Everything Genie, Genie+ and Individual Lightning Lane - Please Read Posts 1-7

[BrianL]

Yes, these are very popular rides and the Individual Lightning Lane selections will sell out. It is still currently very busy due to Spring Breaks and Easter, but depending on when you are going it may not be quite as hard to purchase ILL for these. These rides do have standby availability at all times I believe. The only ones that require either a free boarding group or ILL purchase are Cosmic Reqind and TRON.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

I think it usually means that all ILL spots are gone for the day. Isn’t Remy’s included with Genie + now?

Yes, of the OP's list, FOP and ROTR are ILL/standby, and Remy's is G+/LL or standby. I also agree that it likely means the ILLs are already gone for FOP and ROTR, and G+/LL is gone for Remy's for the day.

 

[thinkerbell]

Ohhhh…got it! Thank you! We are going at the beginning of May so hopefully it will be different then.

 

[BrianL]

Ohhhh…got it! Thank you! We are going at the beginning of May so hopefully it will be different then.

It should definitely be less busy at that time as there is a little lull before the summer breaks start. I am going as well on May 10th! I have been around that time before and it is pretty good, though keep in mind ILL will still sell out for some of these rides - just maybe a little later than currently (shouldn't be seconds). TRON should still be pretty hot!

 

[coasternut22]

Here is the data for Remy. About halfway down is the Lightning Lane availability map for the month. Looks like all return times were booked by 7:10am this morning. Definitely an extremely busy day today. You can use their site to look at the other rides and daily park activity.

https://www.thrill-data.com/waits/attraction/epcot/remysratatouilleadventure/

 

[mdb07]

Hi all, just back from a week-long trip in the heart of this past week's Spring Break crowds and can offer a few tips. Not breaking any new ground here, but as someone who considers himself an expert at using this new system there were a couple of things I learned and a few beliefs reinforced.

• Rope Drop - I am a lifelong Rope Drop evangelist and I found that it just does not really work anymore in these heavy crowd weeks. I think the word is out about the value of Rope Drop but also given the surge prices of the Genie+/ILL alternatives, it creates even more motivation for people to get there early. You just cannot get through 2-3 attractions early anymore, which drastically changes the value proposition of getting up early (especially as I have two teenage daughters). It felt that you could maybe get one thing done, even with Early Entry.
• We found Genie+ Stacking to be the absolute best strategy, hands down, especially given how rope drop was not working out. As examples, we arrived at WDW mid-day our first day and I had already stacked several rides at DHS. So we rolled into DHS around 1:00 and had SDD, TOT, TSMM and Rise already booked and ready to go. Was able to book more as well during our time there and we filled in the gaps with other things like Launch Bay, One Man's Dream, Frozen Sing-A-Long, Muppets, etc. with no waits. We basically finished that park in a half a day and that includes Fantasmic. On our second day we stacked Magic Kingdom and spent the morning relaxing at the resort and arrived around 2:00 with a number of rides already in hand and was able to continue to book more. This also worked well with park hopping. We started day 4 at Epcot and since there are only so many rides there you can Genie+, we booked and rode those early and then started stacking to MK for that evening, which we went to after a break at the resort. Same for Animal Kingdom - booked and cycled through the Safari, Everest, Lion King and Nemo and then started booking for DHS later that night and was able to get 4 more rides that night.
• Modify/Refresh is key - don't sleep on this feature, especially when stacking! Train yourself on how to do this. For a relatively small investment of time you can really arrange your day how you want/need it to be. I could continually move our bookings around to the times I needed them to be. The return time availability was always changing and we often saw rides that had no availability show times available after just a few minutes of trying. Happy to elaborate if anyone is interested in details, but I am sure it has been covered somewhere in here.
• Re: Using Genie+ for shows at Animal Kingdom - I believe I read somewhere on here that someone said not to use Genie+ for the shows - I disagree, at least for our party's purposes. The lines were enormous for the Lion King and Nemo shows. If we had not used Genie+ for them, we would have waited maybe 2 shows for them and that would have been 2+ hours. Luckily my kids were not interested in Kali River Rapids or Navi River Journey, so I could get away with this - just saying that it is something to consider on the heavy crowd days.
• If you have the means, I suggest going right to booking the ILL for Tron - I was able to easily get a booking while everyone else was trying to get Virtual Queue.

