle Cruise, which was a little more than a 30 minute wait. Then I redeemed my LL at Space and I wanted to get an Indy LL. The next available time was 1:15, which I didn’t want because of my Soarin’ and WEB Slingers LLs at 1. But I refreshed several times and got one for 12:15. I ate lunch at Pizza Planet and then used my 12:20-1:20 Rise LL. Then I used my Indy LL and saw that Monsters was down so I booked that. I also saw that WEB Slingers was broken down so my pass had been converted to an all day pass. So I was able to book another one from 2:40-3:40. 



When I got off Indy my Monsters pass had converted to a ME pass. I booked it again hoping for that to happen again but it came back up so I booked Matterhorn which was down. I was able to refresh and get one a half hour later. Around the time that LL was supposed to start it converted to a ME pass. 



But this one was a little different because it was from Matterhorn which is apparently a top tier attraction. All the other ME passes I’ve gotten from rides going down have been valid on everything except Rise, Space, Matterhorn, Indy, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, Racers, and Toy Story Mania. But since Matterhorn IS one of those rides the ME pass was good on any ride except Peter Pan, Rise, Racers, and WEB Slingers. But it was good on Space, Indy, and Matterhorn which is different than the others 



After Matterhorn converted to a ME pass I booked it again and went to use my Soarin’ LL. I waited half an hour for that because a theater was down and LL was super backed up. Standby was 2 hours even though there weren’t that many people in the line 



After I got off I saw that Matterhorn had come back up so I cancelled my LL and booked Grizzly since it was down. It wasn’t down long but I almost immediately got a ME pass from it. After that happened I booked an immediate Incredicoaster and used it. Then I got an immediate Goofy’s LL and used that. I then booked Guardians a half hour later. When I got off Goofy’s I went and did single rider at Grizzly and basically walked right on. 



Then I went to use my 2:40-3:40 LL for WEB Slingers but as I was about to scan in they said the ride was down (again) but that my LL would be good all day. It didn’t convert to an all day pass and it disappeared from the app after it expired but I screenshotted it before it expired and when I used it later it worked. Anyway so at this point it was just about time to use my Guardians LL anyway so I did that. Then I booked a LL for Toy Story Mania an hour and a half later. 



After doing Guardians I did it again with my pass from Grizzly going down. Then I did Incredicoaster standby to kill time before my Toy Story LL. Then I met up with someone I know and did Incredicoaster standby again (we just did that ride together since she didn’t buy genie+). Then it was time for my Toy Story LL. 



There wasn’t really any good LL to book that I was interested in at this point because I still had a couple WEB Slingers LLs to use and I wanted to use my ME pass from Monsters going down on either Guardians or Incredicoaster. I booked Matterhorn just in case it went down again. After Toy Story I used my bonus LL from Monsters on Incredicoaster and then used both of my WEB Slingers LLs. When it got closer to the time I would be park hopping I cancelled Matterhorn and booked Thunder immediately. After park hopping I went straight to Thunder. Because my LL options were pretty limited at this point I refreshed and got Matterhorn in the next few minutes. Normally I haven’t been actually using LL for Matterhorn because the single rider line has gotten me on very quick. But the wait time was pretty high and I figured single rider was probably pretty busy. 



But rather than going right to Matterhorn I used my all day pass on Rise to make sure I got that done. Then I very quickly did Falcon single rider and headed to Matterhorn and used my LL. Then I got an immediate LL for Star Tours and used it but it was useless because there was literally no line (this was about 8 PM). 



I really wanted to use my ME pass from Matterhorn going down earlier to go on Space again. But Space had been down for hours and it was 8:15 and still not open. I figured it wouldn’t open by the time the park closed so I was just gonna use it on Thunder. I could’ve used it on Indy but I didn’t feel like waiting in that line again lol (cause you really don’t skip that much for Indy LL). But somehow even though I had used my bonus LL from Monsters going down on Incredicoaster earlier the LL was still showing on the app. I re-used it on Thunder and it let me go through and then disappeared from the app. Weird! But no complaints from me! While I was in line (this was around 8:30) Space suddenly came back up so I rushed over there after I got off Thunder and used my LL from Matterhorn going down on Space, which was awesome. I got off just in time to get back in line before the park closed and ride again. I don’t think Space is normally insanely busy at park closing but it was since it had been down for hours. The entire indoor queue was full but it moved super fast and I was on in less than half an hour. There were no people in lightning lane since the park is closed and that’s why it went so fast. 



Ok so that’s my experience with yesterday. I’m gonna type up a review of what I’ve learned like tricks, how it all affects standby, etc later


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## rizzle64

disneylover102 said:


> Last one for this trip
> 
> 
> 
> Ok so I once again bought genie+ and lightning lanes yesterday (Wednesday the 12th). Here’s my experience with that.



You've got this down to a science!

Can I ask a couple of questions?

What's the different between and an all day pass and an ME?

When a ride is down, does Genie+ allow you to book an LL while it's down that then will immediately convert to an ME? Then once it does convert, are you able to make another LL booking immediately? So if there are frequent temporary closures, you could continue to do that? Or am I missing something with the way it works when it comes to ride closures?

And while my youngest is 9 and we'll be able to do quite a bit of walking, we won't be bouncing back and forth between lands strictly to get the most out of Genie+. What would your suggestions be for using Genie+ while using a more traditional land by land touring strategy?


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## disneylover102

rizzle64 said:


> You've got this down to a science!
> 
> Can I ask a couple of questions?
> 
> What's the different between and an all day pass and an ME?
> 
> When a ride is down, does Genie+ allow you to book an LL while it's down that then will immediately convert to an ME? Then once it does convert, are you able to make another LL booking immediately? So if there are frequent temporary closures, you could continue to do that? Or am I missing something with the way it works when it comes to ride closures?
> 
> And while my youngest is 9 and we'll be able to do quite a bit of walking, we won't be bouncing back and forth between lands strictly to get the most out of Genie+. What would your suggestions be for using Genie+ while using a more traditional land by land touring strategy?


A ME pass is my abbreviation for a multiple experience pass. These replace your LL when a ride included with genie+ goes down during your return time. They always include everything including rides that don’t have a dedicated LL entrance except Rise, Space, Matterhorn, Indy, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, Racers, and Toy Story. However if the ride that goes down is Space, Matterhorn, Indy, or Toy Story the ME pass includes everything except Rise, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, and Racers. These passes are valid for the rest of the day.

The all day pass I’ve been referring to is for individual lightning lane rides that are not included in genie+: Rise, WEB Slingers, and Racers. If you have a LL booked for one of those and the ride goes down during your return time your LL is converted to an all day pass valid only on that ride. So for example on this trip Rise went down on 3 separate occasions during my LL window and my LL converted to a pass valid all day only on Rise and not on any other ride whatsoever.

Whether you get a ME pass or an all day pass as I referred to them the system basically forgets you booked that ride in the first place and allows you to book it again. So for example if you book Grizzly and it goes down and converts to a ME pass you can book Grizzly again. And if you book Rise and it goes down and turns into an all day pass you can book Rise again.

When a ride goes down you can still book a LL at some point, although they push back the next available time. So for example normally Grizzly LLs are immediately but if it goes down the next LL might be in a half hour. But you can book the next available time and hope it stays down until then. The point at which it converts to a ME pass is different every time. Sometimes it converts 20 minutes before the LL window, sometimes it converts right before, sometimes it converts 30 minutes into the window, and occasionally it never converts. Once it does convert though it’s a completely bonus LL and you can immediately book another one. But if it hasn’t converted yet you have to wait until one of four things happen in order to book another LL: for the LL to convert to a ME pass, for the ride to come back up and you actually use the LL at that ride, for 2 hours to pass, or for the LL to expire. If a ride continues to be down you can continue to book for that ride as long as it keeps converting to a ME pass. I was never successful in doing it twice in a row for a ride just because it always came back up before that was possible. But if the temporary closure is really long you could certainly get multiple ME passes from that.

If you want to go land by land my suggestion would be to make sure you book the rides that are the biggest priority to you regardless of current ride breakdowns. So if you’re gonna be in Tomorrowland soon and you for sure want to do Space Mountain (and trust me you do NOT want to wait in that standby line because LL is way over prioritized there) then make sure to book Space Mountain. But if you see that a ride is broken down with a fairly soon return time and there’s a lot of things in the land you’re in without LL that you want to do go ahead and book the LL for the broken down ride and then you might be able to use that to your advantage later in the day. For example, say you’re in Fantasyland and want to do a lot of rides there but hardly anything over there even has LL and you see that Buzz is broken down. Go ahead and book a Buzz LL and do rides like Peter Pan, Snow White, etc and keep checking to see if your LL converts to a ME pass or if Buzz comes back up. If it converts to a ME pass during that time you haven’t wasted any time you could be using to use LLs but now you have a bonus LL that you could use on Millennium Falcon later when you’re in Galaxy’s Edge.

Also keep in mind that there are a good number of rides that typically have LLs available immediately. These are typically (from my experience) Star Tours, Buzz, Autopia, Small World, Roger Rabbit, Thunder (sometimes), Falcon, Splash (because it’s January but also it’s closed now), Grizzly, Monsters Inc, Incredicoaster, and Goofy’s Sky School. The others are usually about 30-60 minutes ahead (except Soarin’ is usually over 2 hours away and Toy Story is usually about 90 minutes away). If there’s plenty of ride breakdowns that you want to take advantage of, use the breaks in between LL conversions to ME passes to knock out the LLs that are immediate. For example say Matterhorn is down and you book a LL for it and it eventually converts to a ME pass. You want to book Matterhorn again but you’re in Tomorrowland and want to do Autopia, Star Tours, and Buzz. Before booking Matterhorn again quickly knock out those Tomorrowland rides and then book Matterhorn.

Also when you purposely book a LL for a ride that’s broken down keep checking as often as you can to see if the ride comes back up. Once it comes back up there is no longer hope for a ME pass for that specific situation.

Hopefully this helped answer your questions, is there anything else I can clarify?


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## Wilcojoe

disneylover102 said:


> A ME pass is my abbreviation for a multiple experience pass. These replace your LL when a ride included with genie+ goes down during your return time. They always include everything including rides that don’t have a dedicated LL entrance except Rise, Space, Matterhorn, Indy, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, Racers, and Toy Story. However if the ride that goes down is Space, Matterhorn, Indy, or Toy Story the ME pass includes everything except Rise, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, and Racers. These passes are valid for the rest of the day.
> 
> The all day pass I’ve been referring to is for individual lightning lane rides that are not included in genie+: Rise, WEB Slingers, and Racers. If you have a LL booked for one of those and the ride goes down during your return time your LL is converted to an all day pass valid only on that ride. So for example on this trip Rise went down on 3 separate occasions during my LL window and my LL converted to a pass valid all day only on Rise and not on any other ride whatsoever.
> 
> Whether you get a ME pass or an all day pass as I referred to them the system basically forgets you booked that ride in the first place and allows you to book it again. So for example if you book Grizzly and it goes down and converts to a ME pass you can book Grizzly again. And if you book Rise and it goes down and turns into an all day pass you can book Rise again.
> 
> When a ride goes down you can still book a LL at some point, although they push back the next available time. So for example normally Grizzly LLs are immediately but if it goes down the next LL might be in a half hour. But you can book the next available time and hope it stays down until then. The point at which it converts to a ME pass is different every time. Sometimes it converts 20 minutes before the LL window, sometimes it converts right before, sometimes it converts 30 minutes into the window, and occasionally it never converts. Once it does convert though it’s a completely bonus LL and you can immediately book another one. But if it hasn’t converted yet you have to wait until one of four things happen in order to book another LL: for the LL to convert to a ME pass, for the ride to come back up and you actually use the LL at that ride, for 2 hours to pass, or for the LL to expire. If a ride continues to be down you can continue to book for that ride as long as it keeps converting to a ME pass. I was never successful in doing it twice in a row for a ride just because it always came back up before that was possible. But if the temporary closure is really long you could certainly get multiple ME passes from that.
> 
> If you want to go land by land my suggestion would be to make sure you book the rides that are the biggest priority to you regardless of current ride breakdowns. So if you’re gonna be in Tomorrowland soon and you for sure want to do Space Mountain (and trust me you do NOT want to wait in that standby line because LL is way over prioritized there) then make sure to book Space Mountain. But if you see that a ride is broken down with a fairly soon return time and there’s a lot of things in the land you’re in without LL that you want to do go ahead and book the LL for the broken down ride and then you might be able to use that to your advantage later in the day. For example, say you’re in Fantasyland and want to do a lot of rides there but hardly anything over there even has LL and you see that Buzz is broken down. Go ahead and book a Buzz LL and do rides like Peter Pan, Snow White, etc and keep checking to see if your LL converts to a ME pass or if Buzz comes back up. If it converts to a ME pass during that time you haven’t wasted any time you could be using to use LLs but now you have a bonus LL that you could use on Millennium Falcon later when you’re in Galaxy’s Edge.
> 
> Also keep in mind that there are a good number of rides that typically have LLs available immediately. These are typically (from my experience) Star Tours, Buzz, Autopia, Small World, Roger Rabbit, Thunder (sometimes), Falcon, Splash (because it’s January but also it’s closed now), Grizzly, Monsters Inc, Incredicoaster, and Goofy’s Sky School. The others are usually about 30-60 minutes ahead (except Soarin’ is usually over 2 hours away and Toy Story is usually about 90 minutes away). If there’s plenty of ride breakdowns that you want to take advantage of, use the breaks in between LL conversions to ME passes to knock out the LLs that are immediate. For example say Matterhorn is down and you book a LL for it and it eventually converts to a ME pass. You want to book Matterhorn again but you’re in Tomorrowland and want to do Autopia, Star Tours, and Buzz. Before booking Matterhorn again quickly knock out those Tomorrowland rides and then book Matterhorn.
> 
> Also when you purposely book a LL for a ride that’s broken down keep checking as often as you can to see if the ride comes back up. Once it comes back up there is no longer hope for a ME pass for that specific situation.
> 
> Hopefully this helped answer your questions, is there anything else I can clarify?


Great info. We are going to be in Disneyland for two days and one day at DCA in early March.  We don’t want to do park hoppers but will purchase Genie plus and Individual LL.  Would you recommend heading straight to the Individual LL rides (Rise,Web,Rad) at rope drop with the hope that we could save the LL to ride them again later in the day?


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## disneylover102

Wilcojoe said:


> Great info. We are going to be in Disneyland for two days and one day at DCA in early March.  We don’t want to do park hoppers but will purchase Genie plus and Individual LL.  Would you recommend heading straight to the Individual LL rides (Rise,Web,Rad) at rope drop with the hope that we could save the LL to ride them again later in the day?


It all depends on if you can be some of the first on the ride for the day. Or in other words be one of the first at the rope for rope drop and then hurry to the ride when it opens. I did WEB Slingers first last Friday and was at the front of the rope and in the first room of the day and on really quick. When I got off the entire queue was full and I believe extended outside the queue. Same with Rise: I was in the first preshow room when I did it first Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and when I got off the queue was full (although I don’t know that the extended queue by critter country was open) and the line was extending all the way through Galaxy’s Edge. You’re better off just waiting in the middle of the day than wasting all your precious  morning time waiting. But if you can be at the front like I was or even fairly close to the front I would say that’s a great idea. I always had my LLs for those at least an hour or two after the park opened so I could use that time to take advantage of any short standby waits


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## Wilcojoe

disneylover102 said:


> It all depends on if you can be some of the first on the ride for the day. Or in other words be one of the first at the rope for rope drop and then hurry to the ride when it opens. I did WEB Slingers first last Friday and was at the front of the rope and in the first room of the day and on really quick. When I got off the entire queue was full and I believe extended outside the queue. Same with Rise: I was in the first preshow room when I did it first Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and when I got off the queue was full (although I don’t know that the extended queue by critter country was open) and the line was extending all the way through Galaxy’s Edge. You’re better off just waiting in the middle of the day than wasting all your precious  morning time waiting. But if you can be at the front like I was or even fairly close to the front I would say that’s a great idea. I always had my LLs for those at least an hour or two after the park opened so I could use that time to take advantage of any short standby waits


That’s an excellent point.  Quite frankly I don’t think we would want to sprint to be one of the very first.  Which rides would you recommend we start with at both parks? It’s my wife, myself, and two sons ages 13 and 10.  We haven’t been since 2016 and the youngest will be experiencing most of the thrill rides for his first time, so it’s not like they have any favorites.  Lol


----------



## disneylover102

Wilcojoe said:


> That’s an excellent point.  Quite frankly I don’t think we would want to sprint to be one of the very first.  Which rides would you recommend we start with at both parks? It’s my wife, myself, and two sons ages 13 and 10.  We haven’t been since 2016 and the youngest will be experiencing most of the thrill rides for his first time, so it’s not like they have any favorites.  Lol


You’re not allowed to sprint but some people do it anyway lol. It’s definitely tiring to do the fast walk so it’s completely understandable why you wouldn’t want to. I would say Space, Indy, and Guardians are probably some of the best to do first at rope drop if you’re there when the rope drops but don’t want to rush too fast


----------



## CableKC

At DCA rope drop, LL$$ availability is between 815am to 915am for WS.   Standby is 110 minutes already.


----------



## CableKC

I’m waiting in standby at WS at rope drop at DCA.   My intent is to buy the LL$$ for WS so that we can ride it again.   But I’m questioning whether this is a good idea since the Standby for WS now is 110 minutes while I see standby at other non-RS rides at 5 to 15 minutes.

Any thoughts on this strategy?


----------



## Wilcojoe

CableKC said:


> I’m waiting in standby at WS at rope drop at DCA.   My intent is to buy the LL$$ for WS so that we can ride it again.   But I’m questioning whether this is a good idea since the Standby for WS now is 110 minutes while I see standby at other non-RS rides at 5 to 15 minutes.
> 
> Any thoughts on this strategy?


I think your pot committed at this point.  Certainly your wait won’t be anywhere close to that long since you rope dropped it.  But please let us know how long it ends up being.


----------



## CableKC

got onto WS by 852am


----------



## Wilcojoe

CableKC said:


> got onto WS by 852am


What time would you say you got in line?  Assuming 5 after 8:00, that’s a pretty long wait for rope drop. I am trying to figure out our strategy so I appreciate your updates.


----------



## CableKC

Wilcojoe said:


> What time would you say you got in line?  Assuming 5 after 8:00, that’s a pretty long wait for rope drop. I am trying to figure out our strategy so I appreciate your updates.


We got in line straight from Rope drop at DCA. My concern was that it would take up to 110 minutes…but it turned out to be roughly 52 minutes just to get onto the ride itself.   I will purchase the LL$$ later for sometime after lunch.   As of 908am….the purchase time for LL$$ for WS is $15 with a time slot for 910am.    

For the LL$$ , im pretty much going to monitor it and wait til it’s available for the time I want to go ( after lunch time )


----------



## CableKC

935am

LL$$ for WS - 1055am / Standby - 45 min
LL$$ for RS - 10am / Standby - Not available


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## Wilcojoe

CableKC said:


> 935am
> 
> LL$$ for WS - 1055am / Standby - 45 min
> LL$$ for RS - 10am / Standby - Not available


Are you going to buy the RS and hope it stays closed so you can get a multi pass? I have a feeling I am going to enjoy doing that every chance I get.


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## disneylover102

Wilcojoe said:


> Are you going to buy the RS and hope it stays closed so you can get a multi pass? I have a feeling I am going to enjoy doing that every chance I get.


Since RS is an individual paid LL it wouldn’t become a multiple experience pass, just an all day pass for RS. But they would be able to buy RS again


----------



## Wilcojoe

disneylover102 said:


> Since RS is an individual paid LL it wouldn’t become a multiple experience pass, just an all day pass for RS. But they would be able to buy RS again



Good to know, thanks.


----------



## CableKC

Wilcojoe said:


> Are you going to buy the RS and hope it stays closed so you can get a multi pass? I have a feeling I am going to enjoy doing that every chance I get.


I don’t know what the Best practice approach is, but I’m going to just ride RS once via the LL$$.   For the day, we will ride WS once via Standby ( at rope drop ) then purchase a LL$$ for after lunch so that we can do it again ( since this is the 1st time trying it ).


----------



## CableKC

1024am


LL$$ for WS - 1035am / Standby - 75 min
LL$$ for RS - 1110am / Standby - 85 min


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## CableKC

The only non$$$ LL that we used is for GotG mission breakout.    I will probably target using the rest of the non$$ LL to be used in the afternoon to after dinner


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## disneylover102

CableKC said:


> The only non$$$ LL that we used is for GotG mission breakout.    I will probably target using the rest of the non$$ LL to be used in the afternoon to after dinner


Keep in mind Soarin’ runs out really fast and Toy Story is usually pretty far ahead so I would keep an eye on those and when the next available time works go ahead and book it


----------



## CableKC

disneylover102 said:


> Keep in mind Soarin’ runs out really fast and Toy Story is usually pretty far ahead so I would keep an eye on those and when the next available time works go ahead and book it


Yeah….I’m finding that as well.   For some reason , soarin is already at 250pm at 1108am…..the latest of the non-lLL$$ passes.


