Is Genie+ Worth the Price When Visiting Disneyland?
Disneyland, the happiest place on earth…also, one of the most crowded during the summer months. Many rides and attractions can have a standby line of over an hour and a half. When you are traveling with a six-year-old, standing around in lines for over an hour is out of the question. Enter Genie+, a personalized experience that helps to mitigate line wait times and even helps you to plan out your itinerary for the day.
There are Two Types of Genie Service
When it is comes to the new Genie service through Disneyland, you need to know that there is a free version of this feature, as well as a paid version. The free Disney Genie service in the My Disney Experience app will “maximize your park time” via a personalized itinerary feature that will “quickly and seamlessly map out an entire day.”
There is also a paid version of the Genie service. The Genie+ is an extra $15 per person, per day, plus tax. With the Genie+ add-on feature, you can acquire Lightning Lane reservations throughout the day and skip the lines and long wait times.
I should mention, you do not need to buy Genie+ or use Lightning Lanes to have a fun and productive day at Disneyland. To the contrary, this feature in the My Disney Experience app can be frustrating due to its unfriendly user interface, propensity for glitches, and the fact that it’ll increase your screen time. However, if you want to skip the lines and eliminate the constant complaints from your tiny humans, it may be worth the $15+ for each ticket.
What happened to the free FastPass+ system?
FastPass+ has been permanently retired at Disneyland. Genie+ is the permanent replacement and is very different. So different that it is highly recommended that you spend a bit of time learning to navigate the Disney app before visiting the park. The app itself has a learning curve and can become quite frustrating if you are trying to learn on the fly while already at the park.
How to Make the Most out of Genie+
I spent half of the year planning an epic trip to Disneyland with my family. It was the topic of many conversations around our dinner table for months. My family discussed attractions we wanted to ride and characters we wanted to meet. I prepared by scouring the web for tips and tricks for navigating the park. However, nothing can really prepare you for the enormity of the park nor when things just don’t go the way you planned.
One of the biggest life savers and the reason our trip was so successful was the use of Genie+ and the ability to use Lightning Lanes for many of the park’s attractions. It should be noted that you most definitely should download the Disneyland app a few weeks prior to your trip and begin playing around with the app’s features. It will save you a ton of time and frustration if you know the ins and outs of the app prior to your visit.
At Disneyland, you can start booking Genie+ attractions as soon as you have scanned your ticket to enter a park for the morning (if you haven’t pre-purchased Genie+ for the length of your ticket, you’ll have to purchase it first). Note that once you have entered any park for the day, you can then book Disney Genie+ return times from any location for the rest of the day. So if you take a mid-day break to go back to your hotel, you can keep booking from there. The app will let you know when you are eligible to book your next attraction.
With Genie+, guests book same-day reservations for their desired attractions on a smartphone. These reservations are 1 hour long windows to return to the ride. Disney says guests can make these reservations one at a time. However, one thing we learned while using the Lightning Lane feature that was pretty awesome was that if your ride closes during your allotted time to use the Lightning Lane feature, you will receive a free Lightning Lane ticket to use at any point during the day for pretty much any ride at Disneyland, even those that don’t have the Lightning Lane feature. This happened each and every day that we were at Disneyland, and while it was a bit inconvenient, it also provided us one extra Lightning Lane pass for the day that we could use at any time we chose.
Another thing that must be mentioned is, like the old Fast Pass, you can only be signed up for one Lightning Lane at a time. So, you need to plan accordingly. Also, once you sign up for and complete a Lightning Lane on a certain ride, you can not use the Lightning Lane on the same ride again. That was one thing we did not know, and it was a pretty big bummer when we just wanted to ride Space Mountain one more time and not wait over an hour to do so.
Last, it should be noted that not all of the rides at Disneyland have a Lightning Lane and two rides - Star Wars The Rise of the Resistance in Disneyland and Radiator Springs Racers in California Adventure Land - have an additional add-on purchase of $20 per ticket for use of the Lightning Lane. In an effort to be transparent, we did purchase both of those extra Lightning Lanes for our family. We just could not fathom standing in line for over two hours, nor did we want to. I can honestly say, it was not worth the extra $60 to ride the Radiator Springs Racers. However, it was a hundred percent worth it for the new Star Wars Rise of the Distance ride.
Which attractions are available via the Genie+ service?
Here’s the official Genie+ list of attractions:
Disneyland Park Attractions Available on Genie+ (12)
Autopia
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
Haunted Mansion
Indiana Jones
It’s a Small World
Matterhorn
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin
Space Mountain
Splash Mountain
Star Tours
Disney California Adventure Park Attractions Available on Genie+ (7)
Goofy’s Sky School
Grizzly River Run
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!
Incredicoaster
Monsters Inc.
Soarin’
Toy Story Midway Mania
Other Tips Worth mentioning
As soon as you scan into the Lightning Lane of a ride you have booked with Genie+, you are immediately eligible to book a new return time with Genie+ (if it has been less than 120 minutes since you booked your last attraction). Scan your pass and have a game plan of which Lightning Lane you want to book next so you can immediately do that before hopping on your next ride.
If you don’t scan into the Lightning Lane of a ride you have booked with Genie+, you are eligible to book a new return time with Genie+ at the end of your 1 hour time window. (However, don’t forget, you are only allowed to use one Lightning Lane for each ride a day)
If the return time window you are given for a ride starts more than 120 minutes later than the time at which you are booking, you will be eligible to book a new return time with Genie+ 120 minutes later. So, if it is 11:00 a.m. and Space Mountain is showing a Lightning Lane return time between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., you can book your next Genie+ attraction 120 minutes after the current time of 11:00 a.m.
The first two hours of the park opening and the last hour before park closing have the least amount of guests, so use that time to ride all of the non Lightning Lane rides in Standby lines during those times. The wait time will be way less significant, and you will be able to maximize your overall park experience that way.
As a closing thought, remember, visiting Disneyland should be a fun experience for you and your family. You are there to make memories, so try not to spend the whole time staring at your phone trying to map out the best possible day. It already is a great day - you’re in Disneyland with your family, so have fun!