Genie+ Review

I won’t give the full detailed break down of my experience with Genie+, but here is the summary:

During one of the busiest times to visit Walt Disney World (February break), we purchased Genie+ on three of our trip days and averaged five rides a day with it. On each day we were able to get a few of the top tier rides such as Slinky Dog Dash, Tower of Terror, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, etc. and a number of low tier rides. Over the three days we saved a total of 11.4 hours (685 minutes) of waiting in lines for a total cost of $45 per person and a value of $3.90 per hour saved. If you read my Individual Lightning Lane (ILL) review then you know that your average park ticket has a $10 per hour value, so we really got our money’s worth from Genie+ (lower is better). But…I think we used Genie+ about as optimally as possible, during an extremely busy season.

Variable Value or Your Mileage Will Vary

I don’t like Genie+. It has a number of faults that could potentially be worked through but the core product really bothers me. You see, Genie+ has an extremely variable value – to illustrate this let me talk about our first day using it at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (DHS). While we got a Slinky Dog Dash reservation at 7 a.m., when we were able to get our second reservation (two hours after park open) there were no times available for any of the first or second tier rides. Slinky Dog (not that we could get a second one anyway), Tower of Terror, Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster, Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run, and Toy Story Mania were all gone for the day. We snagged an Indiana Jones pass instead, but we missed the 15 minute arrival window for it due to when our Slinky Dog pass was. Our third pass for the day was then used to meet Olaf, an experience with a zero minute standby line when we arrived.

Ultimately, we netted value beyond the first DHS pass both days we went because we spent our evenings at parks with more ride availability (EPCOT and Magic Kingdom). It is very easy to have Genie+ feel like wasted money, getting no big name rides or only one or two experiences from it. I praised Individual Lightning Lane for its fixed value, and I’ll damn Genie+ for its wild swings in value. I think that’s why opinions on Genie+ tend to be so polarized – either you tried it and got your money’s worth and more, or you didn’t and feel ripped off. I think Disney is very aware of this issue, even going so far as to put a disclaimer on the Genie+ site that you should only expect two to three rides per purchase.

Variance From Park to Park

One of the key factors in the variable value of Genie+ is the park you are going to for the day. If I break Genie+ attractions into three categories – Tier One (60+ minute standby waits generally), Tier Two (less than 60 minute standby waits), and Shows – the problem starts to become evident fairly quickly. My classifications are at the end of this article, but the summary is:

First off, we’ll discuss shows. In very few cases does Genie+ provide value for shows. It either gives you priority access to the standby area for the next show (most cases) or allows you to seat early if you arrive fifteen minutes before the standby seating begins (typically thirty minutes before the show). Even going during one of the busiest times, in the first case there was virtually never a standby line you would be bypassing; in the second showing up fifteen minutes before normal seating was good enough to snag a seat anyway. In my opinion, shows were added to the original FastPass+ to pad it out – which is ok for a free product but unacceptable for a paid one. 

Because of this tier distribution, Magic Kingdom is far and away the best park to buy Genie+ for and I’d recommend it for anyone going there. You can get one to two Tier One rides and likely two to three in Tier Two. EPCOT and Animal Kingdom are interesting…they have so few rides that you don’t need to buy Genie+ and subsequently most people don’t. As a result of the lower use, Genie+ can get you surprising value at these parks because passes are available much longer for Tier One rides. I could go either way getting it for either of these parks. DHS is the big trap. If it is the only park you are going to for the day it is very likely you will only get one Tier One ride and maybe one Tier Two (which could only save you a few minutes). Yes, that could still beat the $10 per hour cost of a park ticket….but it might be close. It’s almost like all the Tier One rides at DHS have a $15 ILL on them…unless you park hop.

Scheduling Your Genie+ Rides

Genie+ suffers from all the same issues as ILL and more. Just like ILL you need to get up at 7 a.m., though in this case being on or off property doesn’t affect anything. You also have the same issues with the time randomly changing during the process, though it seems a bit more reliable since there is no credit card charge as part of the process. There are still issues with it not taking your other plans into account and getting a time you want is even worse. I plan to go in-depth into these problems as I have a software background and can talk more extensively on the app issues, but overall the user experience is not good.

Genie+ also has the added challenge of taking you out of your trip every two hours. After the first reservation, you will be setting alarms to go off every two hours after the park opens. Whether you are in the middle of a ride or not, you will want to hop on Genie+ right then because everyone else is on the same timer. Regularly I saw availability disappear within five minutes of one of the crucial two hour benchmarks. This is very disruptive and makes enjoying Disney a little bit harder. I doubt they’ll ever change it but I’d much rather they went to a reserve-in-advance system. If sixty or thirty days was too far out, I would much prefer they shortened it to a week than rather went to this same day, throughout the day system.

Final Thoughts

I don’t like Genie+ very much. As much as I know how to optimize the variable value, the whole trip I heard others lamenting their inability to get anything. Additionally, the issues with the My Disney Experience app itself and the general “same day, all day long” design just add sour notes to my vacation. I would personally be much happier if they’d just made FastPass+ paid or if they’d made all rides Individual Lightning Lane with Tier Ones costing in the $5-$10 range and Tier Twos and Shows in the $1-$2 range. I know that was tried in Disneyland Paris with mixed success, but the price point was much higher. While it’s clear paid line skip is here to stay, I hope Genie+ sees some drastic changes.

— Dave