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## rizzle64

disneylover102 said:


> A ME pass is my abbreviation for a multiple experience pass. These replace your LL when a ride included with genie+ goes down during your return time. They always include everything including rides that don’t have a dedicated LL entrance except Rise, Space, Matterhorn, Indy, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, Racers, and Toy Story. However if the ride that goes down is Space, Matterhorn, Indy, or Toy Story the ME pass includes everything except Rise, Peter Pan, WEB Slingers, and Racers. These passes are valid for the rest of the day.
> 
> The all day pass I’ve been referring to is for individual lightning lane rides that are not included in genie+: Rise, WEB Slingers, and Racers. If you have a LL booked for one of those and the ride goes down during your return time your LL is converted to an all day pass valid only on that ride. So for example on this trip Rise went down on 3 separate occasions during my LL window and my LL converted to a pass valid all day only on Rise and not on any other ride whatsoever.
> 
> Whether you get a ME pass or an all day pass as I referred to them the system basically forgets you booked that ride in the first place and allows you to book it again. So for example if you book Grizzly and it goes down and converts to a ME pass you can book Grizzly again. And if you book Rise and it goes down and turns into an all day pass you can book Rise again.
> 
> When a ride goes down you can still book a LL at some point, although they push back the next available time. So for example normally Grizzly LLs are immediately but if it goes down the next LL might be in a half hour. But you can book the next available time and hope it stays down until then. The point at which it converts to a ME pass is different every time. Sometimes it converts 20 minutes before the LL window, sometimes it converts right before, sometimes it converts 30 minutes into the window, and occasionally it never converts. Once it does convert though it’s a completely bonus LL and you can immediately book another one. But if it hasn’t converted yet you have to wait until one of four things happen in order to book another LL: for the LL to convert to a ME pass, for the ride to come back up and you actually use the LL at that ride, for 2 hours to pass, or for the LL to expire. If a ride continues to be down you can continue to book for that ride as long as it keeps converting to a ME pass. I was never successful in doing it twice in a row for a ride just because it always came back up before that was possible. But if the temporary closure is really long you could certainly get multiple ME passes from that.
> 
> If you want to go land by land my suggestion would be to make sure you book the rides that are the biggest priority to you regardless of current ride breakdowns. So if you’re gonna be in Tomorrowland soon and you for sure want to do Space Mountain (and trust me you do NOT want to wait in that standby line because LL is way over prioritized there) then make sure to book Space Mountain. But if you see that a ride is broken down with a fairly soon return time and there’s a lot of things in the land you’re in without LL that you want to do go ahead and book the LL for the broken down ride and then you might be able to use that to your advantage later in the day. For example, say you’re in Fantasyland and want to do a lot of rides there but hardly anything over there even has LL and you see that Buzz is broken down. Go ahead and book a Buzz LL and do rides like Peter Pan, Snow White, etc and keep checking to see if your LL converts to a ME pass or if Buzz comes back up. If it converts to a ME pass during that time you haven’t wasted any time you could be using to use LLs but now you have a bonus LL that you could use on Millennium Falcon later when you’re in Galaxy’s Edge.
> 
> Also keep in mind that there are a good number of rides that typically have LLs available immediately. These are typically (from my experience) Star Tours, Buzz, Autopia, Small World, Roger Rabbit, Thunder (sometimes), Falcon, Splash (because it’s January but also it’s closed now), Grizzly, Monsters Inc, Incredicoaster, and Goofy’s Sky School. The others are usually about 30-60 minutes ahead (except Soarin’ is usually over 2 hours away and Toy Story is usually about 90 minutes away). If there’s plenty of ride breakdowns that you want to take advantage of, use the breaks in between LL conversions to ME passes to knock out the LLs that are immediate. For example say Matterhorn is down and you book a LL for it and it eventually converts to a ME pass. You want to book Matterhorn again but you’re in Tomorrowland and want to do Autopia, Star Tours, and Buzz. Before booking Matterhorn again quickly knock out those Tomorrowland rides and then book Matterhorn.
> 
> Also when you purposely book a LL for a ride that’s broken down keep checking as often as you can to see if the ride comes back up. Once it comes back up there is no longer hope for a ME pass for that specific situation.
> 
> Hopefully this helped answer your questions, is there anything else I can clarify?



This is very helpful, thank you very much!

I think we will try to take advantage of some downed rides if the opportunity comes up. I appreciate your insight on when LL's are available for near immediate return, that will help in putting together an outline for our days. We'll be there in a week, can't wait!


----------



## CableKC

I spent the weekend at DL and DCA using the Genie+ and LL$$ passes.

I would say that if you're one of those visitors that loves to go on the popular rides that Genie+ and LL$$ caters to and is okay with going on it once ( cuz you don't want to wait in lines ), then paying extra for what amounts to Fastpass is worth it.  

Some of my thoughts below:

- Genie+ / LL$$ pass is totally worth it at DL compared to using it at DCA.   At DL; because there are so many options to use the passes that you can pretty much space it out where you wait in some ride for 45 minutes, book some LL pass for the next hour and then "rinse and repeat" for the rest of the day.    You can probably fill up the vast majority of the day where you are riding something once every 30 to 45 minutes.      At DCA; because there are far fewer rides that utilize the LL pass, this translates into waiting in Standby Lines more often than not.
- Remember, you get to only use the LL pass for each ride, once a day.    This means that once you use the LL pass for ( let's say ) Space Mountain, then you won't have the option to book it later. 
- I was under the impression that for non-LL$$ passes ( as in, what is only included in the Genie+ pass ) that you can book passes at specific time slots later in the day ( like booking one for 4pm, even if the next available slot is at 12pm ).    But it looks like the LL passes ( both for Genie+ and LL$$ ) are available only for the next time slot that is available for that ride.
- Ride that uses LL that sells out - Soarin' ( DCA ) and Indiana Jones Ride ( DL ).
- Although this weekend appeared to be far less crowded compared to other weekends, I found that the LL passes were mainly available no more than 1 to 2 hours from the current time ( for the more popular rides ) and even as low as 5 minutes ( for the less popular rides ).   The only exceptions were Soarin' ( DCA ) and the Indiana Jones ride ( DL ) where the availability of those rides were up to 3 hours away from the current time.
- Just like Fastpass, you can't get a new non-LL$$ pass until you redeem the current pass that you signed up for.  I think that if the pass is several hours away, then there is some time limit ( like 2 hours or something ) where you will then be available to make another request.
- I found that the LL$$ for RotR, Spiderman WS and Cars RS were still available for purchase until mid to late afternoon.   It was far less crowded when I went, so it's possible that it may not be available earlier in the afternoon.
- For all LL passes, all I really did was continue to monitor the app to see what the next timeslot.   For the very popular rides, I knew that if I could wait it out while going on other rides with short standby or use another LL pass; I could wait it out so that I'm not stuck in Standby lines only.

I think that the best strategy to follow when using Genie+ and LL$$ is to arrive as early as possible and ride as many of your favorite rides via Standby and then save your LL passes for later in the afternoon and evening.   Since the wait times are far more reasonable compared to later in the morning and afternoon, I'd rather have waited in line for 45 minutes to an hour for the most popular ride and then use the LL pass later in the day.    I did that for WS on the first day and we waited in line for about 52 minutes  ( at rope drop ) and then use the LL$$ pass for the ride again later in the afternoon.    For Space Mountain, I did the same where we rode SM at 9am ( waiting only 25 minutes ) and then saved the LL pass for SM after riding RotR and Smugglers Run.   This was in the late afternoon, which means that we rode those 3 popular rides all in sequence in the span of 90 minutes.

In the end,  I will admit that I hate paying for stuff like this because it's just another way for Disney to "nickel and dime" us.   But because my Wife hates to wait in line, I was able to pay for it and take advantage of cutting the wait times down to 10 to 25 minutes ( which is far more palatable for her ).


----------



## Wilcojoe

What would most folks say is a reasonable wait time for RoTR, Websligers and RS Racers if arriving to the esplanade at about 30-45 minutes prior to park opening?  It seems like some of the die hards that review here and on other boards are arriving 1–1.5 hours before rope drop and I just dont think that’s feasible for everyone.  I am trying to get an idea of a realistic wait time at rope drop for someone in the middle or near the back of the pack.


----------



## disneylover102

Wilcojoe said:


> What would most folks say is a reasonable wait time for RoTR, Websligers and RS Racers if arriving to the esplanade at about 30-45 minutes prior to park opening?  It seems like some of the die hards that review here and on other boards are arriving 1–1.5 hours before rope drop and I just dont think that’s feasible for everyone.  I am trying to get an idea of a realistic wait time at rope drop for someone in the middle or near the back of the pack.


If you’re arriving 30-45 minutes before park opening and not necessarily rushing to the ride your wait time isn’t gonna be much better (in fact it might be worse) than it would be later in the day because EVERYONE goes to those rides first.

All 3 times I did Rise first last week I got there 1-1.5 hours before park opening and was able to maneuver myself to the front of the crowd and walk on to Rise. But each of those times when I got off the entire queue was full (except for the additional exterior queue by Critter Country) and the line was stretching all the way through Galaxy’s edge almost to the entrance to Frontierland. Later in the day the queue (including the exterior queue) was full but it wasn’t stretching outside the queue at all, let alone all the way through the very massive Galaxy’s Edge 

When I started at WS on 1/7 I arrived 1-1.5 hours before the park opened and was at the very front. I was one of the very first but when I got off the entire queue was full just like it usually is in the middle of the day.

I have never started (nor will I ever start) at RSR because of the amazing single rider line. What I’ve observed about that SR line is you basically walk onto the ride if you do it the first few hours the park is open and then it does build as the day goes on but it’s never more than a 25-30 minute wait. They have closed it in the evenings before but I’m not sure if they’re doing that anymore. If SR isn’t an option for you (you have young kids, you really want to ride together, etc), I don’t think it’s any different from Rise and WS in that many people rush there first and the line is as long or longer as it will be later in the day.

Personally I wouldn’t wait in those lines in the morning if I wasn’t near the front. However they may actually go quicker earlier in the day before a lot of people start using lightning lanes and are significantly prioritized. If staying until park closing is an option for you that will likely give you better results for standby wait times and the wait won’t cut into your park time (unless you’re park hopping and one park closes before another like is common for DCA to close an hour or two earlier than DL)

I’ve only done WS once at park closing (well kind of). That was on Halloween at Oogie Boogie Bash. The virtual queue was still in use and converted to standby right when OBB started and that’s when I got in line. I think I waited about 20 minutes. The situation is way different now that WS is always standby and the park doesn’t close at 6. But I have heard that the wait gets pretty short toward the end of the day.

I did RSR last with my sister last July when SR was closed but we wanted to do it when it was dark (as mentioned earlier they closed SR in the evening then) so we got in line soon before park closing and I think we waited about an hour but part of that was because it broke down for probably 15-20 minutes. I’ve heard other people say the wait has been much shorter at park closing since then.

Rise at park closing is a little more complicated. It’s pretty much never ever open past 9:30 so if the park closes at 10 or later your wait time at Rise is gonna cut into park time. Usually they say Rise is gonna be open until 8 and then update it on the app if it’s gonna close later. I was there on 1/7-1/8 and 1/10-1/12. I think it closed at 9 on 1/7 and 1/8 when the park was open until midnight and the line looked pretty long when it was about to close both times if I remember right. On 1/10 and 1/11 the park was open until 9 and Rise ended up being open until then and both days I only waited about 20-30 minutes from getting in line until sitting down on the final ride. It had been a lot longer an hour earlier so it really dies down in that last hour apparently. On 1/12 the park closed at 9 but Rise closed at 8 and I didn’t do it because I didn’t want the wait to cut into my last hour of my last park day.

Anyway my point is you’re likely better off trying to do WS and RSR at park closing than at rope drop. Rise is a little more complicated but if the park has an early closing (like 8 or 9) doing it last is probably a good bet. Keep in mind these rides (especially Rise and RSR) break down a LOT. So if you only have a day there and you’d be devastated if you don’t do those rides don’t risk waiting until the end of the day.

If you’re going to be at the park 30-45 minutes before it opens I think better rides to do first would be rides like Space, Indy, Guardians, and Soarin’. These will certainly have long waits later in the day but not everyone rushes to them first.

Hopefully this helps even if it’s not what you wanted to hear!


----------



## Wilcojoe

disneylover102 said:


> If you’re arriving 30-45 minutes before park opening and not necessarily rushing to the ride your wait time isn’t gonna be much better (in fact it might be worse) than it would be later in the day because EVERYONE goes to those rides first.
> 
> All 3 times I did Rise first last week I got there 1-1.5 hours before park opening and was able to maneuver myself to the front of the crowd and walk on to Rise. But each of those times when I got off the entire queue was full (except for the additional exterior queue by Critter Country) and the line was stretching all the way through Galaxy’s edge almost to the entrance to Frontierland. Later in the day the queue (including the exterior queue) was full but it wasn’t stretching outside the queue at all, let alone all the way through the very massive Galaxy’s Edge
> 
> When I started at WS on 1/7 I arrived 1-1.5 hours before the park opened and was at the very front. I was one of the very first but when I got off the entire queue was full just like it usually is in the middle of the day.
> 
> I have never started (nor will I ever start) at RSR because of the amazing single rider line. What I’ve observed about that SR line is you basically walk onto the ride if you do it the first few hours the park is open and then it does build as the day goes on but it’s never more than a 25-30 minute wait. They have closed it in the evenings before but I’m not sure if they’re doing that anymore. If SR isn’t an option for you (you have young kids, you really want to ride together, etc), I don’t think it’s any different from Rise and WS in that many people rush there first and the line is as long or longer as it will be later in the day.
> 
> Personally I wouldn’t wait in those lines in the morning if I wasn’t near the front. However they may actually go quicker earlier in the day before a lot of people start using lightning lanes and are significantly prioritized. If staying until park closing is an option for you that will likely give you better results for standby wait times and the wait won’t cut into your park time (unless you’re park hopping and one park closes before another like is common for DCA to close an hour or two earlier than DL)
> 
> I’ve only done WS once at park closing (well kind of). That was on Halloween at Oogie Boogie Bash. The virtual queue was still in use and converted to standby right when OBB started and that’s when I got in line. I think I waited about 20 minutes. The situation is way different now that WS is always standby and the park doesn’t close at 6. But I have heard that the wait gets pretty short toward the end of the day.
> 
> I did RSR last with my sister last July when SR was closed but we wanted to do it when it was dark (as mentioned earlier they closed SR in the evening then) so we got in line soon before park closing and I think we waited about an hour but part of that was because it broke down for probably 15-20 minutes. I’ve heard other people say the wait has been much shorter at park closing since then.
> 
> Rise at park closing is a little more complicated. It’s pretty much never ever open past 9:30 so if the park closes at 10 or later your wait time at Rise is gonna cut into park time. Usually they say Rise is gonna be open until 8 and then update it on the app if it’s gonna close later. I was there on 1/7-1/8 and 1/10-1/12. I think it closed at 9 on 1/7 and 1/8 when the park was open until midnight and the line looked pretty long when it was about to close both times if I remember right. On 1/10 and 1/11 the park was open until 9 and Rise ended up being open until then and both days I only waited about 20-30 minutes from getting in line until sitting down on the final ride. It had been a lot longer an hour earlier so it really dies down in that last hour apparently. On 1/12 the park closed at 9 but Rise closed at 8 and I didn’t do it because I didn’t want the wait to cut into my last hour of my last park day.
> 
> Anyway my point is you’re likely better off trying to do WS and RSR at park closing than at rope drop. Rise is a little more complicated but if the park has an early closing (like 8 or 9) doing it last is probably a good bet. Keep in mind these rides (especially Rise and RSR) break down a LOT. So if you only have a day there and you’d be devastated if you don’t do those rides don’t risk waiting until the end of the day.
> 
> If you’re going to be at the park 30-45 minutes before it opens I think better rides to do first would be rides like Space, Indy, Guardians, and Soarin’. These will certainly have long waits later in the day but not everyone rushes to them first.
> 
> Hopefully this helps even if it’s not what you wanted to hear!


This was very helpful and makes sense. We will be there 3 days with park hoppers and will purchase Genie plus all days.  I also don’t have a problem paying for the $LL but would prefer not to have to pay for it more than once for Rise for 4 people at $80 a day on top of whatever the going rate is for RSR and Web. I think your strategy makes sense so we will likely  avoid the $LL rides at rope drop and stick to the older  classics.


----------



## CableKC

Wilcojoe said:


> What would most folks say is a reasonable wait time for RoTR, Websligers and RS Racers if arriving to the esplanade at about 30-45 minutes prior to park opening?  It seems like some of the die hards that review here and on other boards are arriving 1–1.5 hours before rope drop and I just dont think that’s feasible for everyone.  I am trying to get an idea of a realistic wait time at rope drop for someone in the middle or near the back of the pack.


For WebSlingers Standby at Rope Drop on a Saturday at DCA, I got on the ride at 8:52am (  52 min wait ).


----------



## Wilcojoe

Question?  It’s currently 9:28am PT and Indiana Jones is temporarily closed but showing a LL for 9:30.  If I accept and get to the ride at 9:30 and it’s still closed do I immediately get the ME pass?  Like do I scan my phone at the entrance to show I am there?  Just trying to get an idea for how this works.  Obviously I am not at the park currently.  Lol


----------



## dukeybootie

Went this past Monday (MLK) with my family of four and had an amazing(ly expensive) time using G+ plus all three ILL options. In ride order:

Star Tours (standby)
Space Mountain (LL)
Buzz (standby)
MFSR (LL)
Big Thunder (LL)
ROTR (ILL)
Soarin' (LL)
Web Slingers (ILL)
Guardians (LL)
Luigi
Incredicoaster (LL)
Radiator Springs Racers (ILL)
Toy Story (LL)
Little Mermaid
Golden Zephyr
Jumpin' Jellyfish x3 (no wait)

Thoughts:
-this was our first time on Web Slingers; probably not going to pay for ILL in the future and definitely not waiting more than 20 minutes for it on standby
-even with ILL for Web Slingers, it took another 35+ minutes to actually sit down in the ride vehicle after scanning
-we did everything we wanted to do except the Mater ride, so mission accomplished in that sense
-it was very nice being able to time our ILL purchase for Racers as I have always wanted to ride it in the evening with the lights on
-it was the first ROTR experience for two of us so I bit the bullet and bought the ILL but I can't justify spending that kind of $ on a regular basis
-I do feel like I got my money's worth, but it is a heck of a lot of money. We might only have done 1/3 of our rides without G+ on this day otherwise, and it was much more relaxing as well.

Last and most important thought:
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ALLOW US TO RIDE MULTIPLE TIMES USING G+/LL

I don't know why this ridiculous "once only per ride" restriction is in place. We already paid a premium to get G+ after all. If we want to go on Guardians 5 times using LL, that means we aren't taking up LL space somewhere else, so it's not added congestion. And it was allowed with MaxPass anyway, so why take that away from us? By far my biggest criticism of G+. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way.


----------



## Wilcojoe

dukeybootie said:


> Went this past Monday (MLK) with my family of four and had an amazing(ly expensive) time using G+ plus all three ILL options. In ride order:
> 
> Star Tours (standby)
> Space Mountain (LL)
> Buzz (standby)
> MFSR (LL)
> Big Thunder (LL)
> ROTR (ILL)
> Soarin' (LL)
> Web Slingers (ILL)
> Guardians (LL)
> Luigi
> Incredicoaster (LL)
> Radiator Springs Racers (ILL)
> Toy Story (LL)
> Little Mermaid
> Golden Zephyr
> Jumpin' Jellyfish x3 (no wait)
> 
> Thoughts:
> -this was our first time on Web Slingers; probably not going to pay for ILL in the future and definitely not waiting more than 20 minutes for it on standby
> -even with ILL for Web Slingers, it took another 35+ minutes to actually sit down in the ride vehicle after scanning
> -we did everything we wanted to do except the Mater ride, so mission accomplished in that sense
> -it was very nice being able to time our ILL purchase for Racers as I have always wanted to ride it in the evening with the lights on
> -it was the first ROTR experience for two of us so I bit the bullet and bought the ILL but I can't justify spending that kind of $ on a regular basis
> -I do feel like I got my money's worth, but it is a heck of a lot of money. We might only have done 1/3 of our rides without G+ on this day otherwise, and it was much more relaxing as well.
> 
> Last and most important thought:
> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ALLOW US TO RIDE MULTIPLE TIMES USING G+/LL
> 
> I don't know why this ridiculous "once only per ride" restriction is in place. We already paid a premium to get G+ after all. If we want to go on Guardians 5 times using LL, that means we aren't taking up LL space somewhere else, so it's not added congestion. And it was allowed with MaxPass anyway, so why take that away from us? By far my biggest criticism of G+. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way.


Pretty good looking set list.  I agree an encore of the ILL rides doesn’t seem like it would add more congestion. I would hope that at $20 a pop for RoTR you aren’t waiting at all. 20 minutes for an ILL is no bueno.   How long was your wait on Rotr and Racers?  Also did you arrive at rope drop?


----------



## dukeybootie

Wilcojoe said:


> Pretty good looking set list.  I agree an encore of the ILL rides doesn’t seem like it would add more congestion. I would hope that at $20 a pop for RoTR you aren’t waiting at all. 20 minutes for an ILL is no bueno.   How long was your wait on Rotr and Racers?  Also did you arrive at rope drop?



We did arrive at rope drop but deliberately took things easy (no running for anything). Walked onto Star Tours while grabbing LL for Space Mtn at the same time. By the time we entered the Space Mtn queue the standby line was already at 45 minutes.

ILL details:

1. ROTR: didn't wait at all, walked straight to the briefing area after checking in. The ride had gone down for about an hour (?) after I purchased the ILL and *just* came back online maybe 10 minutes before my party arrived for ILL check in. There were tons of people rushing towards ROTR during this time and it was nice not having to compete with that, esp with two little ones in tow.

2. WS: waited with other ILL folks for about 3-5 minutes before going into the briefing area. What I didn't know about or expect was the 30 minute wait that followed the briefing. Not sure if this is the usual pace for WS but it took a long time to load the cars. Anyway, not an ILL fault is what I'm saying.

3. RSR: waited with other ILL folks for about 1-2 minutes at merge point before going to loading ramp area. Deliberately waited to purchase this ILL until the return window started ~5pm to catch the ride in all its twilight glory.


----------



## Wilcojoe

dukeybootie said:


> We did arrive at rope drop but deliberately took things easy (no running for anything). Walked onto Star Tours while grabbing LL for Space Mtn at the same time. By the time we entered the Space Mtn queue the standby line was already at 45 minutes.
> 
> ILL details:
> 
> 1. ROTR: didn't wait at all, walked straight to the briefing area after checking in. The ride had gone down for about an hour (?) after I purchased the ILL and *just* came back online maybe 10 minutes before my party arrived for ILL check in. There were tons of people rushing towards ROTR during this time and it was nice not having to compete with that, esp with two little ones in tow.
> 
> 2. WS: waited with other ILL folks for about 3-5 minutes before going into the briefing area. What I didn't know about or expect was the 30 minute wait that followed the briefing. Not sure if this is the usual pace for WS but it took a long time to load the cars. Anyway, not an ILL fault is what I'm saying.
> 
> 3. RSR: waited with other ILL folks for about 1-2 minutes at merge point before going to loading ramp area. Deliberately waited to purchase this ILL until the return window started ~5pm to catch the ride in all its twilight glory.