We do not normally visit at such peak crowded times, and the only way we could/would do it is with Genie+ and ILL. Expensive for sure, but the only way this would have worked for our group - we are fortunate that we can do it of course. Looking at the wait times across the parks this week, the time savings alone for what we were able to accomplish were worth the money.

 

[luvallprincesses]

How does anyone feel about booking G+ for Studios on arrival day with a flight leaving at 8:30 am and landing in MCO at 11:30 am (with private town car service to the Swan)? Flight travel too unreliable to spend the money? Or really worth the ability to stack while waiting in security at the airport, after landing/waiting for luggage, and before heading into the park, hopefully 3-4 pm and staying until 8-9 pm? Looking for anyone with experience in this, strong feelings, or regrets one way or the other.

 

[Runnsally]

How does anyone feel about booking G+ for Studios on arrival day with a flight leaving at 8:30 am and landing in MCO at 11:30 am (with private town car service to the Swan)? Flight travel too unreliable to spend the money? Or really worth the ability to stack while waiting in security at the airport, after landing/waiting for luggage, and before heading into the park, hopefully 3-4 pm and staying until 8-9 pm? Looking for anyone with experience in this, strong feelings, or regrets one way or the other.

Totally worth it.

 

[mdb07]

Agree that it is worth it at a busy period - and if your plans and time change you can continually use the Modify option to push your times back (except for SDD - that one will be harder and you just have to hope you get a later time). All of that travel time can be valuable stacking time. You would have to accept the risk that if something really went awry then you would not be able to take advantage of what you paid for, though. That said, I found in multiple instances that they are reasonable about refunds. My wife got sick on day 4 of our trip and was not able to join us for anything, even though I had bought Genie+ for that day for all of us. The Guest Experience team refunded me the $35+tax for her Genie+ for that day (they could see that I had booked a ton of things for our entire party but she had never actually tapped in). They also refunded the Flight of Passage ILL I had bought her for that day. If things really went wrong with your flights you could probably/possibly get a refund.

 

[rance]

Hi
I apologize if this has been discussed previously but I can’t find it.

Can I purchase an ILL at 7 am the day I check into hotel?

Our flight leaves for MCO at 8 and I would like to purchase TRON at 7am but won’t be at hotel checking in until noon…. Staying at swan.
Is that allowed with a reservation, but not checked in yet?

Thansk

 

[scrappinginontario]

Hi
I apologize if this has been discussed previously but I can’t find it.

Can I purchase an ILL at 7 am the day I check into hotel?

Our flight leaves for MCO at 8 and I would like to purchase TRON at 7am but won’t be at hotel checking in until noon…. Staying at swan.
Is that allowed with a reservation, but not checked in yet?

Thansk

Yes you can but, return times for TRON are being enforced so you will want to select a time you’re sure is after you arrive in the MK.

Please see the posts on page 1 re: everything genie+ and ILL$.

 

[luvallprincesses]

(except for SDD - that one will be harder and you just have to hope you get a later time)

We haven’t been since the ability to Modify, so in this case if I grab a SDD at 7 am, I would want to try to immediately alter the time for a later time because even the later times will be gone within minutes? (June trip) Then again…is it the G+ or ILL times that can’t be seen now for the first half hour after booking? If that’s the case for G+ then I guess we’d book the Falcon or Runaway Railway instead.

 

[mdb07]

We haven’t been since the ability to Modify, so in this case if I grab a SDD at 7 am, I would want to try to immediately alter the time for a later time because even the later times will be gone within minutes? (June trip) Then again…is it the G+ or ILL times that can’t be seen now for the first half hour after booking? If that’s the case for G+ then I guess we’d book the Falcon or Runaway Railway instead.

