Let’s Start With the Basics
If you are doing any research before your trip (which I highly recommend), you have probably joined a couple of Facebook Pages, followed some Instagram accounts, and have read a few blogs. That is great! The way to have a successful Disney Trip is to know what you are doing. There’s no way around it. No matter if you are a “Go with a Flow” personality, or “I need to have a spreadsheet to schedule out my vacation days”, like your girl here. The more you know, the more successful your trip will be. If you show up to this beast that is Disney with no preparation, you will spend the first couple days of your trip playing catch up, which is no fun and a waste of your money!
If you have been doing your research, you have probably noticed a ton of abbreviations. Here is a cheat sheet of some of the abbreviations that apply to the topic of Genie Plus. There are many more, but we’ll stick with the ones we need!
Alright, So What Is Genie Plus?
Genie Plus is Disney’s newest Fast Pass option. You will need to purchase it for each member of your party, each day of your visit. It will be about $20 depending on the days you are visiting the park. So if you have 4 people in your group, and the rate that week is $20/person you will pay $80 each day for the Genie Plus access. Yes, that does sound like a lot, especially when you start adding up your park days. But, fun fact, we went to Universal, and not only did we pay about $150 for a park ticket, the fast pass option was $100 additional per person. So, in my opinion Disney Genie Plus is a steal. The formats are different, but if you know how to maximize Genie Plus it will serve you just as well! Purchasing Genie Plus, especially in Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom, are huge assets to maximizing your Disney Experience.
With that said, if you don’t know how to operate it… it will be a huge waste.
How Does Genie Plus Work?
In order to purchase and operate Genie Plus, you have to download the free Disney Genie app. If you booked with a Certified Disney Travel Guide (highly recommend), you have probably already done this step. If you do not have this app, download it now! This will be your gateway to all things Disney. It will have a ton of information at your fingertips for free. Ride wait times, mobile food ordering, show times, dining reservations, access to your room, and even an interactive map!
Within this app is where you will purchase Genie Plus, as well as book your ride times. You can purchase Genie Plus starting at 12am the morning of your park visit. Does that mean you have to be awake every night at 12am just to purchase Genie Plus. No. I have purchased Genie Plus at 6:55am just before it was time to make my first reservation. However, I have heard reports of Disney limiting Genie Plus purchases, and essentially “selling out” and some guests were not able to purchase it. I have not had that experience, so I would say, check the Disney Calendar. If the parks are maxed out on the days you are there, you should probably be safe and purchase it at midnight, but if it looks like the parks are going to be a little less crowded, you can probably purchase in the morning before you need to book your first ride times.
Once Genie Plus is purchased for everyone in your group, you are ready to book your rides. Right now, if you are staying at a Disney Resort, you will be able to book your first ride time at 7 am. You will be ready to book your next ride 2 hours after park opening, or right after you have checked in to your first Genie Plus ride that you booked.
Sound confusing? Let me break it down for you:
Don’t worry, your Genie Tip Board, will tell you exactly when you can make your next booking!
So, What’s the Best Genie Plus Strategy?
The tried and true strategy that has worked best for us is the afternoon stacking method. We typically get to the park right after rope drop. Sometimes we are there in time for rope drop, but let’s be honest, we are consistently late for everything, so it only makes sense to be late for rope drop! Either way, if we get there for early entry or if we get there a little after the park opens, typically this is when you can knock out a lot of the bigger rides with lower wait times. So, we will use our Genie Plus bookings to stack our rides in the afternoon when the wait times are high.
If we were going to Hollywood Studios, we would head straight for SDD or MMRR, while also stacking our Genie Plus Bookings for the afternoon. A lot of times, we are able to ride these rides twice by rope dropping these rides and then booking them for a later time that afternoon. This is always a win for my son, who loves SDD. Also, we are not Star Wars people, so the Star Wars rides are not really ever on our radar, but they are very popular for rope dropping in Hollywood Studios as well.
Here is an example of what we were able to do on our last trip to Hollywood Studios:
*Note this is with an extreme emphasis on Toy Story Land, because our son is a huge Toy Story fan. So you could easily slip a few more bigger rides in there in place of some of the rides we rode twice. This is just how we chose to use our bookings!
Slinky Dog Dash- Rope Drop
Toy Story Mania
Aliens
Woody’s Lunch Box (Hello Totchos!, and no we didn’t care that it wasn’t even 10am)
Gift Store
Parade
Slinky Dog Dash- Genie Plus
Gift Store
Muppets 3D
Frozen Sing A Long
Lunch at ABC Commissary- YES, all of this was before Lunch!
Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy
Met Pluto
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway- Genie Plus
Toy Story Mania- Genie Plus
Aliens- the line was short so we were able to sneak it in before we left!