I like your strategy and the order of your rides makes great sense.  What time would you say you left the park for the night?


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## dukeybootie

Wilcojoe said:


> I like your strategy and the order of your rides makes great sense.  What time would you say you left the park for the night?



Both parks closed at 8pm that day. Wife and 6yo daughter hit up Mermaid/Zephyr/Jellyfish in the last 15 minutes and were running to Silly Symphony Swings when the closing announcement was made. Did get to do Jellyfish 3x with no waiting thanks to an awesome ride operator who even suggested trying different seats to get different views each time.


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## Dug720

dukeybootie said:


> plus all three ILL options.



I thought you could only get 2 of the ILL options. (I have no desire to do anything Star Wars, so it's a moot point for me. But I'm just clarifying.)


----------



## dukeybootie

Dug720 said:


> I thought you could only get 2 of the ILL options. (I have no desire to do anything Star Wars, so it's a moot point for me. But I'm just clarifying.)



I had read that too but for whatever reason I was able to get all three (and have the CC receipts). I never held more than one at a time, though, so perhaps that was the trick?


----------



## Dug720

dukeybootie said:


> I had read that too but for whatever reason I was able to get all three (and have the CC receipts). I never held more than one at a time, though, so perhaps that was the trick?



Gotcha. I wasn't disbelieving you - just curious!


----------



## Laur0406

We have tickets with MaxPass that we originally booked for March 2022.  The tickets are still valid through December 2022...but now that MaxPass doesn't, does anyone know what happens?  Will it automatically convert to Genie+?


----------



## mich311e

Laur0406 said:


> We have tickets with MaxPass that we originally booked for March 2022.  The tickets are still valid through December 2022...but now that MaxPass doesn't, does anyone know what happens?  Will it automatically convert to Genie+?



It won't automatically convert, you have to go to the ticket booth to get a refund by gift card.


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## disneylover102

For those wondering, you can buy all 3 ILLs (RSR, WS, and ROTR) if one of them breaks down during your window and converts to an all day pass for that ride. While I was there I bought ROTR and WS every day. ROTR kept breaking down during my window and would convert to an all day pass and the system would forget I bought it in the first place. At that point I could either buy ROTR again (which I did) or buy RSR. If neither ILL ride breaks down during your window you can’t book the other one.

Looking at the app today would be a perfect day for multiple experience passes… Mansion, Space, Thunder, Matterhorn, and Roger Rabbit are all down…


----------



## Belia

Could someone explain how to leverage ride breakdowns for multiple experience passes?  I understand what you mean, but I don't get how to make it work.  Thank you!


----------



## disneylover102

Belia said:


> Could someone explain how to leverage ride breakdowns for multiple experience passes?  I understand what you mean, but I don't get how to make it work.  Thank you!


Basically wait for rides to break down and then book a LL for them if that works for you. Say I have a LL for Space that starts in 20 minutes and I notice Matterhorn is down. I wouldn’t cancel my Space LL since it’s so soon but I’d get to that LL as early as I’m allowed (5 minutes before the return window starts) and I would immediately book Matterhorn once I was scanned in to Space. Now once I have Matterhorn booked and I’m waiting for a ME pass I can’t book any other LLs. So I’m gonna use this time until either Matterhorn comes back up (in which case I would cancel my LL unless I actually want to use it) or my LL is converted to a ME pass to do things that don’t require LL. For example I might use this time to knock out some rides without LL such as Pirates, Peter Pan, etc. I might go do single rider at the Falcon. I might eat. I might do a standby line for a LL ride such as Thunder or Indy that I’ll want to repeat later anyway (and LL doesn’t affect those as severely as others like Space). While I’m doing these things I’m gonna keep checking to see if Matterhorn comes back up or if my LL converts to a ME pass.

Basically just keep a constant eye throughout the day on ride breakdowns and book them as is convenient. You can always cancel a LL. Make sure if there’s a lot of breakdowns that you’re still booking LLs you intend to use for your biggest priorities (like mine would be Space, Indy, Guardians, etc) in plenty of time before you leave. In times where you’re waiting for a LL to convert, for a ride to come back, etc, just focus on doing anything that doesn’t require LL. Does that make sense?


----------



## brenda1966

This is all very helpful.  And you can see which rides are down via the map in the disneyland app that shows the wait times?  Or are you seeing this in Genie+? ooh, maybe on the Tip Board??  I feel like I need to find a visual walk through with screen shots of the genie+  screens so that I know what I'm doing before I give this a whirl. 
And good to know about how one was able to book a third ILL.  So much to learn!


----------



## disneylover102

brenda1966 said:


> This is all very helpful.  And you can see which rides are down via the map in the disneyland app that shows the wait times?  Or are you seeing this in Genie+?  I feel like I need to find a visual walk through with screen shots of the genie+  screens so that I know what I'm doing before I give this a whirl.
> And good to know about how one was able to book a third ILL.  So much to learn!


You can see what rides are down on both the map and the tip board. When are you going? I’ll be there again buying genie+ February 9-12 so if you’re going after that I’d be happy to get screenshots of everything I can. If you’re going before I can send some screenshots from the app but I won’t be able to get everything


----------



## brenda1966

yes, screen shots would be so helpful!  I'm looking at the tip board now.  Lots of genie LL available immediately.  I'll be going in March, so closer to spring break times and likely busier.   I plan to try it out for sure the first day as we won't arrive at the park until after lunch.


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## disneylover102

brenda1966 said:


> yes, screen shots would be so helpful!  I'm looking at the tip board now.  Lots of genie LL available immediately.  I'll be going in March, so closer to spring break times and likely busier.   I plan to try it out for sure the first day as we won't arrive at the park until after lunch.


I’ll be sure to send screenshots of genie+ once I’m there, for now I can send screenshots that I can get from home


----------



## disneylover102

Here’s a few screenshots of the map on the app. When you open the app click on the map icon on the bottom to get to the map. You can look around at all the wait times on the map or have it show you a list. As you’re looking around on the map at the different rides if a particular ride has a wait time it’s obviously open. If it has a little star icon, however, it is not open. This can mean one of  3 things:

1. That ride is closed for refurbishment and will not open that day. For example, Splash Mountain is currently closed for refurbishment. One of these screenshots shows the star icon on Splash Mountain and when I clicked on it it said in orange, “closed for refurbishment.”
2. That ride is temporarily closed and should open later, hopefully soon but not always. When I took these screenshots Space Mountain was down and when I clicked on that star icon it said in orange, “temporarily closed.” You want to pay attention for cases like this, because lightning lanes are still given out for these rides (more on that later).
3. The park is open but either the ride simply does not have a posted wait time on the app or it is not scheduled to be open the whole day and hasn’t opened yet or has already closed. Most popular rides are open the whole park day. However, occasionally they can be scheduled to open late or close early for maintenance. A rare example that could happen: I believe it was opening day of genie+ and Guardians didn’t open until early afternoon even though it’s usually open the entire park day. A much more common example is Rise of the Resistance. It typically opens with the park but doesn’t always close with it. It typically closes at 8 or 9 even if the park is open later. For example on 1/7 when I was there Rise closed at 9 while the park closed at midnight. On 1/10 Rise closed with the park at 9. But on 1/12 Rise closed at 8 while the park closed at 9. It depends on the day. You can look at the scheduled hours by clicking on the ride icon from the map and scrolling down, as one of these screenshots shows for Rise. You can also look up the ride on the Disneyland website and see scheduled hours for the next 6 weeks. It seemed to me on my last trip that Rise was always scheduled to open with the park and close at 8 and then if it was gonna be able to close at 9 they would update that later in the day. So keep an eye on that.


----------



## disneylover102

Ok now on the app if you click on the 3 lines on the bottom right corner this screen with a bunch of things to click on will come up. I’ll just briefly describe what all these things are.

Tip Board- I’ll discuss in detail later but this is where you can see a list of all the rides with their wait times and lightning lane return times.

My Genie Day- this is where you can tell the app what you want to do that day and what you want to see first on your tip board, where your lightning lanes to redeem show up, and where a bunch of completely useless recommendations will show up LOL. More on that later

Tickets and Passes- this is where you can most easily link all your park tickets and you can use this part of the app to scan your ticket at the park gate. With a normal park ticket when they scan this they’ll give you a paper ticket. But with a magic key (which is what I have) they don’t. So I use this part of the app to scan my magic key every time I enter a park, although I have a screenshot of it just in case.

Future Plans- honestly you don’t really need this, it just shows what park reservations, dining, etc you have for the future. The only use for this is really just to make sure your reservations haven’t been deleted

Virtual Queues- you won’t need this. Virtual queues used to be for Rise and WEB Slingers, but they just do standby/lightning lane there now. They can technically turn VQ on for either of them at any time but that hasn’t happened yet even during Christmas break. So just assume it’s standby/LL only.

Mobile Food Orders- this is obviously where you go to make a mobile order. You select a time window to go pick it up. Definitely use this, you save a lot of time

Photos- one HUGE perk of genie+ is you get free photos! This is where you link them. Whether or not you bought genie+ you can link them here but if you didn’t buy genie+ that day there’s a watermark on your photos. Just click on photos and then “link photos.” There are 3 ways to link photos (one is for rides, the others are for photos you get in front of the castle, the Falcon, etc):
1. Attraction photo ID. For Space, Splash, Racers, Guardians, and Incredicoaster when you get off and see your photo on the screen there will be an ID (a letter followed by several numbers). Take a photo with your phone of the ID and then you can type that ID into the app. 
2. Show photopass code. When you get photos taken have the photopass photographer scan your QR code from the app (I don’t want to post mine for obvious reasons but it’s under “show photopass code.” 
3. If you don’t have that QR code available to scan the photographer will give you a photopass card that you can scan through the app under “link photopass card.”

(Note this will likely change later this year when magic bands come)

My Hotel Reservation- I’ve never personally used this since I think paying thousands of dollars to stay at a hotel I’m just gonna sleep at and have no perks whatsoever is a waste. But if you do have a hotel reservation it’ll show up here

Park Hours & Info- this is just where you can see a calendar with park hours, ride closures, and the entertainment schedule for today. Park hours on the website are much more detailed (the entertainment schedule shows for every day for the next 6 weeks). You can get to this on the main page of the app

Play Disney Parks- this is just basically a link to download the Play Disney Parks app

Shop Merchandise- this is just a link for Shop Disney

Chat with Us- this opens a chat with a Disney cast member. This was helpful when on my first day this last trip I couldn’t buy genie+ at first and I was able to get help fairly quickly.


----------



## disneylover102

Now, more details on my genie day:
There are several things you can do on this page:
1. Click “get started now” where you’ll select a day to plan and tell genie what you want to appear first on your tip board (more on tip board later). You can select like 8 or 9 rides and I prefer to select all the genie+ rides I can since I can go to the map for wait times for non-LL rides.
2. You can buy genie+. There’s a place near the bottom to do this. One of these screenshots shows that I’m not eligible to buy genie+ because I have not entered a park. You can’t buy genie+ until you’re scanned into a park.
3. You can view and redeem any lightning lanes you have. I recommend screenshotting these and/or your ticket barcode in case genie isn’t working when you need to scan in for a lightning lane.
4. You can view the completely useless recommendations you’re given to do and I hope for your sake you ignore them. For example it might be rope drop and my legs are ready to rush to Rise but Genie is telling me not to do anything for 45 minutes and then do Tiki Room even though I never said I wanted to do it because the forecasted wait is low at that time. It might say after that to go do the carousel 30 minutes after that and then go wait 2 hours for Rise. Those are useless suggestions so I’m gonna ignore them and do what I want to do, which is gonna be to rope drop Rise and then do rides like Space and Thunder before they get even longer. The forecasted waits that are included on each individual ride page might be useful to you but just know to look at ride wait times throughout the day and go where you want to go when you want to go, keeping in mind rides that are gonna likely be shorter at night like Space, rides like Rise that everyone is gonna rush to first, and any lightning lanes you’re going to use. But please please PLEASE don’t listen to what genie thinks you should do. It’s useless!
5. You can tell genie what you’d like to do in the other park when you’re heading over there. Don’t do this until you’re done with your first park. Your tip board will automatically show the last park you told genie what you wanted to do in


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## disneylover102

Ok now one last post: the tip board.

Once you’ve told genie what you want to do in each park the tip board will first list the rides you said you wanted to do and then list the rest after that. You can always edit the rides you want it to show first. I like it to show only the rides I’m eligible to book lightning lane for so when it’s time to book another one all my options are right there. Once I’m ineligible to book a ride anymore I edit my selections and take that ride off. For example if I book Thunder and I successfully use my lightning lane without it going down I am no longer eligible to book Thunder. So I take it off the list of rides that show on the tip board first. However, if Thunder goes down during my return window and converts to a multiple experience pass the system forgets I ever booked Thunder and I am eligible to book it again. In that case I would keep it on the list of rides that show first on my tip board. 


You can see on the tip board rides that are temporarily closed. You can see in these screenshots that even when Space and Thunder were down lightning lanes weren’t super far away (note the time on my phone is in Utah and an hour later than Disneyland time). Sometimes they are that close but usually they’re more like 30-45 minutes away or more for the more popular LL rides. Pay attention to broken down rides like literally all day for the chance for more multiple experience passes. 

When you want to book a lightning lane just click on the time shown on the ride you want to book and follow the steps you’re given. I’ll post screenshots when I’m in the park actually doing this again and don’t have to dig through old


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## disneylover102

Ok I tried my best to provide good screenshots and clear instructions but it’s hard to describe it all so feel free to ask questions and I’ll answer the best I can


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## brenda1966

disneylover102 said:


> Ok I tried my best to provide good screenshots and clear instructions but it’s hard to describe it all so feel free to ask questions and I’ll answer the best I can


Thanks a bunch! This was really helpful.


----------



## Wilcojoe

Can you choose a LL from the DLH?  For example, I want to choose a LL for Space Mountain before returning back to the park after an afternoon nap.


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## Rich M

Wilcojoe said:


> Can you choose a LL from the DLH?  For example, I want to choose a LL for Space Mountain before returning back to the park after an afternoon nap.


Yes once you have scanned into a park  you can continue to get them after you leave.


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## allimaree

Can you choose a LL or ILL from another park? We are stuck starting in DCA both days we are going to be in the park this week and we really want to do Rise. Not sure how quickly rise sells out but can I buy the ILL from DCA if I need to before I'm allowed to go over to DL after 1:00?


----------



## Rich M

allimaree said:


> Can you choose a LL or ILL from another park? We are stuck starting in DCA both days we are going to be in the park this week and we really want to do Rise. Not sure how quickly rise sells out but can I buy the ILL from DCA if I need to before I'm allowed to go over to DL after 1:00?



Yes but need to make sure its a time you can get in the park


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## DisDad 407

disneylover102 said:


> Ok I tried my best to provide good screenshots and clear instructions but it’s hard to describe it all so feel free to ask questions and I’ll answer the best I can


Wow, You are such a helpful person! Thanks so much for this information. It will be a great help to me for my upcoming trip. Thanks again for posting this!


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## mel2014

Rich M said:


> Yes but need to make sure its a time you can get in the park



From previous posts, if you have a parkhopper and buy a LL in the other park, the system will automatically offer you only times after 1 pm (e.g., if you enter DCA at 8:30 am and immediately try to buy a ROTR LL, you won't get a time any earlier than 1 pm) and you will get the earliest available time after that). It will do the same thing for Genie+ -- if you enter DL and make a Genie+ selection for Soarin, you'll be offered the first available time after 1 pm. While this will lock you out of making a new selection in DL for 2 hours unless you cancel, as disneylover102 described in previous posts, this can be a good strategy to get a guaranteed afternoon Genie+ selection in the other park while not wasting your early morning low crowd hours using your once-per-day Genie+ rides during that time (it seems like this strategy works better when your starting park is DL, since there are significantly more Genie+ attractions and the booking windows are consequently slower to "sell out" for the day).


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## disneylover102

allimaree said:


> Can you choose a LL or ILL from another park? We are stuck starting in DCA both days we are going to be in the park this week and we really want to do Rise. Not sure how quickly rise sells out but can I buy the ILL from DCA if I need to before I'm allowed to go over to DL after 1:00?


You won’t have any problem. Even if you’re the first person scanned into DCA if you try to book Rise it’ll change your return time to 1 PM. But they don’t even run out that fast and are available well into the late afternoon and even when they run out Disney releases more. As far as regular LLs go it works the same way. You could book Space or Indy or something and the time would change to 1. Soarin’ is usually at least a couple hours out though so I don’t think it would be a terrible idea to book that first instead. Whatever you prefer.

You mentioned you’re stuck starting in DCA both days. Is this just an issue of no park reservations being available at Disneyland? I just looked at the park reservation availability for magic keys and regular park tickets and the only day that didn’t have Disneyland available was for tomorrow (Friday) for regular park tickets. I definitely found for my interests starting at Disneyland was a lot better because there’s a lot more to do, it’s an extra opportunity to walk onto Rise for free (if you have insanely fast legs and sanity and are willing to get there super early), and there’s more genie+ rides to break down that you can book and potentially get more multiple experience passes (if you’re in DCA and Matterhorn breaks down but it’s 10 AM if you book Matterhorn it’ll change your return time to 1). Not that starting in DCA is bad or anything, I just found that all the rides I like to repeat there are really easy to repeat after 1 PM:
1. WEB Slingers once per day is good for me and that’s a very easy ILL to grab (and you can book it twice if it breaks down during your window)
2. Guardians typically has a fairly long line after 1 but multiple experience passes are good on it
3. Radiator Springs Racers has a great single rider line and while it’s typically a walk on in the morning, you only wait 15-20 minutes pretty much any time later in the day. (Also you could buy an ILL but that’s not worth paying to skip 15 minutes for especially if it’s replacing WEB or Rise)
4. Soarin’ is one I’m ok with doing once per day with LL. Multiple experience passes are good here as well. Note standby is ALWAYS ridiculously long because LL is super prioritized 
5. Incredicoaster is a great LL but honestly you’re probably never gonna wait in standby more than 20-25 minutes even later in the day 
6. Toy Story Mania is a great one to do one LL per day. Multiple experience passes are not valid here btw

All the other DCA rides are easy one and done any time (or don’t ever do as long as I live like the Ferris wheel of death)

But then at Disneyland you’re gonna get some really nice short waits early in the morning and multiple experience passes aren’t valid on the biggest regular LL rides like they are in DCA (Space, Indy, and Matterhorn are excluded although do keep the single rider line in mind for Matterhorn). So if you can change your park reservations to Disneyland for one or both days I would highly recommend that if you have a sort of similar Disney touring style as me


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## allimaree

Thanks so much. My daughter is dancing in DCA both tomorrow and Saturday and she has to check in at 11:30 and 12:30 respectively. So we have to start at DCA or she wouldn’t be able to get in. Does that make sense?


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## disneylover102

allimaree said:


> Thanks so much. My daughter is dancing in DCA both tomorrow and Saturday and she has to check in at 11:30 and 12:30 respectively. So we have to start at DCA or she wouldn’t be able to get in. Does that make sense?


Ah that makes sense. I was in dance in junior high and we went to Disneyland one summer and danced in DCA. That was fun but the group drove me insane lol, they wanted to have all 50 of us doing the same things a bunch of the time and fight about what to do next and since it wasn’t an official school thing with official rules I sneaked away from the group the last day and did 10 times as many rides as anyone else. Then I quit that group cause the teacher wasn’t great… lol hopefully you and your daughter have a better experience with your group than I did with mine


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## allimaree

disneylover102 said:


> Ah that makes sense. I was in dance in junior high and we went to Disneyland one summer and danced in DCA. That was fun but the group drove me insane lol, they wanted to have all 50 of us doing the same things a bunch of the time and fight about what to do next and since it wasn’t an official school thing with official rules I sneaked away from the group the last day and did 10 times as many rides as anyone else. Then I quit that group cause the teacher wasn’t great… lol hopefully you and your daughter have a better experience with your group than I did with mine


Haha! You’ve truly been a Disney lover from the beginning.  Luckily, we’ll be on our own for most of the day. Any suggestions for conquering Disneyland after 1:00?


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## allimaree

allimaree said:


> Haha! You’ve truly been a Disney lover from the beginning.  Luckily, we’ll be on our own for most of the day. Any suggestions for conquering Disneyland after 1:00?


Sorry, just saw your very good answer on the other thread. Thanks so much!


----------



## allimaree

Yesterday went pretty well except as we were waiting at the front of the rope between Carthay and Grizzly falls, a cast member told us that RSR wasn’t going to open with the park. Might be an hour or two. No problem—we’ll do Web Slingers. Then a little while later, another cast member told us Web was also down and would not open with the park. So when the rope dropped we all booked it to Guardians but so did an entire different rope crowd. Everyone ended up crowding into the same line but some people weren’t happy about it. All in all, we had a pretty unproductive morning which was frustrating. The late morning and afternoon went better and we got almost everything done we wanted to do.

One new thing we noticed—our multi experience pass we got from Buzz going down worked at Space Mountain.


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## disneylover102

allimaree said:


> Yesterday went pretty well except as we were waiting at the front of the rope between Carthay and Grizzly falls, a cast member told us that RSR wasn’t going to open with the park. Might be an hour or two. No problem—we’ll do Web Slingers. Then a little while later, another cast member told us Web was also down and would not open with the park. So when the rope dropped we all booked it to Guardians but so did an entire different rope crowd. Everyone ended up crowding into the same line but some people weren’t happy about it. All in all, we had a pretty unproductive morning which was frustrating. The late morning and afternoon went better and we got almost everything done we wanted to do.
> 
> One new thing we noticed—our multi experience pass we got from Buzz going down worked at Space Mountain.


Oh no, that’s very frustrating!

And that’s great news! Was it valid on Matterhorn or Indy? Maybe they’ve updated what it’s valid on


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## allimaree

disneylover102 said:


> Oh no, that’s very frustrating!
> 
> And that’s great news! Was it valid on Matterhorn or Indy? Maybe they’ve updated what it’s valid on


I think yes on Matterhorn, not sure on Indy. But then, yesterday, when I got another one for Soarin’ going down, it was not good on Space. Seems to vary but make sure to look closely at the available rides. You may be surprised!