Yes that’s correct. I happened to get an SDD time for late afternoon so it worked for us. And I was all over it right at 7 AM so at busy times you may have to hope you get what you want right away because they will likely be gone very quickly. That said, I would still go for it and then try to modify right away. You never know and you can always decline the modification - I.e. you have to confirm the change before it sticks so when you modify you will know what you are modifying to and can cancel if it doesn’t work for you. And you can always keep trying to modify throughout the day - as I mentioned before the availability changes throughout the day and they also drop some additional ones at random.

 

[happypaws]

Planning to try to get an individual lightening lane for Tron this Friday. I have a park hopper pass. Staying on site and going to purchase at 7am. I have animal kingdom for my park pass in the morning and planning to park hop to magic kingdom later in the afternoon. Will this plan work? Has anyone done something like this? Must I have a park pass for MK even if I have a hopper ticket at time of purchase?
I have researched many blogs, the Disney website and this website and haven’t found this specific answer.
Seems like it should work based on a post on the Disney website from 2022 about RotR and GotG. https://plandisney.disney.go.com/qu...idual-lightning-lane-reservation-park-518004/
But when I checked the MDE today it said my party wasn’t eligible to purchase an ILL (I’m not at Disney yet). Of course this made me nervous since there is no way to test until my first park day on Friday.
Would love to hear from anyone who did this successfully or otherwise! Thanks.

 

[momandRN2B]

Yes as long as you have a park reservation that day (for any park) you should be able to. Just make sure you pick a time after 2:00pm.

 

[AUDramaQueen]

It worked for Guardians when we were there last. Like pp said, it has to be for after 2pm.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Planning to try to get an individual lightening lane for Tron this Friday. I have a park hopper pass. Staying on site and going to purchase at 7am. I have animal kingdom for my park pass in the morning and planning to park hop to magic kingdom later in the afternoon. Will this plan work? Has anyone done something like this? Must I have a park pass for MK even if I have a hopper ticket at time of purchase?
I have researched many blogs, the Disney website and this website and haven’t found this specific answer.
Seems like it should work based on a post on the Disney website from 2022 about RotR and GotG. https://plandisney.disney.go.com/qu...idual-lightning-lane-reservation-park-518004/
But when I checked the MDE today it said my party wasn’t eligible to purchase an ILL (I’m not at Disney yet). Of course this made me nervous since there is no way to test until my first park day on Friday.
Would love to hear from anyone who did this successfully or otherwise! Thanks.

You didn’t have a park reservation today which is why you saw the message you did.

As others have said, be sure to select an ILL$ return time after 2PM as return times are being enforced for TRON.

 

[mdb07]

You didn’t have a park reservation today which is why you saw the message you did.

As others have said, be sure to select an ILL$ return time after 2PM as return times are being enforced for TRON.

Agree with all of these responses. We just did this last week with a park pass for Epcot and bought 7:40 PM lightning lanes for Tron. Worked very smoothly.

 

[HannahEJ]

Hello Everyone!

First time using Genie+ - We used to be masters of the old FP system, but now feeling nervous about getting it right!

Would love advice on what Genie+ to go for first in each park to optimize our day and any other info you feel might be helpful

Is there a way to know the current G+ drop times throughout the day?

Thank you and have a magical day!

 

[scrappinginontario]

Hello Everyone!

First time using Genie+ - We used to be masters of the old FP system, but now feeling nervous about getting it right!

Would love advice on what Genie+ to go for first in each park to optimize our day and any other info you feel might be helpful

Is there a way to know the current G+ drop times throughout the day?

Thank you and have a magical day!

I would recommend reading the posts on page 1 of this thread as they explain Genie+ and ILL$ in great detail. There are also links to helpful videos.

Genie doesn't have 'drop times'. Are you asking about Virtual Queues for TRON and Guardians? If so, the VQ thread is the one you'll want to check out. Again, the first posts contain information about how VQ's work.

If you have additional questions about Genie+ after reading, please add them here. Similarly, the VQ thread is available if you have specific questions about that.