We got back to our hotel by 4pm. We were planning to stay all day, but we were beat! If we continued to book while we were at our hotel, we would have had even more rides stacked when we returned for the evening.
If you follow the afternoon stacking method, but can’t do the park open to close, here is what I recommend:
-Rope Dropping, heading back to your resort after lunch, naps, come back to the park and hit up all of your stacked rides. You book afternoon rides at 7am, 2 hours after park opening, and every 2 hours after that.
-Wake up at 7am, book your first ride, go back to sleep!! Wake up late, eat breakfast at your resort, take it slow, book your next ride 2 hours after park open, then head to the park after lunch. Continue to stack your rides, and use standby lines for rides with shorter wait times, stay until close and see the fireworks!
How Do I Know What Rides to Book?
You have to do the research! Before your stay, pull up your Genie App every day at different times. Make notes of the rides that you have on your “Must Do” list. Notice the wait times, are they too long for you and your family to stand in without having a toddler meltdown (or adult melt down)?
If they are, you need to put that on your Genie Plus booking list. You can even go to “My TipBoard” and it will tell you when the next time the Genie Plus can be booked, even when you are not in the park. This is very important because, the faster the Genie Plus bookings get reserved, the later in the day the available time slots go. This is why you might log in and see that The Barnstormer is available to book for 9:45am, while the next available booking for Jungle Cruise is 3:15pm. You will need to note the rides on your “Must Do” list that go fast, and those will need to be the first Genie Plus you book. If both of these are on your "Must Do" List, you would want to book the Jungle Cruise time first, because chances are at your next available time to book, Jungle Cruise will no longer be offering times to book.
By doing this research, you are also familiarizing yourself with each park and their layout, so you will know exactly where (or atleast the general area) of where these rides are when you are trying to get to them on your actual park day.
What are Individual Lightning Lanes?
On top of Genie Plus, there are also “Individual Lightning Lanes”, or ILLs. These are separate rides that are not offered on Genie Plus. Disney will sometimes switch these out, so you need to make notes of which ones will be on the ILL list during your trip.
With these rides, you have to purchase them separately from Genie Plus. The price depends on the popularity of the ride, as well as how crowded the park is expected to be. I have seen these prices range from $11-$20+ per person. To me, this does seem steep, by the time you consider you have most likely purchased Genie Plus for everyone, then you have to pay even more for just one ride? It’s a tough pill to swallow. We have purchased these in the past, because honestly, our time was just more important. Being able to just walk past a 90 minute wait with an impatient toddler was well worth the price. This is definitely up to you and what will work best for you, and it might be a ride you don’t even care about and can scratch it off of your list.
Another difference between ILL and Genie Plus, is that they are available to purchase whenever. There is no 2 hour wait, or need to check in to a certain ride before they are available to purchase. You can just keep checking the TipBoard for when your ideal time pops up. But like the Genie Plus rides, the times get later and later in the day. Once they are gone, they are not very likely to come back. So keep that in mind if you have your eye on an ILL purchase!
Just in case you are not confused enough, let’s add in Virtual Queues!
There are a couple of rides that board via Virtual Queues. You can find these on your Genie App, and this is also where you will enter the Virtual Queue. This process usually applies to new rides when they first open. The idea is to allow you to enjoy your day while you wait on your ride rather than spending your whole time in a standby line. For example, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is one of the rides currently on the Virtual Queue list. To ride this ride, you will need to join the Virtual Queue. This is an option on your Disney Genie homescreen. There are currently 2 different drops, 3 on days with Extended Park Hours. These drops are at- yes, you guessed it- 7am, 1pm, and 6pm when hours are extended. At these times, you will go on to your app to enter the Virtual Queue. If you succeed, you will be given a Boarding Group Number. The BGs will be updated in the app throughout the day so you know what BGs are boarding, and it will also give you an estimated wait time. This will help you gauge your time and explore the rest of the park accordingly.
Quick Facts for Genie Plus
When you book a ride, you will have an hour to check in to the booked ride. If you book something for 1:20-2:20pm, you can check in (scan your magic band) at any point during that time frame to redeem your ride.
If you are park hopping, you can book rides for your second park, as long as the time slot is after 2pm.
Use your tip board! Go in and mark your preferred attractions, and they will appear towards the top for easier access to wait times/Genie Plus times.
Be sure to have your whole party linked to each other's accounts. This allows anyone in the group to make Genie Plus reservations for everyone.
You must have a Park Reservation linked to your account to make Genie Plus selections.
Do your research! Disney is a machine. If you are not prepared, you will spend the first couple of days playing catch up.
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