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## disneylover102

allimaree said:


> I think yes on Matterhorn, not sure on Indy. But then, yesterday, when I got another one for Soarin’ going down, it was not good on Space. Seems to vary but make sure to look closely at the available rides. You may be surprised!


Interesting. When I was there I got makeup passes from Roger Rabbit, Thunder, Falcon, Soarin’, Grizzly, and Goofy’s going down and they were all the same: good on any ride except Rise, Peter Pan, Space, Indy, Matterhorn, Toy Story, Racers, or WEB Slingers. Maybe it’s randomly different on Buzz? I’ll have to experiment on that more when I’m there next week


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## disneylover102

Ok I’m back at Disneyland today through Saturday and I’m buying genie+ each day. I probably won’t buy Rise or WEB Slingers every day this time since I’m on more of a budget this time but I’ll report my experiences each day like I did last time. If anyone has any questions while I’m here or wants screenshots of specific thing lmk


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## jjjones325

I know this is covered elsewhere and probably easy to find, but figured I'd go the lazy route and just ask.

Making my first ever Disneyland visit next week.  Bought Genie+.  Can I only start making reservations when I enter the park?  How quickly do times fill up?

I'm a veteran of WDW where you can start at 7 AM and some rides are gone for the day in a minute.

Thanks, all!!!

PS:  And I can download all my photos for free since I have Genie+, right?


----------



## WAstateDVCDaddy

dukeybootie said:


> Last and most important thought:
> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ALLOW US TO RIDE MULTIPLE TIMES USING G+/LL
> 
> I don't know why this ridiculous "once only per ride" restriction is in place. We already paid a premium to get G+ after all. If we want to go on Guardians 5 times using LL, that means we aren't taking up LL space somewhere else, so it's not added congestion. And it was allowed with MaxPass anyway, so why take that away from us? By far my biggest criticism of G+. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way.



Unfortunately it would be added congestion.  If you rode Guardians 5x, chances are 1000 other G+ users would also want to ride it 5x.  The waits for the really popular LL rides would be a lot longer, and everyone would complain because the LL waits are so long, when in reality, it’s only a few of the LL rides that are jammed up.

I kinda miss the days of the ticket books!


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## dukeybootie

WAstateDVCDaddy said:


> Unfortunately it would be added congestion.  If you rode Guardians 5x, chances are 1000 other G+ users would also want to ride it 5x.  The waits for the really popular LL rides would be a lot longer, and everyone would complain because the LL waits are so long, when in reality, it’s only a few of the LL rides that are jammed up.
> 
> I kinda miss the days of the ticket books!



On the one hand, I don't disagree with you on a hypothetical level. But on the other hand, this was previously allowed with MaxPass and I don't think it caused the problem you are describing back then. So by that token I remain confused as to why this couldn't be brought back.


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## MonocularVision

dukeybootie said:


> On the one hand, I don't disagree with you on a hypothetical level. But on the other hand, this was previously allowed with MaxPass and I don't think it caused the problem you are describing back then. So by that token I remain confused as to why this couldn't be brought back.



It seems to me that the return times for G+ are_ vastly_ improved from MP days. When we were there late December we were able to get on any G+ ride even after rolling in after 10 or 11. Back during MP days a lot of rides would have already either run out or had return times late in the evening.

The difference could at least be accounted for by free FP offerings but I think the once-per-day rule is having a major positive impact on return time availability.


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## disneylover102

jjjones325 said:


> I know this is covered elsewhere and probably easy to find, but figured I'd go the lazy route and just ask.
> 
> Making my first ever Disneyland visit next week.  Bought Genie+.  Can I only start making reservations when I enter the park?  How quickly do times fill up?
> 
> I'm a veteran of WDW where you can start at 7 AM and some rides are gone for the day in a minute.
> 
> Thanks, all!!!
> 
> PS:  And I can download all my photos for free since I have Genie+, right?


Yes you make reservations once you enter the park. Most stuff doesn’t sell out until very late except Soarin’ and Matterhorn which run out a few hours before park closing. And yes photos are free


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## WAstateDVCDaddy

dukeybootie said:


> On the one hand, I don't disagree with you on a hypothetical level. But on the other hand, this was previously allowed with MaxPass and I don't think it caused the problem you are describing back then. So by that token I remain confused as to why this couldn't be brought back.


MaxPass was different - Disney planned for MP to be the step up from FP, so a premium service that only some people would use.  I think they want/expect a higher adoption rate with G+ since it’s the only option, and if everyone’s buying G+, they have to design it for larger quantities of use.  I do seem to remember MP having issues with late availability or no availability for passes on the most popular rides at times, but maybe that’s my (bad) memory playing tricks on me?


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## senoragilbert

Well, thanks everyone for your tips. We found the biggest issue with Genie+ is when a ride goes down when you have already scanned in. You've lost time and you get a multi-experience pass, which only guarantees a longer line to wait in again when you come back. This happened to us TWICE on Soarin'. Guest services was downright rude when we expressed our frustration with the lost time. the ME passes are great when you haven't gotten in line yet, but they're awful if you've already scanned in and are waiting to load.


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## disneylover102

Here’s my genie+ and individual LL report for 2/9. I’m typing a lot of this up 2 days later with a full very successful park day in between so I don’t necessarily remember every little detail lol



I arrived about 6:30 for an 8:00 park opening with a reservation at Disneyland. I was almost the first lined up at security. At 7:10 security opened and a little before 7:30 they scanned my ticket. For some reason California Adventure lightning lanes weren’t available yet but I figured I might as well reserve something so I got Space from 8-9. But by the time I got to the rope at Frontierland, lightning lanes at California Adventure were available so I got Soarin’ for 1-2 PM and was gonna be eligible to book another LL at 9:33 (2 hours later). 



At 8:00 the rope dropped and the stampede with me at the front rushed to Rise… which was down. I wish they had done what they’ve done at DCA and tell you at the rope if any of the big rides are down (when I started at DCA last month they told everyone Racers would be closed and that WEB Slingers would have a brief delay). It took a few minutes to go opposite the stampede of people who weren’t aware Rise was down. I hurried over to Space and waited a little less than 20 minutes. While I was in line I noticed Matterhorn was down so I booked a LL in an hour. 



After I got off Space I headed to Indy which was posted at 20 minutes. It ended up being 12. Matterhorn came back up right before I would’ve gotten a bonus and honestly I don’t remember what I booked after that but there was something that was down that I booked. Whatever it was came back up right before I would’ve gotten a bonus. 



After Indy I went and did Thunder which was posted at 15 and ended up being 10. Rise came back up and by the time I got over there it was posted at 55 and I waited 45 to get on the final ride portion, which really isn’t a terrible wait. It would’ve gone faster but toward the end of my time in line, lightning lane started getting a bit backed up which slowed down standby. After I got off I went on it again with lightning lane. It took about 5 minutes to get to the preshow. 



At this point whatever I had booked before had come back up without a bonus LL given so I booked Thunder for soon and after Rise I went and used that. While in line I refreshed a bunch and got Space for immediately (I told genie to just show me Falcon, Indiana, and Space which were all an hour or two ahead and kept refreshing until Space was immediate). After scanning into Space I got Star Tours in 15 minutes (normally it’s immediate but it was oddly popular on that day and was 45 minutes in standby). After getting off Space I used my Star Tours LL and got an immediate one for Buzz, which I did afterwards. After scanning into Buzz I was able to get a Falcon LL in 15 minutes (and by the time I finished Buzz and got over there it was time to redeem it). Once I scanned into Falcon I got Toy Story (I might’ve booked something that was down first, I don’t remember). Once I got off I got right back into the single rider line (I only did LL so I could ask to be pilot which I was) and got right on. 



Then it was time to park hop so I went and did Cars single rider and got on in less than 10 minutes. Then I went and did Incredicoaster standby which was posted at 40 minutes and ended up being about half an hour. Then I scanned into Toy Story and booked Indiana Jones for 20 minutes later (after some refreshing) because it was down. However it came back up soon after. So I booked Incredicoaster immediately and did that after Toy Story (Toy Story took a lot longer than normal because it had a brief delay and LL got backed up). Then I booked Guardians for probably an hour later. 



Then I met up with my friend who didn’t buy genie+ and we did standby for Guardians which was posted at 60 and it was almost exactly that (from when we got in line to when we sat on the ride). Then when we got off I scanned into Guardians and tried and tried and tried and tried to get a Soarin’ LL as I met back up with my friend and did Animation Academy and Turtle Talk With Crush. Idk if they were super backed up, running at half capacity, etc but no matter how much I refreshed absolutely nothing showed up for Soarin’. 



Let this be a lesson for those who consider Soarin’ a very high priority. For me Soarin’ is definitely a priority but I’ve been on it many times, I had 3 days left on this trip, I’ve been on 3 other long trips since July, and I’m moving to Florida for the Disney College Program next week where Soarin’ is exactly the same. So while not getting on it was sad since I love it, it was just one time on one day. But if going on this ride is a very rare and/or valuable experience for you, this needs to be your #1 priority lightning lane. They do run out hours ahead of time unlike almost anything else (Space and Matterhorn do run out early occasionally, like the day I’m writing this I almost didn’t get Space when there was like 6 hours left of park hours). That’s part of the reason why my suggestion is to book it first even when you’re starting in Disneyland assuming you’re there at/before park opening. If you’re like me and go way before the park opens you’ll be scanned in about 30-45 minutes before park opening (it’s been 30 minutes before for 8:00 openings and 45 minutes for 9:00 openings). If you’re the first few people at the gate they’ll scan your ticket a minute before actually letting everybody in. If not you’ll scan your ticket and then have to rush in right away if you’re doing Rise first. But if you can be one of those first few people you can buy genie+ and start reserving rides right away in that minute before being let in and then immediately activate that 2 hour rule. For example if at 7:30 I buy genie+ and book Soarin’ my time will change to 1-2 and I can book another at 9:30. Now when the park opens you have a choice if any rides have a delayed opening: you can keep your Soarin’ LL and give up the possibility of a bonus LL or you can cancel your Soarin’ LL and book some of those breakdown rides and have to activate the 2 hour rule later if you’re even able to grab one, which on this day, I wasn’t. The strategy or canceling Soarin’ and booking breakdown rides did not work well at all on this day but I will say it worked beautifully the two days after, which I still need to write a report on (currently I’m writing this part of the report 3 days later). 



Anyway so I gave up on getting Soarin’. There’s only so much refreshing you can do LOL. So at this point I got a LL for Indiana Jones which I believe was broken down (I believe I aurally did that just before doing Crush). It came back up but it was one I wanted to actually do so I kept the pass. When we park hopped I went to go use my LL but noticed there was barely 

any outdoor line for it which means it would’ve been a waste to use it just yet since the outdoor line is the only thing you skip. I think since it had been down that’s why the line wasn’t huge. I figured I would do standby and then re-ride with my LL. However when I was almost on the ride it broke down so I squeezed past a bunch of people to get through the exit (it was not fun lol). When I got into an area with service (Indiana Jones doesn’t have great service I think since it’s underground according to my understanding), my LL had turned into a bonus. FINALLY I got one lol. So I went and used that on Space (as a reminder Space is not typically included in the bonus LLs unless it comes from Space, Indiana Jones, Matterhorn, or Toy Story. Apparently it’s also included with bonus LLs from Buzz but I’ve never gotten one from Buzz since it doesn’t really break down a lot). Then I met back up with my friend and we did Pirates. We were going to do Rise last but it broke down so we did Thunder last since my friend was tired and wanted a shorter line (Indiana Jones was really long because it had reopened by this point but it was a brief enough delay that they didn’t clear out the line so it had built up a lot. And it was too close to closing to go all the way over to Space). 



All righty there’s my report from 2/9 which I finally finished the morning of 2/12 waiting for security to open. Now I’ll start working in the 2/10 one lol.


----------



## senoragilbert

disneylover102 said:


> ... tried and tried and tried and tried to get a Soarin’ LL ... Idk if they were super backed up, running at half capacity, etc but no matter how much I refreshed absolutely nothing showed up for Soarin’.
> ...if going on this ride is a very rare and/or valuable experience for you, this needs to be your #1 priority lightning lane...



If Soarin' is a huge priority, I'd rope drop it. Soarin' has been extremely unreliable, they're only using one theatre (which is probably the issue, honestly) and if it goes down the whole ride goes down. In 2.5 days, it was down at least 5 times, and went down when we were in the pre-show TWICE. Knowing what I do now, I would rope drop WebSlingers (once a day is plenty for me, it's just TSMM with a story) and then hit Soarin', so if it goes down later at least I got to do it once. Also...they fill the whole theatre, including C3. In fact, C3 is filled before B or A! So if you want to sit somewhere else, be sure to ask!


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## disneylover102

senoragilbert said:


> If Soarin' is a huge priority, I'd rope drop it. Soarin' has been extremely unreliable, they're only using one theatre (which is probably the issue, honestly) and if it goes down the whole ride goes down. In 2.5 days, it was down at least 5 times, and went down when we were in the pre-show TWICE. Knowing what I do now, I would rope drop WebSlingers (once a day is plenty for me, it's just TSMM with a story) and then hit Soarin', so if it goes down later at least I got to do it once. Also...they fill the whole theatre, including C3. In fact, C3 is filled before B or A! So if you want to sit somewhere else, be sure to ask!


True, rope dropping it once is great especially if you don’t buy genie+ or if you’d like to ride twice or don’t want to worry about that LL. If you only need to do it once you shouldn’t have a problem getting a LL but just make sure to prioritize it. I think Wednesday and Thursday they were only running one theater but Friday and Saturday they were running both. Maybe they only run one theater on weekdays.

However I personally never start in DCA because of these reasons:
1. I want every opportunity to get a short wait at Rise. Even if it’s down at rope drop it’ll come up before 1 and if you’re close you can catch it if you’re in the area.
2. Space is typically much shorter in the morning
3. Bonus LLs from ride breakdowns are valid on everything in DCA except Toy Story which isn’t a repeater for me although that one LL per day is great. I typically use all my bonus LLs all on Guardians unless they’re from Space, Matterhorn, Indy, or Toy Story because those ARE valid on Space.
4. There’s more to knock out at DL


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## senoragilbert

disneylover102 said:


> ...I think Wednesday and Thursday they were only running one theater but Friday and Saturday they were running both. Maybe they only run one theater on weekdays


Well, good! Our experience last weekend was one theatre (Saturday evening and Sunday all day)


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## disneylover102

senoragilbert said:


> Well, good! Our experience last weekend was one theatre (Saturday evening and Sunday all day)


Yeah I didn’t make it on on Wednesday as I described and I assume that’s because of the limited capacity. On Thursday my friend and I did it in LL and it took half an hour even then because of the limited capacity. But Friday and Saturday they were running at full capacity and I got on in like 5-10 minutes each time. And also standby was much shorter then

Interestingly though Guardians was only running 4 or 5 (out of 6) gantry lifts yesterday which made standby very long and even LL took over 20 minutes most of the time


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## disneylover102

Here’s my genie+ and ILL report for 2/10. Sorry it’s taking so long to get these posted lol. I’m trying to type them up as I can (that’s why some of this is written like I’m there right now) but right after this trip I moved to Florida for the DCP and it’s been a wild week  but I’ll post the 2/11 and 2/12 report at some point lol

I bought genie+ and WEB Slingers but not Rise because there were plenty of bonus LLs and $20 is a lot for one ride anyway (although I do think it is worth it when there’s time)



So btw I’m here with a friend who doesn’t want to buy genie+ or lightning lanes or anything so when I talk about sharing bonuses with her we would basically meet up in between LLs and since there were so many bonuses that day I shared some with her.



So I got to security around 6:30 for an 8:00 park opening and got scanned in around 7:30 like usual. I booked Soarin’ for 1:00.



I rope dropped Rise which was actually open (the only time that happened out of 4 days this week lol) and I saw that Matterhorn was down so I cancelled Soarin’ and booked that. I don’t remember the exact timing of everything but basically in the first couple hours that day I got 4 bonus LLs from Matterhorn which are very valuable because they include Space Mountain.



After doing Rise I went over to Space and waited about 15 minutes. Then I hopped back in line and waited about 20 minutes. Then I did Alice in Wonderland and waited about 15 minutes. At that point I met up with my friend and we basically walked onto Roger Rabbit, Gadget’s, and Small World. Then we did Matterhorn single rider and that was just a few minutes. Then we did Space Mountain together using 2 of the 4 LLs from the Matterhorn breakdown. Then we did Thunder standby which took about 40 minutes which is pretty long for it actually.



I think a couple things had broken down at this point and I had booked them but then they came back up. But then I booked Space for pretty soon and used that. After scanning in I booked Soarin’ for a few hours later. Then we park hopped and shared a LL for Guardians. Then I went and did Racers single rider twice and by this point it had been 2 hours and it was time that I could book another LL. I booked Incredicoaster immediately and went and rode that and booked Guardians for about an hour later. Then I did Little Mermaid standby which was very fast and then I used a LL at WEB Slingers. Then I used my Guardians LL.



And then a bunch of rides broke down. We joined the walk up list at cafe Orleans and while we were there I booked Matterhorn which was down and got a makeup LL. Then I booked Thunder which I was actually intending to use and that went down too. Same thing happened with Indy at some point.



Indy came back up around the time we finished eating and we almost walked right on. And then we got stuck at the rolling stone. The lights came on and we were there for probably 15-20 minutes. It started working again and they let you



After this Thunder had come back up. So I booked a LL and I was about to use it but the line was empty (not for long) so we jumped on really fast and then I used that LL when the line had built up. Then I went to use one of the bonus LLs from Matterhorn on Space. Then my friend and I park hopped and shared a LL on Soarin’ which took forever because it was at half capacity. Then we finished off at WEB Slingers (it was sweethearts Nite so Disneyland closed an hour earlier) and waited a little more than half an hour.


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## Jcruise86

We went to Disneyland on Monday, and I found that Genie+ was not intuitive, and finding where on Genie + to make reservations for attractions was a bit of a pain. Far too much junk I was not interested in got in my way.

Theme parks are distracting atmospheres, and I resented having to look at my phone while would rather have been looking at the park.

Major Disney shareholder (after he sold Pixer) Steve Jobs would've expressed his anger at Chapek & Iger for putting out such a bad program.

I hope it improves. Other than that we had a very nice day!


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## Dug720

Jcruise86 said:


> Major Disney shareholder (after he sold Pixer) Steve Jobs would've expressed his anger at Chapek for putting out such a bad program.



Genie+ was announced and mainly developped under Iger...


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## COASTIEandMATE

Dug720 said:


> Genie+ was announced and mainly developped under Iger...


Interesting! I did not realize this, thanks Dug!!


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## disneylover102

Here’s my genie+ report from 2/11. I ended up paying $20 each for genie+ and Rise and also $12 for WEB Slingers. 



I got to security around 6:30. Security opened at 7:10 and I got scanned into the park at about 7:30 at which point I bought genie+ and reserved Soarin’ for 1-2 PM. I was at the front of the rope by Frontierland and someone asked if Rise would be open (I would’ve but I had asked the day before and they said they didn’t know). A cast member called the people who work at Rise and found out it would be broken down. This was less than 5 minutes before park opening. I weaved back through the massive crowd with the idea that I would do Space Mountain first. But I saw a friend from college in the crowd and briefly talked to him and told him Rise was down which he and his group were planning to do and I said I guessed I would do Space first. But someone overheard me and said Space was supposed to be down too. It was now getting dangerously close to park opening and so I was frantically trying to figure out what to do first with Rise and Space down. If I had had an extra second to think I would’ve done Peter Pan first which is something I wanted to do at some point on this trip. But I weaved through the massive crowd over to the Adventureland crowd and filled in any space as I could (but not cutting in front of anyone) to get as far to the front as possible. I did Indy first but that’s not what most of the Adventureland crowd was doing. They were mostly going to Rise first through Critter Country, unaware it would be down and that they shouldn’t go that route since it’s just a little slower lol (most people don’t know it’s gonna be down, it’s not like they announce it over the intercom or anything). I ended up being the 5th in line for Indy. 



But as that rush started I was multitasking and on my phone cancelling my Soarin’ LL and booking Space for 8:10 because I knew it would be down but that the sudden didn’t know that yet and therefore LLs wouldn’t be pushed back at all. Depending on the ride they usually get pushed back 30-60 minutes when a ride goes down but if you can get ahead of the system and book a LL before the system knows a ride is down, do it! This might be the case if you know a ride will be down at park opening (like I did), you walk up to a ride and it’s down but the tip board still says it’s up (and note that the tip board is typically slightly more updated than the map of wait times), or if you are in line when a ride breaks down and that fact has not been updated in the system. 



I obviously walked right onto Indy (and confirmed as I was walking through the line that Rise and Space were down) and while I was on Indy 2 things happened: I got the desired bonus LL from Space (good on anything except the individual LL rides and Peter Pan. It was valid on Space, Matterhorn, Indy, and Toy Story because it came from Space being down) and Space came back up. There was a VERY narrow window of time to get that bonus. Space wasn’t even down for 10 minutes and I got the bonus. So if you can, definitely try to find out if anything with LL will be closed at park opening and book that first unless you want to for sure guarantee that Soarin’ LL. 



I then booked Soarin’ again for 1-2 PM and everything was running for about the next hour and a half so I ended up waiting the 2 hours to book another LL.



After getting off Indy since Space was up at 10 minutes I did that and waited a little more than 10 minutes. After that I wanted to do things fairly close to Rise for when it came up so I went and did Thunder. It was posted at 15 and ended up being a little less than that. After that I did Pirates which was posted 15 and I waited 10. While I was waiting I kept refreshing my tip board to see if Rise would come up and if it did I was planning on ditching my spot in line and hurrying over. It came back up a few minutes into the ride but since Pirates is a long one, by the time I got to Rise the line was already stretching all the way through Galaxy’s Edge with the entire queue full besides the extended queue. I got in line anyway because I figured it would move quickly and it’s a good ride and hopefully lightning lane wouldn’t be too backed up yet. Well after 20 minutes they had filled the extended queue and I had gotten to the main queue just before the caves. And then it broke down again. They said I could keep my spot in line but I wasn’t very close to the front anyway so I got out of line and walked right onto the Falcon in single rider. It was around this time that it was time to book another LL and I got one about 45 minutes away for Roger Rabbit which was down.



I then just went to wait for Peter Pan since I knew I was gonna need to do that eventually. On my way over there I stopped at a guest relations kiosk and showed screenshots of the bonus LL I didn’t have time for the night before and the CM gave me a new one. It was based on a Thunder breakdown so it was valid on anything expect Peter Pan, any ILL rides, Space, Matterhorn, Indy, and Toy Story. 



While I was in line for Peter Pan I got the bonus LL from Roger Rabbit. I booked it again for about 20 minutes away I think. Then I did Matterhorn single rider and Roger Rabbit came up so I got Thunder for immediately. I did that and then used my bonus LL from Space going down earlier on Space. I think something went down and I booked that. But it came back up so I booked Star Tours and did that after Space. 



For the next little while I think I was booking rides that were down, I don’t remember which ones though. After Star Tours I hurried over to Indiana Jones because it had been broken down and I wanted to catch it before the line built back up. I only waited about 15 minutes. Then I did Millennium Falcon single rider and walked right on and then used my Rise LL which I had booked a few hours prior. 



So here’s what happened with the Rise LL: I didn’t want one until at least a couple hours after park opening so I waited to book one. But then when it was down at park opening the times were pushed back and I refreshed until I got a time I liked, I think it was 12:55-1:55. As I was purchasing it I made sure it gave me the right time but when the transaction went through it changed it to 1:35-2:35 which wasn’t great for my 1-2 Soarin’ LL. By the time I got off Rise it was a little after 2 so I got to Soarin’ as fast as I possibly could. During this time I booked Toy Story Mania for about an hour out (I kept refreshing to get a better time). 



I knew there was probably a 15 minute grace period and I really didn’t want it to use my bonus LL from Roger Rabbit or Thunder so my goal was to scan in by 2:15. I scanned in at 2:14 so I BARELY made it. By then my LL had disappeared from my genie day but I had screenshotted it earlier and when I scanned the barcode it used the one I wanted it to thankfully. 



At this point my friend (who started in California Adventure) wanted me to watch the Avengers Campus shows with her because I hadn’t seen most of them. So we watched Doctor Strange, Dora Milaje, Black Widow, and Spider-Man. Then it was time to ride Toy Story so I went and did that. After scanning in I booked Incredicoaster immediately. So I went and did that and booked Guardians for 40 minutes later. After getting off Incredicoaster I did it again through standby which was posted at 30 minutes and was actually a little less than 20. 



At that point I went and scanned into Guardians and booked Space for a couple hours later at 7:10-8:10. It was weird how I got it though. Normally Space has plenty of LLs available hours before the park closes but I was about to book 6:55-7:55 I think and it said that time was no longer available and changed it to 10:05-11:00 which I didn’t want to do in case it broke down the last hour of the day. So I refreshed and the next time available was now 10:30-11:00. That was even worse so I refreshed again and now none were available. I kept refreshing and eventually 7:40-8:40 popped up and when I tried to reserve that it changed the time to 7:10-8:10. So genie was real confused there 



After Guardians I did RSR single rider and booked WEB Slingers which I rode afterwards. After doing WEB Slingers I saw about half the standby queue for it was empty so I jumped in line and did it again (I waited about half an hour). 



Then I used my bonus LL from Thunder and Roger Rabbit to ride Guardians twice. At that point it was time for my Space LL and time to book a new LL and I got Indy. I used my Space LL and had to sit down and wait for 15 minutes because it briefly broke down. 



Then I went and waited an hour for Rise and got into the transport. The transport broke down while I was on it and I got stuck for 20 minutes. When they finally got everyone out they scanned my ticket and gave me a LL good through the end of the next day on any LL ride including Rise but not including WEB Slingers or Racers. What was much different about that particular LL from other bonuses was that it was good on Rise (which is like… never the case) but not non-LL rides such as Pirates. 



While at Rise, Indy broke down and I got a bonus LL from it so I used it on Space (it was valid there since Indy is also one of the ones it’s not typically valid on). I got an immediate LL for Buzz and used that. Then I did standby for Star Tours which was very fast. At that point the park was closing in about 10 minutes so I jumped in line at Space. It was posted 75 but I only waited 35.


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## edhmom

Thanks for all the real-world experiences.  I like how some of you leverage the rides being down to score bonus passes.  I did that all the time with MP.

I thought you were only allowed to book a ride once per day.  Maybe the better phrasing would be, you are only allowed to book and ride once per day.  What happens if I, for example, book Space because it's down and I'm hoping to get a bonus pass.  If Space comes back up during my window but I don't actually ride it., am I allowed to book it again?  Does that make sense?

Thanks!


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## Critter3

disneylover102 said:


> At this point my friend (who started in California Adventure) wanted me to watch the Avengers Campus shows with her because I hadn’t seen most of them. So we watched Doctor Strange, Dora Milaje, Black Widow, and Spider-Man. Then it was time to ride Toy Story so I went and did that. After scanning in I booked Incredicoaster immediately. So I went and did that and booked Guardians for 40 minutes later. After getting off Incredicoaster I did it again through standby which was posted at 30 minutes and was actually a little less than 20.



I don't want to get off topic but are the Avenger Campus shows actual "shows"? I tried searching for like showtimes for some of the stuff going on in Avengers Campus but can't find anything.  Or is it basically a constant experience and all the characters are walking around and like every 30mins they put on a "show"?  See all these interactions is one of the big things I want to take in while there in May.


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## disneylover102

Critter3 said:


> I don't want to get off topic but are the Avenger Campus shows actual "shows"? I tried searching for like showtimes for some of the stuff going on in Avengers Campus but can't find anything.  Or is it basically a constant experience and all the characters are walking around and like every 30mins they put on a "show"?  See all these interactions is one of the big things I want to take in while there in May.


There’s the Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Dora Milaje, Black Widow, and Guardians show. Those are scheduled shows you can find on the Disneyland website and app. Character interactions however aren’t necessarily scheduled but especially if there’s not a show going on characters will frequently come out either on top of the building and wave down at you or sometimes they’ll come down and meet you with a little bit of distance. When I was there Loki came out pretty much every day, Shang Chi was out sometimes, also Black Widow. So basically shows are scheduled and characters aren’t scheduled but they do come out frequently


----------



## Critter3

Thanks disneylover102!  That's strange (no pun intended...well, maybe ) because I tried searching on the website but couldn't find anything.  However, went looking in the app they popped up. Thanks!


----------



## DLRExpert

Side experience, helping friends with their trip at WDW from home in CA. Holy moly is their G+ and LL more stressful than what Disneyland offers. Main reason I see is that too many attractions have LL, when they do not need it. So there is a lot of What to Do next as you are forced to find something to do while waiting to use LL. If you do not know about how you can refresh or that LL times sometimes come back, you would maybe get 3-5 LLs on a busy day at the parks.


----------



## DLNEWBIEWDWVETERAN

DLRExpert said:


> Side experience, helping friends with their trip at WDW from home in CA. Holy moly is their G+ and LL more stressful than what Disneyland offers. Main reason I see is that too many attractions have LL, when they do not need it. So there is a lot of What to Do next as you are forced to find something to do while waiting to use LL. If you do not know about how you can refresh or that LL times sometimes come back, you would maybe get 3-5 LLs on a busy day at the parks.


We're doing DL for the first time ever (after 12 WDW trips) because of Genie+ and staffing issues. Orlando's 7 a.m reservation and no ILL until you enter the park for offsite guests can stick-it. DL looks fantastic and able to handle large crowds.


----------



## DLRExpert

DLNEWBIEWDWVETERAN said:


> We're doing DL for the first time ever (after 12 WDW trips) because of Genie+ and staffing issues. Orlando's 7 a.m reservation and no ILL until you enter the park for offsite guests can stick-it. DL looks fantastic and able to handle large crowds.


Yeah DL should really wow you on how much better G+ is.


----------



## disneylover102

Yeah I’m down here in Orlando for the DCP waiting to get my pass to the parks and I took a look at the tip board and wow it’s way worse here. Most ILLs are gone by the time you can get any unless you’re willing to pay a ridiculous amount to stay on site


----------



## brianphill77

Once you've entered a park, can you book LLs later that day even if you've left the park?

We plan to park hop and take afternoon breaks during our trip.  Let's say we head back to the hotel at 1pm, and on our way out I grab a LL return for a ride in the park we'll hop to (so, have not used LL at that park yet) with a 5:30pm return. Can I grab another LL for a different ride at 3pm while at the hotel?  Then another one for a different ride at 5pm as we're heading back in?  Seems like that could be a good way of stacking up evening rides.


----------



## disneylover102

brianphill77 said:


> Once you've entered a park, can you book LLs later that day even if you've left the park?
> 
> We plan to park hop and take afternoon breaks during our trip.  Let's say we head back to the hotel at 1pm, and on our way out I grab a LL return for a ride in the park we'll hop to (so, have not used LL at that park yet) with a 5:30pm return. Can I grab another LL for a different ride at 3pm while at the hotel?  Then another one for a different ride at 5pm as we're heading back in?  Seems like that could be a good way of stacking up evening rides.


Yes, you should be able to. I’ve never personally done that with genie+ but I did it with maxpass and it works the same. It doesn’t track your location, it just knows if you’ve scanned in or not. Most of the time though return times aren’t more than an hour or two ahead at the most with the exception of Soarin’ and Space


----------



## Blondie58

We are 60 somethings that loved our Fast passes.  (Yes, we know they are NOT coming back.)  We chose FPs prior to visits and then* left technology behind*.  Two trips with G+ and LL.  I am the only one of three couples that wishes to return.  (One visit for 14 days in Oct. and one for 12 days over New Years.)  We like to stay up and socialize, get up and walk, and then head to parks with our FPs.  No leisure about it with the new system.  We ended up doing rope drops and it was not enjoyable.  We did a couple LL.  Again, we were up so early and they were hours later.  Had LL for Remy and went all the way to EPCOT and ride was down.  LL was for 4:00 and yes we wished for it to be MUCH earlier in the day.  Could not go back to do the ride as we had other dining reservations and evening plans.


----------



## disneylover102

Blondie58 said:


> We are 60 somethings that loved our Fast passes.  (Yes, we know they are NOT coming back.)  We chose FPs prior to visits and then* left technology behind*.  Two trips with G+ and LL.  I am the only one of three couples that wishes to return.  (One visit for 14 days in Oct. and one for 12 days over New Years.)  We like to stay up and socialize, get up and walk, and then head to parks with our FPs.  No leisure about it with the new system.  We ended up doing rope drops and it was not enjoyable.  We did a couple LL.  Again, we were up so early and they were hours later.  Had LL for Remy and went all the way to EPCOT and ride was down.  LL was for 4:00 and yes we wished for it to be MUCH earlier in the day.  Could not go back to do the ride as we had other dining reservations and evening plans.


Just so you know you’re in the Disneyland thread, not Disney World 

It’s much better at Disneyland


----------



## Squinty

We arrived today. Landed at SNA at 8:30 and were in the parks an hour later.

Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.


----------



## austinelsa

Squinty said:


> We arrived today. Landed at SNA at 8:30 and were in the parks an hour later.
> 
> Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.


oh no thats not promising. Im following your trip since we aligned on the mask thing. hope it goes better tomorrow!


----------



## Squinty

austinelsa said:


> oh no thats not promising. Im following your trip since we aligned on the mask thing. hope it goes better tomorrow!



FYI, very very very few people are masking indoors. I am not as freaked out as I thought I’d be!

From what I experienced today, the app is not allowing stacking. I could book a new reservation after tapping in, but if I already had one for less than two hours out, it would not let me book another. It happened to me at least four times today.  That was not my understanding of how it was supposed to work.

After the first one, I went to guest services and got a pass for a specific ride but not set to a specific time. After the others, I didn’t even bother. Guest services is reimbursing us for Genie + today at least.


----------



## Lisa24jks

Does anyone know how LLs work with return times for people with a wheelchair? Can you hold a Lightning Lane AND a return time for one of the rides that don't have a wheelchair line at the same time? Sorry if this is answered somewhere else, but there are just... so many posts. 

(For example, if I have a LL for Space Mountain, can I also hold a return time for Peter Pan at the same time? Just thought about this because I"m traveling with my mom who uses a scooter in the parks, but does not qualify for DAS.)


----------



## disneycat321

I was in the parks solo this past week, Tues-Thurs, Feb 22-24. Tues I didn't enter the parks until 1pm (travel day). I had G+ all 3 days, as well as PH. I'm a DLR vet and was an experienced fast pass/max pass user and loved both those systems, especially MP. I tried to go into this with an open mind.

It was very crowded this week due to the Feb break many districts (including mine - I'm a teacher) had this week, so my experience with G+ was very different than what some others have posted about. There was almost never an immediate return for anything other than Small World outside of 8-9am or so. Rides like SM, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soarin, Toy Story, and GOTG were always several hours in the future, necessitating the 2 hour wait time between booking attractions. In my experience, 2 hours vs. the old 90 minutes feels like a big difference. I think far more people are buying G+ now than there were at the beginning. I noticed that most park goers this week were family groups, and I saw a _lot_ of First Time Visitor buttons and heard a lot of conversations indicating that people were there for the first time or at least were not DLR regulars. It felt more like WDW vacation crowds than I've ever experienced at DLR before.

I went to WDW during the FP+ era and was stunned by how long their standbys were, seemingly as a direct result of the FP+ system. Well, those long standbys have come to DLR now during the Genie+ era. I've been going to DLR for many years, often during very crowded times (again, I'm a teacher), but I've never seen lines this consistently bad for the G+ attractions. 75-120 basically always for Space, 50 being the low end for Big Thunder, 120 for TSMM, 45+ regularly for Incredicoaster, 80 (yes, not a typo) for Monsters Inc, etc. And then, if you're in a standby line for those (which I never was outside of the 8-9am hour when it was tolerable because less LL returns), you're barely moving as the LL people just go streaming by you. I _know_ Disneyland; know how to gauge line lengths based on what the line looks like...or I used to. The 120 TSMM line looks like the 45 minute line before G+, but that's because those people are barely moving while LL just keeps going past. I know this is probably by design - people will want to buy G+ if they are stuck in horrible lines watching all those LL people go past. So, it's working the way Disney intended, I think.

I miss MP and I am not a fan of G+. I liked it in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to ride any of my favorites without massive lines unless I had it, but I didn't like it at all in comparison to FP or MP. The inability to repeat ride is frustrating, and would have been even more frustrating on a shorter trip. The 2 hour space between bookings is too long. The standby lines G+ is creating are ridiculous. And, though I broke down and paid $20 for ROTR ILL, I was so annoyed that I felt I had to either do that, stand in line for an hour and a half at least, or be part of the crazy rope drop stampede that might not even pay off anyway. I can't even imagine how much Disney is making per day _just_ off that one attraction.

Also, I don't know why, but I felt like I was on my phone a lot more for G+ than I ever was for MP, and that annoyed me, too.

I do think G+ is far worse at WDW because of the fewer attractions per park (minus MK). This trip solidified my thought that I don't want to go to WDW for the foreseeable future (and I love WDW).

I am going to DLR again during spring break (ack) with a friend, and I'm sure it will be a fun trip, just like this one was. But I'm not going to be super eager to go again for awhile, because I just feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death for a lesser experience than before. Since I can't go during less crowded times because I'm a teacher, this is the experience I'm left with, and it just doesn't feel great to me.


----------



## Squinty

Squinty said:


> Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.



Wanted to follow back up on this - G+ did start working right for me the next 3 days of our trip. Than goodness for these message boards so I knew kinda what I was doing! I can’t image how hard it would’ve been to come to it cold. We ended up being able to be much more efficient and never again waited longer than 20 mins for anything. Nonetheless, I was on my phone waaay more than I would’ve wanted to be, and it took a lot more planning and strategizing to create the kind of days we wanted then it did before, back in the FP/Maxpass days. I definitely think G+ is contributing to long standby queues. Was G+ worth it? Yes, for the infrequent visitor, which I think we will be from here on out.


----------



## Renarr

I was there the same week (Monday - Saturday) for the same reason (also a teacher here).  I don't know Disneyland as well (we usually do WDW annually), but here were my takeaways:

One thing that I feel would help some of the Lightning Lane issues would be to _expand_ the number of rides that it could be used for.  Right now, it seemed like it was good for mostly the rides you wanted to bypass the lines for anyway.  If they made it available for The Little Mermaid, should you use it on that?  Almost certainly not.  (Although I did see a stunning 45 minute wait for it while we were there.)  But could you, and might that spread out some of the Genie+ crowd?  Perhaps.

We did use Genie+ for most of our days there (not Saturday, since we were only there for a few hours), mostly because my wife is DAS-eligible (we've used it twice at WDW) but doesn't want to use DAS.  We would routinely spend a couple hours in the park, back to the room for a few hours for a nap, followed by another 3-4 hours in the park and call it a day.  With that, we ended up roughly on par with what we could have gotten at WDW with the Fastpass+ system.  In paying $20 each for the privilege, that didn't strike us as a good deal.

One major frustration with the Individual Lightning Lane (it was there to a lesser degree with Genie+) is that there were certain times of day we wanted to ride these rides (we wanted to try Rise, in particular, at night), and so having to watch the app to see the progress for how quickly the paid passes were going was a bit annoying.

One tip I noticed for the Photopass aspect: we didn't look at the app super carefully before riding a Photopass ride.  If you take a photo of the picture you want, you'll have the code you need, and can insert the code and navigate the app at your convenience.



disneycat321 said:


> I was in the parks solo this past week, Tues-Thurs, Feb 22-24. Tues I didn't enter the parks until 1pm (travel day). I had G+ all 3 days, as well as PH. I'm a DLR vet and was an experienced fast pass/max pass user and loved both those systems, especially MP. I tried to go into this with an open mind.
> 
> It was very crowded this week due to the Feb break many districts (including mine - I'm a teacher) had this week, so my experience with G+ was very different than what some others have posted about. There was almost never an immediate return for anything other than Small World outside of 8-9am or so. Rides like SM, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soarin, Toy Story, and GOTG were always several hours in the future, necessitating the 2 hour wait time between booking attractions. In my experience, 2 hours vs. the old 90 minutes feels like a big difference. I think far more people are buying G+ now than there were at the beginning. I noticed that most park goers this week were family groups, and I saw a _lot_ of First Time Visitor buttons and heard a lot of conversations indicating that people were there for the first time or at least were not DLR regulars. It felt more like WDW vacation crowds than I've ever experienced at DLR before.
> 
> I went to WDW during the FP+ era and was stunned by how long their standbys were, seemingly as a direct result of the FP+ system. Well, those long standbys have come to DLR now during the Genie+ era. I've been going to DLR for many years, often during very crowded times (again, I'm a teacher), but I've never seen lines this consistently bad for the G+ attractions. 75-120 basically always for Space, 50 being the low end for Big Thunder, 120 for TSMM, 45+ regularly for Incredicoaster, 80 (yes, not a typo) for Monsters Inc, etc. And then, if you're in a standby line for those (which I never was outside of the 8-9am hour when it was tolerable because less LL returns), you're barely moving as the LL people just go streaming by you. I _know_ Disneyland; know how to gauge line lengths based on what the line looks like...or I used to. The 120 TSMM line looks like the 45 minute line before G+, but that's because those people are barely moving while LL just keeps going past. I know this is probably by design - people will want to buy G+ if they are stuck in horrible lines watching all those LL people go past. So, it's working the way Disney intended, I think.
> 
> I miss MP and I am not a fan of G+. I liked it in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to ride any of my favorites without massive lines unless I had it, but I didn't like it at all in comparison to FP or MP. The inability to repeat ride is frustrating, and would have been even more frustrating on a shorter trip. The 2 hour space between bookings is too long. The standby lines G+ is creating are ridiculous. And, though I broke down and paid $20 for ROTR ILL, I was so annoyed that I felt I had to either do that, stand in line for an hour and a half at least, or be part of the crazy rope drop stampede that might not even pay off anyway. I can't even imagine how much Disney is making per day _just_ off that one attraction.
> 
> Also, I don't know why, but I felt like I was on my phone a lot more for G+ than I ever was for MP, and that annoyed me, too.
> 
> I do think G+ is far worse at WDW because of the fewer attractions per park (minus MK). This trip solidified my thought that I don't want to go to WDW for the foreseeable future (and I love WDW).
> 
> I am going to DLR again during spring break (ack) with a friend, and I'm sure it will be a fun trip, just like this one was. But I'm not going to be super eager to go again for awhile, because I just feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death for a lesser experience than before. Since I can't go during less crowded times because I'm a teacher, this is the experience I'm left with, and it just doesn't feel great to me.


----------



## disneycat321

Renarr said:


> I was there the same week (Monday - Saturday) for the same reason (also a teacher here).  I don't know Disneyland as well (we usually do WDW annually), but here were my takeaways:
> 
> One thing that I feel would help some of the Lightning Lane issues would be to _expand_ the number of rides that it could be used for.  Right now, it seemed like it was good for mostly the rides you wanted to bypass the lines for anyway.  If they made it available for The Little Mermaid, should you use it on that?  Almost certainly not.  (Although I did see a stunning 45 minute wait for it while we were there.)  But could you, and might that spread out some of the Genie+ crowd?  Perhaps.
> 
> We did use Genie+ for most of our days there (not Saturday, since we were only there for a few hours), mostly because my wife is DAS-eligible (we've used it twice at WDW) but doesn't want to use DAS.  We would routinely spend a couple hours in the park, back to the room for a few hours for a nap, followed by another 3-4 hours in the park and call it a day.  With that, we ended up roughly on par with what we could have gotten at WDW with the Fastpass+ system.  In paying $20 each for the privilege, that didn't strike us as a good deal.
> 
> One major frustration with the Individual Lightning Lane (it was there to a lesser degree with Genie+) is that there were certain times of day we wanted to ride these rides (we wanted to try Rise, in particular, at night), and so having to watch the app to see the progress for how quickly the paid passes were going was a bit annoying.
> 
> One tip I noticed for the Photopass aspect: we didn't look at the app super carefully before riding a Photopass ride.  If you take a photo of the picture you want, you'll have the code you need, and can insert the code and navigate the app at your convenience.



Back in the regular FP/MP days, having them for less attractions at DLR was actually a huge benefit vs. WDW. There have always been rides at DLR with standbys that are at least relatively manageable (which to me means 30 min or less), especially in Fantasyland. I didn't find that to be the case at WDW in the summer of 2019 - standbys were nuts for everything, presumably because everything had FP+. I totally get what you're saying though, because theoretically it would spread people out more if more attractions were included with G+. 

100% agree with your ILL frustration! I feel like if we're paying for the ride, we should at least be able to choose when we ride it! I found myself playing that waiting game with a few different rides for LL, like when I wanted to ride Big Thunder at night. Technically I did that back in the days of FP/MP too....but we could repeat rides back then, so it was very different.


----------



## LizzyS

I was in the parks this past Sunday and Monday and I would never not buy Genie+ and also ILLs for RotR and RSR.  Racers was only $7 a pop on Monday, so that was a no brainer.  It was $15/pp on Sunday, which we also did.  Rise was non-negotiable and we spent $80 total using the LL there.  I found the Genie+ and ILL windows to be more immediate on most attractions than they used to be with Maxpass.  I think I've seen others say the same.  I do like that because if you hop off a ride using one, it's easy to move right on to the next attraction because the windows are immediate or very soon and ready to redeem by the time you arrive at the next attraction.  ymmv with this depending on crowds, of course.


----------



## superdeluxe

Just returned.  The genie plus and ILL were not…bad?  I was terrified with all the grumbling,  but genie plus saved us between 60-80% of the time from standby.  We implemented a ton of strategies (don’t use LL if standby is less than 30 minutes,  cancel a LL,  if there is another LL with a earlier window etc).

also many of the return times for the LL were 20-25 minutes later.  I want to say we used pretty much all the LL we wanted over the course of 3-4 hours, it moved very quickly.

we did utilize ILL for the big rides (ROTR, Radiator springs,  web slingers).  But we felt it was worth It.


----------



## Absinthe

disneycat321 said:


> I was in the parks solo this past week, Tues-Thurs, Feb 22-24. Tues I didn't enter the parks until 1pm (travel day). I had G+ all 3 days, as well as PH. I'm a DLR vet and was an experienced fast pass/max pass user and loved both those systems, especially MP. I tried to go into this with an open mind.
> 
> It was very crowded this week due to the Feb break many districts (including mine - I'm a teacher) had this week, so my experience with G+ was very different than what some others have posted about. There was almost never an immediate return for anything other than Small World outside of 8-9am or so. Rides like SM, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soarin, Toy Story, and GOTG were always several hours in the future, necessitating the 2 hour wait time between booking attractions. In my experience, 2 hours vs. the old 90 minutes feels like a big difference. I think far more people are buying G+ now than there were at the beginning. I noticed that most park goers this week were family groups, and I saw a _lot_ of First Time Visitor buttons and heard a lot of conversations indicating that people were there for the first time or at least were not DLR regulars. It felt more like WDW vacation crowds than I've ever experienced at DLR before.
> 
> I went to WDW during the FP+ era and was stunned by how long their standbys were, seemingly as a direct result of the FP+ system. Well, those long standbys have come to DLR now during the Genie+ era. I've been going to DLR for many years, often during very crowded times (again, I'm a teacher), but I've never seen lines this consistently bad for the G+ attractions. 75-120 basically always for Space, 50 being the low end for Big Thunder, 120 for TSMM, 45+ regularly for Incredicoaster, 80 (yes, not a typo) for Monsters Inc, etc. And then, if you're in a standby line for those (which I never was outside of the 8-9am hour when it was tolerable because less LL returns), you're barely moving as the LL people just go streaming by you. I _know_ Disneyland; know how to gauge line lengths based on what the line looks like...or I used to. The 120 TSMM line looks like the 45 minute line before G+, but that's because those people are barely moving while LL just keeps going past. I know this is probably by design - people will want to buy G+ if they are stuck in horrible lines watching all those LL people go past. So, it's working the way Disney intended, I think.
> 
> I miss MP and I am not a fan of G+. I liked it in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to ride any of my favorites without massive lines unless I had it, but I didn't like it at all in comparison to FP or MP. The inability to repeat ride is frustrating, and would have been even more frustrating on a shorter trip. The 2 hour space between bookings is too long. The standby lines G+ is creating are ridiculous. And, though I broke down and paid $20 for ROTR ILL, I was so annoyed that I felt I had to either do that, stand in line for an hour and a half at least, or be part of the crazy rope drop stampede that might not even pay off anyway. I can't even imagine how much Disney is making per day _just_ off that one attraction.
> 
> Also, I don't know why, but I felt like I was on my phone a lot more for G+ than I ever was for MP, and that annoyed me, too.
> 
> I do think G+ is far worse at WDW because of the fewer attractions per park (minus MK). This trip solidified my thought that I don't want to go to WDW for the foreseeable future (and I love WDW).
> 
> I am going to DLR again during spring break (ack) with a friend, and I'm sure it will be a fun trip, just like this one was. But I'm not going to be super eager to go again for awhile, because I just feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death for a lesser experience than before. Since I can't go during less crowded times because I'm a teacher, this is the experience I'm left with, and it just doesn't feel great to me.



This has been our experience as well. Being here now for the past 4 days in the park; you see just how poor an experience Genie+ creates for anyone not using Genie+.

Astronomical wait times on any ride with LL and normal/acceptable wait times on every other ride across both parks.

Guess it’s working as intended to make Disney more money; just sad to see the park turn into this after all these years.


----------



## disneycat321

Absinthe said:


> This has been our experience as well. Being here now for the past 4 days in the park; you see just how poor an experience Genie+ creates for anyone not using Genie+.
> 
> Astronomical wait times on any ride with LL and normal/acceptable wait times on every other ride across both parks.
> 
> Guess it’s working as intended to make Disney more money; just sad to see the park turn into this after all these years.


100%. I am just grateful that far less rides are in the G+ system than at WDW, where basically everything is. That’s DLR’s saving grace right now - at least there’s something else you can ride!


----------



## tdhickey

Absinthe said:


> This has been our experience as well. Being here now for the past 4 days in the park; you see just how poor an experience Genie+ creates for anyone not using Genie+.
> 
> Astronomical wait times on any ride with LL and normal/acceptable wait times on every other ride across both parks.
> 
> Guess it’s working as intended to make Disney more money; just sad to see the park turn into this after all these years.


Agree, we had 3 non Genie+ days and some of the lines were super frustrating and you could feel the inequality in the line management way more than I recall with Fast Pass.


----------



## tdhickey

One issue we had was that my Android phone was not very cooperative with the "tip board" and could not be used to order Genie+ or book LL's. I could redeem LL, but not book them. A cast member confirmed the app is buggy on Android phones at times.

Be sure to have an iPhone in your party, we had to use one to book LL and buy Genie+


----------



## sweethannah

Squinty said:


> We arrived today. Landed at SNA at 8:30 and were in the parks an hour later.
> 
> Genie + is no MaxPass. I’ve never paid more and I’ve also never spent so much time in line in the 10 years we’ve been coming. We were able to accomplish only 4 rides in 5 hours, and I was a MaxPass pro. I needed guest services twice to fix app issues. I’m sure the next few days will still be fun, but it’ll also probably be our last Disney vacation.



Sorry to hear you feel that way. I too would describe myself as a MaxPass pro and you've confirmed the fears I have about Genie +. I wish there was the option to book a ride more than once, more money  but you get less. I don't understand it tbh. I'd pay $20 for the old MaxPass happily. As an android user I hope the app glitches are fixed by August.


----------



## sweethannah

edhmom said:


> Thanks for all the real-world experiences.  I like how some of you leverage the rides being down to score bonus passes.  I did that all the time with MP.
> 
> I thought you were only allowed to book a ride once per day.  Maybe the better phrasing would be, you are only allowed to book and ride once per day.  What happens if I, for example, book Space because it's down and I'm hoping to get a bonus pass.  If Space comes back up during my window but I don't actually ride it., am I allowed to book it again?  Does that make sense?
> 
> Thanks!



I'd like to know too! Also if I'm understanding correctly if I book Indy and it goes down I can use my bonus on Space *and* I can book again for Indy because I haven't ridden it? But if I end up using the bonus on Indy I can't re-book Indy because it's one and done? Thanks in advance!


----------



## DLRExpert

sweethannah said:


> I'd like to know too! Also if I'm understanding correctly if I book Indy and it goes down I can use my bonus on Space *and* I can book again for Indy because I haven't ridden it? But if I end up using the bonus on Indy I can't re-book Indy because it's one and done? Thanks in advance!


You can rebook Indy. Once it turns into a bonus it becomes a separate and extra LL pass.
However, for ILL it is only for the same attraction.


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## disneylover102

Yeah just think of it this way: once you get a bonus LL the system forgets you ever booked that ride in the first place. Once that bonus comes in you’re automatically eligible to book another LL (unless the 2 hours had already passed) and you can always book the original ride again. The only way the system won’t let you rebook a ride is if you redeemed a normal LL for that ride when it wasn’t broken down during your window and therefore you didn’t get a bonus from it


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## xipotec

Holy Cow….35 minute standby at ROTR in DL???
Cant be?


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## poptart90

xipotec said:


> Holy Cow….35 minute standby at ROTR in DL???
> Cant be?


I'd love to believe it, but I doubt it.

Our experience in March was the that DL App was completely worthless. Worthless because it was wrong almost 99% of the time. Not the CM's fault. If you walked over and looked at the posted wait time next to the attraction, it was correct. Problem was the App almost never updated in time to prevent a MASS flood of people rushing over to something they thought had a low wait time, but actually had a much higher wait time. Which then ballooned the stand-by line to a ridiculous wait. The App was so far behind, it was ludicrous. Especially given Genie+ was touted as this highly adaptable helpful tool. If the Super High Tech App can't update like the CM-boots-on-the-ground, it's GAH-bage IMO. I kept scratching my head trying to figure out how on earth Disney IT managed to destroy a perfectly functional and helpful App (under FP/MP, that is).

Anyway, this created a ton of unnecessary walking back and forth to different attractions to figure out what was worth attempting. In DCA, I finally resorted to stopping by the Carthay Circle Guest Services board (which was always correct). Made me wish for the Jolly Holiday board every time we were in Disneyland.

We are taking our first family trip to WDW this summer. I'm very interested to see if the App times are more reflective of the actual wait times for those parks.

And since this is the Genie+ experience thread , I'll give my two cents. We hated it. Not surprised with the latest announcement put out by Disney ("people can experience 2-3 attractions if they get there early in the day" bit) as this was also our experience. Never did I feel I accomplished so little while simultaneously being glued to my phone continuously refreshing refreshing refreshing refreshing.....not my idea of a Disney vacay.
MP was FAR SUPERIOR. 

From now on, we're going to skip Genie+ entirely and just pay for the ILL's. We'll rope drop everything we can, then wait until almost close to pick up anything we missed.

And never again bother with Genie "flying in" to offer a suggestion to ride an attraction that is closed or a dine at a restaurant with zero availability!


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## Ladyslug

We used Genie+ on both of our park days (Monday and Tuesday, parkhopping, open-to-close with a brief late afternoon break) and it was very worth it for us (party of two, no children).  We started both days in Disneyland, got there for rope drop, and while we were waiting for the park to open, we would book a LL for DCA (Guardians one day, Grizzly the other) and thus have a later return time LL ready to go while the two hour delay didn't hurt us because standby lines were short in the morning.  We did have a few ride closures that caused our LLs to convert to LLEPs, but that just allowed us to have more flexibility later in the evening and to rebook the closed rides (they all came back up later, with the exception of Grizzly).  We ended up riding pretty much everything we wanted to multiple times with minimal waits, and even had enough time left over to do extra stuff we wouldn't typically do to fill in time before our return windows opened (Winnie the Pooh, Castle Walkthrough, Sorcerer's Workshop) as well as plenty of time for snacks, water breaks, Dapper Dans, Doctor Strange, Cars Land at sunset, and getting stuff from the Food & Wine booths.  Several of the LL return lines were so fast we barely had time book another LL before we had to board the ride vehicle.  Whenever we booked a LL for a return time that was more than 2 hours out, my sister would set a 2-hour timer to remind us to book something else so we wouldn't lose any time.  We did try to have a game plan in advance for what we wanted to get done, so we were mostly on our phone to check return times when it was almost time to book another LL, just to see what rides would work for location and timing (especially later in the day as return times started to extend) -- we didn't really do any book-and-cancel moves to try and game return times or anything.

We did not do ILL -- we rope-dropped Rise (ended up being about a 40-min wait, even with it being down for 10-15 min at park open), used the single rider line for RSR (20-30 min wait at around 6:30pm), and waited in a posted 40-minute standby line for Webslingers at around 9pm (actual wait time: 45 min).

We did experience a glitch where the Haunted Mansion LL reservation didn't go through for my sister (we think maybe cell service dropped out when she was in the middle of booking), but Guest Relations was able to get it taken care of quickly and we were still able to ride together during my reservation window (I think it was thanks to a little Plaid Pixie Dust).  And if you are going standby, it is definitely rough, especially at peak crowd times.  The standby return times can start to become really questionable because the LL folks are highly prioritized, and it is hard to stand there and watch what feels like a zillion people from the LL line pass through while your line barely ever moves.  Our Star Tours standby wait at about 11:30am was way off (posted 25 min, actual 40 min), which was frustrating since we were just doing that to fill in time before our Space Mountain return, and 25 minutes would have been perfect filler.  Since my visits to DL are usually just 2-day trips, I will be building Genie+ into my budget for the foreseeable future as it just makes everything more efficient.


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## xipotec

Ladyslug said:


> We used Genie+ on both of our park days (Monday and Tuesday, parkhopping, open-to-close with a brief late afternoon break) and it was very worth it for us (party of two, no children).  We started both days in Disneyland, got there for rope drop, and while we were waiting for the park to open, we would book a LL for DCA (Guardians one day, Grizzly the other) and thus have a later return time LL ready to go while the two hour delay didn't hurt us because standby lines were short in the morning.  We did have a few ride closures that caused our LLs to convert to LLEPs, but that just allowed us to have more flexibility later in the evening and to rebook the closed rides (they all came back up later, with the exception of Grizzly).  We ended up riding pretty much everything we wanted to multiple times with minimal waits, and even had enough time left over to do extra stuff we wouldn't typically do to fill in time before our return windows opened (Winnie the Pooh, Castle Walkthrough, Sorcerer's Workshop) as well as plenty of time for snacks, water breaks, Dapper Dans, Doctor Strange, Cars Land at sunset, and getting stuff from the Food & Wine booths.  Several of the LL return lines were so fast we barely had time book another LL before we had to board the ride vehicle.  Whenever we booked a LL for a return time that was more than 2 hours out, my sister would set a 2-hour timer to remind us to book something else so we wouldn't lose any time.  We did try to have a game plan in advance for what we wanted to get done, so we were mostly on our phone to check return times when it was almost time to book another LL, just to see what rides would work for location and timing (especially later in the day as return times started to extend) -- we didn't really do any book-and-cancel moves to try and game return times or anything.
> 
> We did not do ILL -- we rope-dropped Rise (ended up being about a 40-min wait, even with it being down for 10-15 min at park open), used the single rider line for RSR (20-30 min wait at around 6:30pm), and waited in a posted 40-minute standby line for Webslingers at around 9pm (actual wait time: 45 min).
> 
> We did experience a glitch where the Haunted Mansion LL reservation didn't go through for my sister (we think maybe cell service dropped out when she was in the middle of booking), but Guest Relations was able to get it taken care of quickly and we were still able to ride together during my reservation window (I think it was thanks to a little Plaid Pixie Dust).  And if you are going standby, it is definitely rough, especially at peak crowd times.  The standby return times can start to become really questionable because the LL folks are highly prioritized, and it is hard to stand there and watch what feels like a zillion people from the LL line pass through while your line barely ever moves.  Our Star Tours standby wait at about 11:30am was way off (posted 25 min, actual 40 min), which was frustrating since we were just doing that to fill in time before our Space Mountain return, and 25 minutes would have been perfect filler.  Since my visits to DL are usually just 2-day trips, I will be building Genie+ into my budget for the foreseeable future as it just makes everything more efficient.


How were crowds thou?


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## Ladyslug

Crowds were worst in the middle of the day (11a-5p), but overall I'd say moderate crowds, since it was a Monday and Tuesday after most Spring Breaks are done.  There was what appeared to be an influx of locals around 6pm (that's when the Food & Wine Festival booth lines got longer), but I never felt like I couldn't move through the parks fairly smoothly (except for some clogging in Fantasyland midday), so it must not have been too crowded.


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## disneymum58

How long is the return time window when you book a Genie + lightening lane?


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## ironband74

disneymum58 said:


> How long is the return time window when you book a Genie + lightening lane?


1 hour,  with a 5 minute early to 15 minute late grace period.  So the window is given as an hour,  but in reality is 1hr 20 minutes


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## PirateBoatDropRide

sweethannah said:


> Sorry to hear you feel that way. I too would describe myself as a MaxPass pro and you've confirmed the fears I have about Genie +. I wish there was the option to book a ride more than once, more money  but you get less. I don't understand it tbh. I'd pay $20 for the old MaxPass happily. As an android user I hope the app glitches are fixed by August.


This is my main issue with G+ at DL. I just want the ability to book the same ride more than once in the same day if it's avilable.  I actually would have less is issue with G+ at DL if we could do the same rides more than once.  I think it does stink that it makes a day without G+ far more difficult and they really should have kept Max Pass+ at DL, but G+ could be fine with some changes for those that decide to pay for it.


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## Porsche4

We are leaving next week for a weeks stay. We intend to rope drop and ride as many things as we can standby in the first couple of hours of park time then start using G+ to re ride things as the day goes on, effectively letting us do our favourites twice a day. We will have a mid afternoon break and re enter the parks about 5pm to get dinner and maybe just do fill in things like Art of Animation and shopping.  I'm not sure how successful we will be but we will give it a go. I have been really stressing about the predicted crowds as all the night time entertainment starts back up the day we arrive but I now figure that with 8 days in the park & G+ we will get more than enough ride time. I also think we may try getting on some rides during the night time parades which hopefully may draw some crowds from the rides. I also think once we re enter the parks we will keep an eye on the crowd levels and try and pick a night with the lowest crowds to experience the night time entertainment ourselves but I am not too stressed about getting the optimum viewing spot. I would have liked to get a booking for a viewing package but as I am in Australia and time zones are way out I couldn't be on the App immediately these dropped so missed out. We will just try and grab ourselves a spot somewhere half an hour before start time but I am not too fussed if we miss the night time stuff, I'm just looking forward to spending time with my daughter and finally having some Disney fun.


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## Nhebron

My experience this week (spring break) with rope dropping and then coming back in the evening was that most of the genie + passes for the headliners were gone in the evening.  Genie+ was helpful to manage wait times late morning through afternoon.


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## Porsche4

Nhebron said:


> My experience this week (spring break) with rope dropping and then coming back in the evening was that most of the genie + passes for the headliners were gone in the evening.  Genie+ was helpful to manage wait times late morning through afternoon.


Yes thats what I was thinking might happen so I thought we would start using G+ around 10:30 to ride the more popular rides a second time after rope dropping them first then when we return from our afternoon break just do filler things like wandering around Galaxy's Edge or hopping on the train for a circuit of the park. I'm thinking that even though the crowds will be pretty full on in the nighttime for the return of all the entertainment we will just wander around and enjoy all the lighting effects in all the different lands.


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## robert_j

We were in the parks on Thursday and Friday for the first time in five years, and it was packed! We found that it is possible to take full advantage of Genie+ (i.e., to book everything you are eligible to book), but you have to be very strategic about it.

In practice that means following two principles. First, use Genie+ throughout the day instead of saving it for the afternoon, when the return times are long. Second, prioritize rides that have the longest return times, since the return times only stretch out further as the day goes on.

Using these principles, we went on a ton of rides, but we were also on our feet from rope drop to close both days. While it is fresh in my mind, here is what we did, in case others find our approach helpful:

*Disneyland (Thursday)*

Rope drop: Tomorrowland

Space Mountain was closed, so we ended up doing standby for Star Tours and Buzz Light Year (both walk ons). Star Tours is a favorite and we knew we wanted to go on it at least twice, so we saved our Genie+ for a second run in the afternoon. Meanwhile, at park opening, we booked our first Genie+ for Indiana Jones. We were planning to go to Adventureland next, and we would have been fine to ride Indy then, but really we were hoping Indy would close and we could get a multi-experience pass to use later.

Early Morning/Adventureland

On our way to Adventureland, we learned that Indy did in fact close so we got our first multi-experience pass of the day. Then we got on line for Jungle Cruise standby, with probably a longer wait than usual for that time of the morning because all the Indy people went over.

Mid Morning/Lunch

Walked on Small World, used Genie+ for Haunted Mansion and Big Thunder Mountain. We also put in our mobile order for Jolly Holiday around 10:30 so we could get the noon return window we wanted. Throughout the morning I was monitoring the app for the return times we wanted for ROTR and Millennium Falcon so we could do those around the same time after lunch; we must have had those booked by about 10:40 because I did not use Genie Plus again until the two hour window expired right after lunch. For the rest of the morning we mobile ordered Dole Whips and went to the Tiki Room, then did photos in the castle area. We were done with lunch by 12:40, when I was eligible to book my next LL, so I booked Star Tours for the afternoon, then went over to Galaxy's Edge.

Afternoon: Galaxy's Edge/back to Tomorrowland

Went on Rise after lunch (ILL) and then Millennium Falcon right after that (LL). Then we took some time to explore Galaxy's Edge. In the meanwhile, we saw that Space Mountain was up and running, so at 2:40 we scheduled Space Mountain for 6:00-7:00. We went back to Tomorrowland, and while waiting for our Star Tours return window to come up, we did standby for Autopia. Then we went on Star Tours, went back to Galaxy's Edge for droid making (4:50) and light sabers (5:50). We went back again to Tomorrowland for our Genie+ reservation for Space mountain, rode Space with the droid and the lightsaber (not our original plan, but somehow it worked). Then we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner, and on the way scheduled Genie+ for Indy for after dinner (around 9:30-10:30).

Dinner/Evening

We had an 8:00 dinner reservation at Napa Rose; by 9:30 we were back in the parks and discovered that Indy was down _again_, so we unexpectedly collected our second multi-experience pass for the day. We immediately used one of our multi-experience passes for Alice, then walked on Pinocchio because the standby was short. We had an Oga's reservation at 10:15, and were done by 10:45 -- no one really cared for the drinks! Then we did standby for Millennium Falcon, which was 30 minutes, and we were done by 11:15. Then we used our second multi-experience pass (thank you Indy) to ride Big Thunder mountain for a second time. Then we went over to Indy at 11:30 expecting to end the day with it -- there were no LLs available but happily the standby line was so short that we were out by 11:55. That left just enough time to hustle to Peter Pan before closing.

Summary

You have to be  strategic, and know what your priorities are, but using this plan we were able to ride the following on a very crowded Thursday:

Star Tours (2x)
Buzz
Jungle Cruise
Small World
Haunted Mansion
Big Thunder (2x)
ROTR
Millennium Falcon (2x)
Autopia
Space Mountain
Alice
Pinocchio
Indy
Peter Pan
Of course, it helped that we had two multi-experience passes because Indy closed twice.

*California Adventure (Friday)*

For California Adventure we discovered that we could not book our Genie+ reservations too closely together because the LL queues would get really backed up. We waited a good 30 minutes to get on Goofy's Sky School with Genie+. We also had a lot more down time between rides because it was so crowded and standby was not really an option.

Rope drop: Soarin' Over California/Pixar Pier

We rope dropped Soarin' Over California because it is a favorite and we wanted to ride it twice, especially since it was the original version that we love so much. We also figured (correctly) that most people would be going to Radiator Springs Racers, and our general strategy was to go in the opposite direction from the crowds. After Soarin', we went to Pixar Pier, where Toy Story, Incredicoaster, and Mickey's Fun Wheel (stationary) were all walk ons, so we could save our LLs. Meanwhile, at the start of the day, we booked our first LL for Guardians and bought an ILL for Web Slingers for around the same time.

Mid Morning: Avenger's Campus/Cars Single Rider

Right as we were getting off Incredicoaster, we discovered that Radiator Springs Racers was down, and all of those crowds shifted over to Pixar Pier. So we left Pixar Pier and went to Avenger's campus to use our first LL for Guardians, then immediately booked Toy Story to ride a second time, since the standby line had picked up by then. We rode Web Slingers with ILL, then went back to Pixar Pier for our Toy Story Genie+ reservation, and immediately booked Soarin' for a return time after lunch. By that point, Radiator Springs Racers was open, so we rode that using single rider. We did plan to buy an ILL for RSR so we could ride it as a group, but we wanted to save that for after dark. Single rider seemed to be the only viable way to ride RSR twice because the standby lines were so terrible.

Mid Day

By mid day things got tricky because the return windows were getting very long. After riding Soarin' again we got LLs for Grizzly River Run for a 5:00 return time, Incredicoaster for 6:00 (for a second run, after walking on it in the morning), Goofy's Sky School for 7:00, and Monster's Inc. for 9:00. In between these reservations, there was a lot of waiting, so we ended up taking advantage of food and wine, doing standby for Little Mermaid twice, going to Mickey's PhilharMagic, and then doing standby for Guardians to ride it a second time. It turned out to be only about 40 minutes for the Guardian standby in the late afternoon (despite a 60 minute posted return time), and since we were  doing a lot of waiting anyway, we thought we might as well wait in line.

Evening

We had dinner at Lamplight Lounge at  8:00. Then we had two more LLs booked: Cars for 9:00 (ILL) and Monster's Inc. for 9:30. The problem was that Cars went down after we got on line, and it was not until 9:30 that it was up and running again, and 9:45 before we were off  it. So we spent a lot of time on the LL queue for Cars and almost did not make it to Monsters' Inc. before closing. We had hoped to end the night with a standby for Incredicoaster, but all the waiting in the LL queues prevented that. Earlier in the day, we  also encountered long waits in the LL queues for Grizzly River Run and Goofy's Sky School, so I can only imagine what the regular waits must have been like.

Conclusion

It was another crowded day on Friday, and we were in the parks from rope drop to close, with a lot of time waiting around managing the crowds, but we were still able to do:

Soarin' Over California (2x)
Toy Story (2x)
Incredicoaster (2x)
Mickey's Fun Wheel
Guardians (2X)
Web Slingers
Radiator Springs Racers (2x)
Little Mermaid (2x)
Grizzly River Run
Goofy's Sky School
Monster's Inc.
*Concluding Thoughts*

You can get a lot done on a crowded day with Genie+. That said, I spent the last two months doing research, was almost constantly strategizing during the day, and slept for about 5 hours over a 48 hour period on Thursday and Friday (on Saturday we slept and hung out at the pool!). For people who do not want to plan the day down to the minute, or pay for upcharges like ILL (to say nothing of Genie+ itself), it is much harder.


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## ironband74

robert_j said:


> You can get a lot done on a crowded day with Genie+. That said, I spent the last two months doing research, was almost constantly strategizing during the day, and slept for about 5 hours over a 48 hour period on Thursday and Friday (on Saturday we slept and hung out at the pool!). For people who do not want to plan the day down to the minute, or pay for upcharges like ILL (to say nothing of Genie+ itself), it is much harder.


Nice!  We're here this week, first day is tomorrow.  Very much appreciate the intel!  I've been doing the same over the last few months, doing dry runs with the app and working through different scenarios and contingency plans.  Super excited to either rock the plan or fail spectacularly tomorrow!


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## robert_j

ironband74 said:


> Nice!  We're here this week, first day is tomorrow.  Very much appreciate the intel!  I've been doing the same over the last few months, doing dry runs with the app and working through different scenarios and contingency plans.  Super excited to either rock the plan or fail spectacularly tomorrow!


It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it was so much fun. Have a great week!


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## Guy in Fargo

Absolutely love it.

Got it each of our last four days.

Background. Family of seven.  Go to the parks once a year for five days each time.

Genie+ works extremely well for us.

It allowed us to ride every ride we wanted to, including the ones we wanted to ride twice.

How we did it.  DCA.  Rope dropped racers one day, web slingers on the other.  Standby for toy story mania.  Genie+ for incredicoaster, midway mania, goofy sky school, soarin, and monsters on the first day.

Trick for folks like us who leave the park for a few hours in the afternoon- start booking evening rides in the early afternoon, then add new ones, every two hours as the next window opens, then book another two hours later.  Allowed us to ride incredicoaster, midway mania, and sky school the hour we were back in the park for the evening.  Then booked Soarin after we redeemed our last pass.  We got individual lightning lanes for racers to end the day.

For Disneyland, we used genie plus in the morning for Indiana (because we only wanted to ride once).  We used the trick to ride autopia, Matterhorn, and it's a small world between 7 and 8, then booked big thunder.  We then watched the fireworks, our big thunder window began at 9 am.


Completely worth it for our family.  Will buy it when we buy our tickets next time.


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## xipotec

Guy in Fargo said:


> Trick for folks like us who leave the park for a few hours in the afternoon- start booking evening rides in the early afternoon, then add new ones, every two hours as the next window opens….
> 
> For Disneyland, we used genie plus in the morning for Indiana (because we only wanted to ride once).  We used the trick to ride autopia, Matterhorn, and it's a small world between 7 and 8, then booked big thunder.



We were thinking of a similar strat, thou just a long sit down meal during afternoon hours.

So the basic “trick” if stacking late night LL, every 2 hours? So if you started at noon ….

that would give you 8 LL ? Is that math correct?


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## CyndiLouWho

robert_j said:


> mobile ordered Dole Whips


This is a game changer for me. Lol.  Last trip, every time we walked by that Dole Whip line it was too long. Never did get one and my family brings it up to this day. Thanks for the great write up. 45 days to go for us.


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## Guy in Fargo

xipotec said:


> We were thinking of a similar strat, thou just a long sit down meal during afternoon hours.
> 
> So the basic “trick” if stacking late night LL, every 2 hours? So if you started at noon ….
> 
> that would give you 8 LL ? Is that math c


You don't get to pick times.

Three nights we did this we pulled them at 3, 5, 7 and 8.


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## JohnR5101

Our experience using G+ May 1-5. I had purchased hopper tickets with G+ added. My wife doesn't want to wait in any line longer than 30 minutes. There were 3 adults, one 12 yr old, one 7 yr old. The kids first visit. The younger one doesn't like roller coasters or something that goes fast. Also wife doesn't do GOTG, but 3 of us loved it. This sets the stage for how we used LL when it wasn't all 5 riding.

Arrival day we got in later than I wanted. After pictures at the gate (took about 40 min) and then riding the train (missed the first one when we got in line) it was about 6:00 pm when we were finally walking down Main St.

I think that evening we didn't really use LL but did get photos. After our Oga's session I was able to get everyone to agree to ROTR standby which was saying 40 min. It was worth it. Also, minor complaint about Oga's reservations (insert Jerry Seinfeld joke here), we waited for about 40 minutes after our reservation time before they finally took us in. And then only after I asked "will we be getting in soon?" I don't know if they misplaced us or what.

Well, the rest of the days went really smooth with LL. I won't bore you with details, but we had minimal waits, did everything we wanted, repeats on subsequent days. Worked out well. If not everyone wanted to do a ride (like Incredicoaster or GOTG) I would go ahead and book all 5, 3 of us would ride, then 2 would go back and re-ride (or swap in the 4th person who sat out with the 7 yr old). But those who didn't ride weren't just sitting there. Always found something nearby with reasonable standby for them.

One time a CM told me as I mentioned that we weren't going to use all 5, we could cancel the ones we're not using at that time. So I did that expecting to be able to book something else with those 2 that we canceled. But be aware that it did not make those available again until the end of the original return window. That may have been because I cancelled after the window opened. But it ought to return those to you. The ones we used we could now book something else, but the cancelled ones we had to wait.

We also scored 2 Multiple Experience LL's. One was Indiana Jones. Those are nice because there is no time limit (within the same day). And good for a lot of things as other have mentioned. Of course I didn't want to "waste" then on Pinocchio or something like that.

One other thing about the paid LL. There's a lot of grumbling about having to pay more for individual rides. I was not looking forward to paying $20 each for ROTR ($100 for the group), or $15 each for Racers ($75 for group). But I found that when I'm there and looking at 135 min standby or $100 come back in 30 min and walk right in, 75 min standby or $75 immediate ride, it was an easy decision. The time is worth more to me since the trip is costing me about $150/hour of park time. It was also so easy with the CC being attached to the account (painless, until the bill comes due). We ended up buying ROTR 2X, Racers 2X and Webslingers 2X. It certainly made the days more relaxing.


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## mdmost

We had a great time with Genie+. It really only became difficult later in the evening but by then we had ridden most of what we wanted. It's not as good or as fair as Maxpass + paper Fastpass for all but for an out-of-town, once maybe 2 years visitor who wants to maximize their time, it is great.

We did this on day 1: Hyperspace Mt>Star Tours>Buzz>Jolly Holiday>Alice>Tea Cups>Mr Toad>Snow White>Pinocchio, all before 11am. Then it was Big Thunder (LL)>Haunted Mansion(LL)>Indy (LL)>Jungle Cruise>lunch>break. Booked Matterhorn LL at 5pm>Carousel>Casey Jr>Small World LL>MSEP>Hyperspace (LL)>Star Tours (LL)

Genie+ was even better in DCA. We hit every Genie+ ride except Grizzly River Run as we didn't want to get soaked. If you want to rope drop Pixar Pier, you can ride Incredicoaster multiple times before even needing to think about using a LL for it. We rode it 3 straight times with made DD14 very happy. Then we grabbed the breakfast burrito from the Joffrey's cart just over the bridge and sat on the bench to eat before going to Midway Mania on a LL selection. I would definitely do a quick LL for Goofy's Sky School as that is a terrible loader and a bad line to get stuck in.

We did this at DCA: Incredicoaster X3>breakfast>TSMM (LL)>Jessie's carousel>Pixar Pal Around>Inside Out>Swings>Goofy Sky School (LL)>Ariel>lunch at Pym's>Spiderman ILL>Guardians (LL)>Mater's>break. Radiator Racers wasn't open that day so we did a ILL for it the next day when it reopened.

Day 3 at DL: Rope dropped Millenium Falcon since we didn't want to wait in the Rise line and risk all that wait time for it to go down. So we booked a ILL for it. It's worth it to me given how much that ride goes down. It went down when our original 9am time was up so we waited until after our Oga's reservation at 10:25 to try it. We did MFSR twice, walk on>Ronto Roasters for breakfast>Big Thunder (LL)>Oga's>Rise>Haunted Mansion (LL)>Splash Mt (LL)>Radiator Racers ILL>break. Came back and did the Matterhorn LL before our Fantasmic dinner.

Day 4 was our slow day but the kids went off on their own armed with Genie+. I think by the time we saw them they had ridden Hyperspace Mt twice (rope drop and LL), Star Tours twice, Big Thunder 3 times (2 walk ons and 1 LL), Haunted Mansion (LL), Indy twice (walk on and LL), Buzz walk on, Matterhorn LL. They then used my wife and my LL options to ride some of them again. We all rode Guardians LL at night together.


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## Cal-Pie

Am I correct in thinking I can use gift cards for Genie+ and ILL?


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## mouschievous

Cal-Pie said:


> Am I correct in thinking I can use gift cards for Genie+ and ILL?


I think so,  but you want to be prepared.  You can't save a gift card to your Disney account (at least, you didn't used to be able to), so you have to enter the GC number when you want to purchase, instead of just using the saved credit card.  But if you have the number already copied (we keep them in the phone notes) and ready to paste, then it shouldn't slow you down much.


----------



## CyndiLouWho

mouschievous said:


> I think so,  but you want to be prepared.  You can't save a gift card to your Disney account (at least, you didn't used to be able to), so you have to enter the GC number when you want to purchase, instead of just using the saved credit card.  But if you have the number already copied (we keep them in the phone notes) and ready to paste, then it shouldn't slow you down much.


Still can't save a GC as of 2 weeks ago. Definite downside.


----------



## xipotec

Not sure of this is new or not. The app now shows “BUY GENIE PLUS TODAY”  listed ……

I thought they capped it?


----------



## FeistyDisneyMom

My family of 7 did G+ for our full stay.  It was a big chunk of the budget at $700, but we found it worth it.  I enjoyed the PP each day, especially the ride pictures.  We also were able to get LLs for nearly all of the rides at times that worked for us.  It was not quite as effective as MaxPass, but I found the LL lines shorter than the FP lines from previous trips.  My family got spoiled with short waits, usually under 10 minutes!

I did find myself wishing the top tier rides were included though.  Paying an additional $140 for RotR, and also paying for 6 for RSR and WS, just felt weird and made me uncomfortable.  I would rather spend an additional $10-20 per day for G+ (yup, that would take our bill up to $1400) then do the individual payments.  It just took me out of the moment and really made me aware I was a customer and not a guest.

We averaged 6 LL a day at DL, and 4 at DCA over our 5 day trip.  Our most productive LL days were those in which we hopped, and did 5 at DL and 3-4 at DCA.  I could have done even more if I was paying more attention to return times.


----------



## Whistlebee

FeistyDisneyMom said:


> My family of 7 did G+ for our full stay.  It was a big chunk of the budget at $700, but we found it worth it.  I enjoyed the PP each day, especially the ride pictures.  We also were able to get LLs for nearly all of the rides at times that worked for us.  It was not quite as effective as MaxPass, but I found the LL lines shorter than the FP lines from previous trips.  My family got spoiled with short waits, usually under 10 minutes!
> 
> I did find myself wishing the top tier rides were included though.  Paying an additional $140 for RotR, and also paying for 6 for RSR and WS, just felt weird and made me uncomfortable.  I would rather spend an additional $10-20 per day for G+ (yup, that would take our bill up to $1400) then do the individual payments.  It just took me out of the moment and really made me aware I was a customer and not a guest.
> 
> We averaged 6 LL a day at DL, and 4 at DCA over our 5 day trip.  Our most productive LL days were those in which we hopped, and did 5 at DL and 3-4 at DCA.  I could have done even more if I was paying more attention to return times.


I felt  nickel and dimed  too.  We had a group of 13 for our trip in June, and it adds up.  We did the LL for ROTR, and Genie+ everyday.  It actually left a bad taste in my mouth by the time the trip was over.  I had no problem paying for MaxPass, and I can easily afford the Genie+ upgrades, but the friends I was traveling with were on a tighter budget.  Which was fine, I helped out, but it made me feel bad that it’s a 2 class system now.  I miss the free FP (even tho we were MaxPass people).


----------



## jrsharp21

I bought some single day park hoppers a few days again and the option to purchase G+ was not anywhere during the selection and check out process. I thought maybe I missed it. So I went back to Disneyland.com and acted like I was going to purchase more tickets and I still did not see it. Did I miss it somewhere?

So now it looks like to add G+ we have to scan in the park first and then go into the app and buy it?


----------



## Cal-Pie

jrsharp21 said:


> I bought some single day park hoppers a few days again and the option to purchase G+ was not anywhere during the selection and check out process. I thought maybe I missed it. So I went back to Disneyland.com and acted like I was going to purchase more tickets and I still did not see it. Did I miss it somewhere?
> 
> So now it looks like to add G+ we have to scan in the park first and then go into the app and buy it?


I did a mock purchase and the option was there to add Genie+, but it came after I selected my park days. At WDW they have discontinued the advanced purchase of  Genie+. You will be able to add it once you've scanned in.


----------



## jrsharp21

Cal-Pie said:


> I did a mock purchase and the option was there to add Genie+, but it came after I selected my park days. At WDW they have discontinued the advanced purchase of  Genie+. You will be able to add it once you've scanned in.



I think I figured out the problem. I think G+ is sold out on the day we are going. I went through the process again and chose a different day and it was available as an option. On the day we are going, only parking is available as additional options.


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## katedrew94

Can someone please give me a simple explanation of stacking? I am going in a few weeks and want to make sure we get the most out of our trip. We haven’t been to Disneyland in 10 years.


----------



## xipotec

katedrew94 said:


> Can someone please give me a simple explanation of stacking? I am going in a few weeks and want to make sure we get the most out of our trip. We haven’t been to Disneyland in 10 years.


So, you cannot get another LL until you:
1. Use the existing one.
2. Wait 2 hours after you last chose one.

What people do, its they wait, and start getting LL, a little later in the day. Then every 2 hours they get another one.

10
12
2
4
6
8


So you can theoretically get  LL that are “stacked up” later in the day….there is of course a limit of how many you can get.
IF you stay till closing you may be able to stack them 6-8.

The issue with stacking is you have no control over return times. But typically you get the rides with the longest average late day waits first….then work backward (as those tend to have returns that push out later in the night.


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## sweethannah

Moving to other thread


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## becks59

Question about multiple experience pass:

My understanding is If you book a Genie+ for a ride and it shuts down, then it turns into a multiple experience pass. If I use that on Splash, could I get a regular LL for splash later in the day too?


----------



## DLRExpert

becks59 said:


> Question about multiple experience pass:
> 
> My understanding is If you book a Genie+ for a ride and it shuts down, then it turns into a multiple experience pass. If I use that on Splash, could I get a regular LL for splash later in the day too?


Yes when you get a MEP for a LL attraction that breaks down that LL is available again.
If timed right you can get multiple MEPs for the same attraction rather quickly by booking LL fast enough with a quick return time.


----------



## Lisa24jks

becks59 said:


> Question about multiple experience pass:
> 
> My understanding is If you book a Genie+ for a ride and it shuts down, then it turns into a multiple experience pass. If I use that on Splash, could I get a regular LL for splash later in the day too?



Yep. If it turns into a multi experience pass, it doesn’t affect your regular LL allotment for the day. It’s just an extra.


----------



## xipotec

becks59 said:


> Question about multiple experience pass:
> 
> My understanding is If you book a Genie+ for a ride and it shuts down, then it turns into a multiple experience pass. If I use that on Splash, could I get a regular LL for splash later in the day too?


Yes.


----------



## disneylover102

I heard if you try to book a LL for the other park in the morning it doesn’t automatically shift the return time to 1 so you can’t book it. Can anyone confirm this?


----------



## Cal-Pie

disneylover102 said:


> I heard if you try to book a LL for the other park in the morning it doesn’t automatically shift the return time to 1 so you can’t book it. Can anyone confirm this?


Yes, it's a fairly recent change. You can't book the opposite park until the return time hits 1pm.


----------



## DLRExpert

disneylover102 said:


> I heard if you try to book a LL for the other park in the morning it doesn’t automatically shift the return time to 1 so you can’t book it. Can anyone confirm this?


 Correct you have to wait until the LL return time is at 1pm or later.


----------



## disneylover102

Ugh that’s annoying. Especially if you’re starting at DL and want to do normal Guardians before it switches over because 1-2 is the only timeframe that’s a possibility


----------



## DLRExpert

disneylover102 said:


> Ugh that’s annoying. Especially if you’re starting at DL and want to do normal Guardians before it switches over because 1-2 is the only timeframe that’s a possibility


If you start at DL at park opening try to get an MEP LL from Indiana Jones. If you are lucky enough you can use that MEP for Guardians, either version.

Another strategy is to just keep an eye on Guardians (original) LL as the 1pm LL should be available around 10am-11am.


----------



## disneylover102

DLRExpert said:


> If you start at DL at park opening try to get an MEP LL from Indiana Jones. If you are lucky enough you can use that MEP for Guardians, either version.
> 
> Another strategy is to just keep an eye on Guardians (original) LL as the 1pm LL should be available around 10am-11am.


Is Guardians not on the list for any MEP anymore?! Like if small world is down is the MEP from that not valid on Guardians anymore? Or do you just mean Indy is most likely to be down at park opening? I haven’t been at DL for a bit because of my DCP at WDW but last time I was at DL all the MEPs were valid on Guardians but not Space or Indy so a MEP from Space or Indy was more valuable 

Yeah, I’ll definitely be checking for the Guardians return time to be late enough. It’ll just be a little annoying moving around my plans and constantly checking to see when it’s available for 1 when before I could’ve just done that automatically. I just want to get as many LLs as possible for Guardians because it’s my favorite ride in DCA


----------



## DLRExpert

disneylover102 said:


> Is Guardians not on the list for any MEP anymore?! Like if small world is down is the MEP from that not valid on Guardians anymore? Or do you just mean Indy is most likely to be down at park opening? I haven’t been at DL for a bit because of my DCP at WDW but last time I was at DL all the MEPs were valid on Guardians but not Space or Indy so a MEP from Space or Indy was more valuable
> 
> Yeah, I’ll definitely be checking for the Guardians return time to be late enough. It’ll just be a little annoying moving around my plans and constantly checking to see when it’s available for 1 when before I could’ve just done that automatically. I just want to get as many LLs as possible for Guardians because it’s my favorite ride in DCA


Guardians is a Golden Tier MEP now. Indy is a Golden Tier attraction, Indy is also most likely to be down at park opening. Also check to see what the status of Space Mountain (Also a Golden Tier attraction) is during Early Entry. If down during EE it may be also be down when the park opens.


----------



## disneylover102

DLRExpert said:


> Guardians is a Golden Tier MEP now. Indy is a Golden Tier attraction, Indy is also most likely to be down at park opening. Also check to see what the status of Space Mountain (Also a Golden Tier attraction) is during Early Entry. If down during EE it may be also be down when the park opens.


Noooo I loved using all my lower tier MEPs on Guardians and higher tier ones on Space  when did they move Guardians up? And is Toy Story still a higher tier ride?


----------



## DisneyJade

sorry, what is a golden tier? that's a new one for me. does it mean if you got a MEP for a less popular ride being down, it can't be used for an e-ticket attraction?


----------



## DLRExpert

DisneyJade said:


> sorry, what is a golden tier? that's a new one for me. does it mean if you got a MEP for a less popular ride being down, it can't be used for an e-ticket attraction?


Correct


----------



## blewis

I'm going to add to this line of questioning b/c my long lost brother (I'm adopted) asked me to.  Last year when he went to Oogie Boogie the Genie system wouldn't allow him to get in line for Guardians before 3pm b/c it didn't recognize him as having tickets.  Somehow it being an event was different.  Any idea how we can fix that?  I've never been on that ride, and really want to experience that w/ him.  We all know that hoping to get on between 3-6 is a pipe dream if we can't access the ride until 3pm.
Does that make sense?  Thoughts?


----------



## Cal-Pie

blewis said:


> I'm going to add to this line of questioning b/c my long lost brother (I'm adopted) asked me to.  Last year when he went to Oogie Boogie the Genie system wouldn't allow him to get in line for Guardians before 3pm b/c it didn't recognize him as having tickets.  Somehow it being an event was different.  Any idea how we can fix that?  I've never been on that ride, and really want to experience that w/ him.  We all know that hoping to get on between 3-6 is a pipe dream if we can't access the ride until 3pm.
> Does that make sense?  Thoughts?


The genie+ system didn't launch until Dec 2021, so I'm not sure how that could have been a factor for him? If you are entering on a party ticket at 3pm, there is no reason why you couldn't get in line for Guardians.


----------



## mjmcnns

I am correct in assuming you can't use Genie+ to make ride bookings until you have scanned into the park?


----------



## DLRExpert

mjmcnns said:


> I am correct in assuming you can't use Genie+ to make ride bookings until you have scanned into the park?


Correct for the Disneyland Resort
7am for Walt Disney World


----------



## DizFan13

DLRExpert said:


> Correct for the Disneyland Resort
> 7am for Walt Disney World


For WDW, I think this is only the case if you're an on-site guest.


----------



## DLRExpert

DizFan13 said:


> For WDW, I think this is only the case if you're an on-site guest.


Wdw onsite and offsite can book LL at 7am.
For ILL only onsite can book at 7am. Offsite cannot. They have to wait until the park opens.


----------



## Disturbia

I think the issue might be a day ticket with/without a park hopper (if park reservation was at a different park) is required?  I know at WDW party tickets don’t give you access to genie+.

https://plandisney.disney.go.com/question/go-rides-genie-during-oogie-boogie-bash-500529/

I believe it’s the same for the Virtual Queues/LLIA

https://plandisney.disney.go.com/qu...sh-able-virtual-line-reservations-web-464418/


----------



## KKB

BFF & I head Oct. 18 for 1 day.
DCA open & DL to close.
I have seen that you can make do Genie+ for everyone in your party--how do I attach her to my account?
(she bought her ticket separate from mine)


----------



## DisneyJade

I am planning to drop a mini trip report in the trip report forum with more detail, but here are a few quick summary observations from our experience with Genie+:


It's not necessary to purchase ahead of time. When ordering ahead, you have to get it for every day. We tried to use it every day, since we paid for it, but honestly, we probably only got our money's worth on our second day. We couldn't really use it much on arrival day at all, as most things were booked out until very late or were totally gone for the day. (Soarin, Guardians, Racers, Toy Story).
If you have little ones who are scared of E-ticket attractions, look carefully at the available rides and consider your options. A few major rides also have single rider, which is actually faster than LL (walk on for MFSR and Incredicoaster - both much faster than LL). My husband could take or leave the big rides, and I was willing to skip a few because we don't want our kids sitting around waiting for us grown ups. See below for which rides we actually used LL for during our trip.*
Not being able to choose your time is a major downgrade from FastPass, and I can't see the obvious benefit of doing this by Disney?
Another downgrade is only being able to book one LL per ride. If you have members of your party that only enjoy half the LL rides (or have height limits), they only get half the value, but you are forced to buy for your entire party.
I do like that the multi-pass you get when a LL ride is down gets you on to rides that don't even have LL, like Pirates or Mater or Nemo. However, it makes me wonder why those rides aren't included as LL rides in the first place.
SUMMARY: Crowds are back, so it's nice to have any skip-the-line option, but overall, it's disappointing to be paying more and getting less than before. It was still nice to have if I didn't think too hard about the cost. 
*How we used LL at each park over the course of 2.5 days, and how your mileage may vary:

*California Adventure*
Toy Story (twice - day 1 and day 2) - whole family​Soarin - whole family​_*Rode Guardians during Early Entry so did not need LL. (Only I rode. If my family liked Guardians, I would have booked an LL for after dark)
*Got a LL for Monsters Inc one morning, but it was a walk on, so we didn't need it. they didn't even have LL open. 
*Got an LL for Incredicoaster but single rider was faster, so I didn't need LL. (G+ would be more valuable for a family wanting to ride together)_

Our family doesn't love the carnival style rides at Pixar Pier, so the LL options there were not for us. In my opinion, CA needs to add LL to Mater, Luigi and Mermaid to add to the value in this park. It is not worth $80 for a family of 4 to skip two lines in a day (Soarin, Toy Story). Granted, early entry helped us to stay ahead of the crowds, but I still do not think G+ is worth it for this park. We also paid for a Racers LL ($60 for 4 ppl - not included in G+)

*Disneyland*
Autopia - whole family (twice - day 2 and day 3)​Buzz - whole family (day 1)​Star Tours - whole family (day 2)​Haunted Mansion - whole family (day 2)​Small World - whole family (day 2)​Indiana Jones - me and hubby only (day 3)​Splash Mountain - me only (day 3)​​_*Used a multi-experience pass at Nemo, which was nice! (this was our only MEP during our trip.)
*Got an LL for Falcon but single rider was faster, so I didn't need LL. (G+ would be more valuable for a family wanting to ride together)_

You can see we got a little more value out of G+ at this park, but it was still of far less value for our littles who don't like the e-tickets yet. Matterhorn and all of Toon Town were closed on our trip, which impacted the value of G+. Also, we were fine skipping Space Mountain. That would be a valuable LL for others. I would love to see more Fantasyland LLs for the littles in this park, but I know it's hard with the tight line space. We also paid for a Rise LL ($80 for 4 ppl - not included in G+)

SUMMARY:
Our daughters each used 9 LLs over 3 days (avg. 3/day) for $120 total
My husband used 10 LLs for $60
I used 11 LLs for $60

*I hope this is helpful for others!*


----------



## DLRExpert

DisneyJade said:


> I am planning to drop a mini trip report in the trip report forum with more detail, but here are a few quick summary observations from our experience with Genie+:
> 
> 
> It's not necessary to purchase ahead of time. When ordering ahead, you have to get it for every day. We tried to use it every day, since we paid for it, but honestly, we probably only got our money's worth on our second day. We couldn't really use it much on arrival day at all, as most things were booked out until very late or were totally gone for the day. (Soarin, Guardians, Racers, Toy Story).
> If you have little ones who are scared of E-ticket attractions, look carefully at the available rides and consider your options. A few major rides also have single rider, which is actually faster than LL (walk on for MFSR and Incredicoaster - both much faster than LL). My husband could take or leave the big rides, and I was willing to skip a few because we don't want our kids sitting around waiting for us grown ups. See below for which rides we actually used LL for during our trip.*
> Not being able to choose your time is a major downgrade from FastPass, and I can't see the obvious benefit of doing this by Disney?
> Another downgrade is only being able to book one LL per ride. If you have members of your party that only enjoy half the LL rides (or have height limits), they only get half the value, but you are forced to buy for your entire party.
> I do like that the multi-pass you get when a LL ride is down gets you on to rides that don't even have LL, like Pirates or Mater or Nemo. However, it makes me wonder why those rides aren't included as LL rides in the first place.
> SUMMARY: Crowds are back, so it's nice to have any skip-the-line option, but overall, it's disappointing to be paying more and getting less than before. It was still nice to have if I didn't think too hard about the cost.
> *How we used LL at each park over the course of 2.5 days, and how your mileage may vary:
> 
> *California Adventure*
> Toy Story (twice - day 1 and day 2) - whole family​Soarin - whole family​_*Rode Guardians during Early Entry so did not need LL. (Only I rode. If my family liked Guardians, I would have booked an LL for after dark)
> *Got a LL for Monsters Inc one morning, but it was a walk on, so we didn't need it. they didn't even have LL open.
> *Got an LL for Incredicoaster but single rider was faster, so I didn't need LL. (G+ would be more valuable for a family wanting to ride together)_
> 
> Our family doesn't love the carnival style rides at Pixar Pier, so the LL options there were not for us. In my opinion, CA needs to add LL to Mater, Luigi and Mermaid to add to the value in this park. It is not worth $80 for a family of 4 to skip two lines in a day (Soarin, Toy Story). Granted, early entry helped us to stay ahead of the crowds, but I still do not think G+ is worth it for this park. We also paid for a Racers LL ($60 for 4 ppl - not included in G+)
> 
> *Disneyland*
> Autopia - whole family (twice - day 2 and day 3) - whole family​Buzz - whole family (day 1)​Star Tours - whole family (day 2)​Haunted Mansion - whole family (day 2)​Small World - whole family (day 2)​Indiana Jones - me and hubby only (day 3)​Splash Mountain - me only (day 3)​​_*Used a multi-experience pass at Nemo, which was nice! (this was our only MEP during our trip.)
> *Got an LL for Falcon but single rider was faster, so I didn't need LL. (G+ would be more valuable for a family wanting to ride together)_
> 
> You can see we got a little more value out of G+ at this park, but it was still of far less value for our littles who don't like the e-tickets yet. Matterhorn and all of Toon Town were closed on our trip, which impacted the value of G+. Also, we were fine skipping Space Mountain. That would be a valuable LL for others. I would love to see more Fantasyland LLs for the littles in this park, but I know it's hard with the tight line space. We also paid for a Rise LL ($80 for 4 ppl - not included in G+)
> 
> SUMMARY:
> Our daughters each used 9 LLs over 3 days (avg. 3/day) for $120 total
> My husband used 10 LLs for $60
> I used 11 LLs for $60
> 
> *I hope this is helpful for others!*


Some thoughts and maybe I read some things wrong.

*Not being able to choose your time is a major downgrade from FastPass, and I can't see the obvious benefit of doing this by Disney?*
You could never do that with Fastpass or MaxPass at Disneyland. At WDW you could do it with FP+

*Another downgrade is only being able to book one LL per ride. If you have members of your party that only enjoy half the LL rides (or have height limits), they only get half the value, but you are forced to buy for your entire party.*
You do not have to buy LL for the entire party.

*I do like that the multi-pass you get when a LL ride is down gets you on to rides that don't even have LL, like Pirates or Mater or Nemo. However, it makes me wonder why those rides aren't included as LL rides in the first place.*
They do not have it, because those rides either have a low capacity (ex Storybook, Pan, Nemo ) or the surrounding area wouldn't be able to support a longer Stand by Line (ex Pirates).


----------



## DisneyJade

DLRExpert said:


> Some thoughts and maybe I read some things wrong.
> 
> *Not being able to choose your time is a major downgrade from FastPass, and I can't see the obvious benefit of doing this by Disney?*
> You could never do that with Fastpass or MaxPass at Disneyland. At WDW you could do it with FP+
> 
> *Another downgrade is only being able to book one LL per ride. If you have members of your party that only enjoy half the LL rides (or have height limits), they only get half the value, but you are forced to buy for your entire party.*
> You do not have to buy LL for the entire party.
> 
> *I do like that the multi-pass you get when a LL ride is down gets you on to rides that don't even have LL, like Pirates or Mater or Nemo. However, it makes me wonder why those rides aren't included as LL rides in the first place.*
> They do not have it, because those rides either have a low capacity (ex Storybook, Pan, Nemo ) or the surrounding area wouldn't be able to support a longer Stand by Line (ex Pirates).



It’s possible I’m remembering FP+, as I’ve spent more time in WDW and less time with the old Maxpass system in DL. So a downgrade for FL parks then, if not CA. 

We purchased Genie+ with our hoppers ahead of time and had to purchase for the entire party. Are you saying we did not have to do that? If so, I’d love a screenshot on where I could have changed that in the booking process because I definitely won’t  buy 4 next time!


----------



## KKB

DisneyJade said:


> We purchased Genie+ with our hoppers ahead of time and had to purchase for the entire party. Are you saying we did not have to do that? If so, I’d love a screenshot on where I could have changed that in the booking process because I definitely won’t  buy 4 next time!


If you don't all buy Genie plus, then you cannot all use it to secure LL spots. 
(I don't see how poster suggested entire party doesn't need G+--they were referring to ILL I believe)


----------



## katyringo

We just finished 5 park days where we used genie+ every single day. My takeaways:

Learn to "go fishing" for those multiple expirence passes. It totally saved us during storms. Once weather cleared we did all the things. 

It's a waste to use any LL before 9-930am, unless the ride was down and I used it to fish for a multiple expirence pass. Use EE/rope drop to do rides you may want to do more than once. 

In Disneyland Indiana Jones and Haunted mansion run out first, and waiting to book them for later will lock you out of new booking for 2 hours. Either book them early and ride between that 9-10am time, or use an afternoon break to stack them in the evening/night.  The worst you can do is book the for 2-4pm at like 10am.. because then you can't book for 2 hours. 

On our last night haunted mansion was pushing 11pm
And I knew we would not  make it that late and it's hubby's favorite (the holiday version) so I started refreshing and got a 930. 

In DCA during Halloween time the regular guardians goes fast! And then monsters opens around 11-12. Our first day we did both those LL in the same day. 

You can use the free genie section to modify your selections to bring the rides you want to watch to the top of the tip board. I used this constantly to watch the times. 

I set an alarm when we were taking an afternoon break to remember to book. Every day we would break from about 1-5 and would re-enter the park with 3-4 LL's ready.

Multiple expirence passes have tiers so make sure to check were you can use the one you have. They can be used on some rides that don't have LL.  It was nice to use one of those to ride pirates on a very busy day. 

On our third day I started being more intentional about booking in clusters. For example we would take the monorail into the park and I had buzz, space, and star tours stacked for a 90 minute time period. It worked great and saved our feet. 

Any specific questions, let me know.


----------



## lindyv321

katyringo said:


> I set an alarm when we were taking an afternoon break to remember to book. Every day we would break from about 1-5 and would re-enter the park with 3-4 LL's ready.
> 
> Multiple expirence passes have tiers so make sure to check were you can use the one you have. They can be used on some rides that don't have LL.  It was nice to use one of those to ride pirates on a very busy day.
> 
> On our third day I started being more intentional about booking in clusters. For example we would take the monorail into the park and I had buzz, space, and star tours stacked for a 90 minute time period. It worked great and saved our feet.
> 
> Any specific questions, let me know.


So question on stacking.. I knew how to use and stack MP but I’ve only used G+ once and stacking confuses me… so if I book one I either have to use it or if it’s for a later time wait 2 hours to book the next one right? So during your four hour break how do stack 3-4 in that time?


----------



## katyringo

lindyv321 said:


> So question on stacking.. I knew how to use and stack MP but I’ve only used G+ once and stacking confuses me… so if I book one I either have to use it or if it’s for a later time wait 2 hours to book the next one right? So during your four hour break how do stack 3-4 in that time?


Because I started while still in the park once times started pushing out and during our lunch. It's every two hours or until you use the last one you booked


----------



## lindyv321

katyringo said:


> Because I started while still in the park once times started pushing out and during our lunch. It's every two hours or until you use the last one you booked


Thank you! I’m hoping I can get the ins and outs of it down on this trip!


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## lindyv321

KKB said:


> BFF & I head Oct. 18 for 1 day.
> DCA open & DL to close.
> I have seen that you can make do Genie+ for everyone in your party--how do I attach her to my account?
> (she bought her ticket separate from mine)


You can scan her ticket into your app to link it to your account


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## FLCA026

lindyv321 said:


> Thank you! I’m hoping I can get the ins and outs of it down on this trip!


I need a tutorial. I don’t know anything about genie but I want to use it when we go to Disneyland.


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## lindyv321

FLCA026 said:


> I need a tutorial. I don’t know anything about genie but I want to use it when we go to Disneyland.


This is the thread to check out! Start at the beginning  tons of great info


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## FLCA026

So if you get genie plus you still have to pay for lightning lanes?


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## mtemm

FLCA026 said:


> So if you get genie plus you still have to pay for lightning lanes?



Disney complicated things by calling it the same thing.  Genie+ will allow access to certain rides so (assuming you can get one for whatever ride you are trying for, not a guarantee),  instead of entering the standby queue, you enter a different queue called the “lightning lane.”

This is the same queue that is offered for pay-to -ride rides that are known as “individual lighting lanes.”   There are currently only two rides that fall into this category at DL/DCA.  Rise of the Resistance and Racers.  You do NOT have to have genie+ in order to buy these rides (at least not at wdw, I assume same for DL). 

So yes, if you buy genie+, you still would need to buy these two rides separately (if you want to). 

There are some great YouTube videos that can show you exactly how to use it that I found very helpful.


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## FLCA026

mtemm said:


> Disney complicated things by calling it the same thing.  Genie+ will allow access to certain rides so (assuming you can get one for whatever ride you are trying for, not a guarantee),  instead of entering the standby queue, you enter a different queue called the “lightning lane.”
> 
> This is the same queue that is offered for pay-to -ride rides that are known as “individual lighting lanes.”   There are currently only two rides that fall into this category at DL/DCA.  Rise of the Resistance and Racers.  You do NOT have to have genie+ in order to buy these rides (at least not at wdw, I assume same for DL).
> 
> So yes, if you buy genie+, you still would need to buy these two rides separately (if you want to).
> 
> There are some great YouTube videos that can show you exactly how to use it that I found very helpful.


Thank you. So genie plus and then those rides are separate For more money. 
I’ll need to see what Genie Plus gets me and if I should do it. I’ll keep reading and I’ll check for utube videos. Thank you!


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## Chrisfilm

We have two families (total of 7 people) taking a trip together in early November. Right now we have us split into two parties. Is it going to be better to link all 7 onto a single account for LL booking? Or will we be fine to all get the same return times keeping it at the current 4/3 split on two accounts?


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## lindyv321

Chrisfilm said:


> We have two families (total of 7 people) taking a trip together in early November. Right now we have us split into two parties. Is it going to be better to link all 7 onto a single account for LL booking? Or will we be fine to all get the same return times keeping it at the current 4/3 split on two accounts?


I would link all the tickets into one app for Genie+ otherwise you may not all get the same return times.


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## lindyv321

Sorry for the double post… 

Question-do you have to cancel an existing reservation prior to the return time or can you cancel it within the return time window if you haven’t scanned in? Just wondering if we go to return and the LL is out of control if I can cancel and book a later time (if available)?


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## katyringo

lindyv321 said:


> Sorry for the double post…
> 
> Question-do you have to cancel an existing reservation prior to the return time or can you cancel it within the return time window if you haven’t scanned in? Just wondering if we go to return and the LL is out of control if I can cancel and book a later time (if available)?


We were able to cancel within the window for this exact reason.


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## Fastman

When using the Genie+ app with multiple tickets linked together and everyone has a LL booked for same ride/time, does each ticket have to be scanned at LL entrance or does scanning one ticket automatically check the rest of the party in?


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## DL1WDW2

I noticed each guest required to scan while at WDW .
Otherwise it would create multiple  returns . They also need to verify that somebody isn’t just following your group in to take advantage …


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## limace

Does anyone have a great YouTube video to recommend to help explain genie+? Taking my whole family and several folks haven’t been since old paper Fastpass days.


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## mtemm

Molly (now of mammoth club, but her DL content is from when she was still part of allears.  She has a few DL videos that are really fun and helpful.  Just go to YouTube and search for Molly all ears Disneyland


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## EEva

katyringo said:


> I set an alarm when we were taking an afternoon break to remember to book. Every day we would break from about 1-5 and would re-enter the park with 3-4 LL's ready.
> *
> Multiple expirence passes have tiers so make sure to check were you can use the one you have. They can be used on some rides that don't have LL*.  It was nice to use one of those to ride pirates on a very busy day.
> 
> 
> Any specific questions, let me know.


I'm curious as to how this works? Do you just show your MEP to the cast member at the attraction? Is there a separate area that allows one to "skip" the stand by wait? 
TIA


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## katyringo

EEva said:


> I'm curious as to how this works? Do you just show your MEP to the cast member at the attraction? Is there a separate area that allows one to "skip" the stand by wait?
> TIA


They have hand held scanners at the ride exit.


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## CJN

Last night, just a few minutes after midnight, I was able to purchase G+ for today. Is this a new development? I thought previously it could only be purchased after you entered a park but since I was awake I thought I’d try. And it worked.


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