Disney is a crazy to launch Genie+ During the 50th

[Lclark5678]

What better time to launch and an entirely new system, than during the biggest park celebration in fifty years. I am finding it difficult to plan for my upcoming trip. Any rumors on the launch day of Genie+?

 

[Fulcrum]

What better time to launch and an entirely new system, than during the biggest park celebration in fifty years. I am finding it difficult to plan for my upcoming trip. Any rumors on the launch day of Genie+?

As of yet we don’t know anything regarding a specific date, but speculation points to on or around October 1st as being the most likely. I think it’d be best for them to do a soft release prior to that in order to smooth out any kinks, but we’ll just have to wait and see how Disney rolls Genie/Genie+ out.

 

[ellbell]

What better time to launch and an entirely new system, than during the biggest park celebration in fifty years. I am finding it difficult to plan for my upcoming trip. Any rumors on the launch day of Genie+?

I'm wondering also. I arrive on the 25th and hope that I can get it for my stay.

 

[JenSop]

I agree. This was not well thought out. We all know how Disney IT works....
Why wait to start such a huge roll-out for when you have the most people? From what I hear, crowds are low now - so NOW would be a great time to roll it out and see how it works.

 

[Aprilshack]

I agree. This was not well thought out. We all know how Disney IT works....
Why wait to start such a huge roll-out for when you have the most people? From what I hear, crowds are low now - so NOW would be a great time to roll it out and see how it works.

I would of thought they would want everything to run smoothly well before the 50th. Not going to look good when it goes belly up and there will be reports of it going all wrong rather than the positive aspects of the 50th.

 

[New Mouse]

I agree. This was not well thought out. We all know how Disney IT works....
Why wait to start such a huge roll-out for when you have the most people? From what I hear, crowds are low now - so NOW would be a great time to roll it out and see how it works.

Because literally everyone will complain and demand refunds when there is no need for the system.

 

[maverikv]

Honestly how buggy could it be? All they are doing is tweaking the existing fast pass system- changing labels, changing the parameters around when you can book, how many reservations, and how far out, and removing a handful of rides. There's no way it isn't the same system.

 

[New Mouse]

I agree. This was not well thought out. We all know how Disney IT works....
Why wait to start such a huge roll-out for when you have the most people? From what I hear, crowds are low now - so NOW would be a great time to roll it out and see how it works.

Because literally everyone will complain and demand refunds when there is no need for the system.

I would of thought they would want everything to run smoothly well before the 50th. Not going to look good when it goes belly up and there will be reports of it going all wrong rather than the positive aspects of the 50th.

To be fair Ive realized the execs do not really even recognize the 50th other than a superficial we have to acknowledge this bc of the fans... so i am not sure they really care.

 

[New Mouse]

Honestly how buggy could it be? All they are doing is tweaking the existing fast pass system- changing labels, changing the parameters around when you can book, how many reservations, and how far out, and removing a handful of rides. There's no way it isn't the same system.

Well 1...the old system didnt work and 2... every time they tried to do something new in the old system, it didnt work. So theres that lol

 

[SteveH]

Disney IT and a new launch? LOL What could go wrong! Unless they significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure it's going to be an epic melt down. Hell they can't even manage the most basic ADR system as it is now.

 

[Venelope21]

I still can’t believe they haven’t announced the specific date. They have to be predicting large crowds for October, seems crazy not to let people know 3 weeks out how this may or may not be impacting their very expensive trip.

 

[Narcoossee11]

This is why I think it may be later in the year. Scary that Disney only has about 2 week to get GENIE started.

 

[gottalovepluto]

What better time to launch and an entirely new system, than during the biggest park celebration in fifty years. I am finding it difficult to plan for my upcoming trip. Any rumors on the launch day of Genie+?

Rumor I saw on another blog was first week of Oct.

Honestly how buggy could it be? All they are doing is tweaking the existing fast pass system- changing labels, changing the parameters around when you can book, how many reservations, and how far out, and removing a handful of rides. There's no way it isn't the same system.

It’s Disney IT. It will literally be a miracle if it works like they’re claiming it will. They can’t maintain their website, make people wait in lines for normal transactions on the website, can’t keep ADR booking from being a mess and can’t even implement ticket to annual pass upgrades on their app. And oof- shall we discuss password reseting bug as of late? I’ve been forced to reset my Disney password at least a half a dozen times over the last couple weeks.

I expect only a mess from Disney IT. Therefore I will be thrilled if it even kinda works

 

[DLgal]

Since the fiscal year starts Oct 1, I'm going with as close to that as possible because they will want every opportunity to increase their profits for the full first quarter.

 

[shawthorne44]

Well, it isn't that new. It is just new at WDW. MaxPass has been at DL for a long time. DLP has been doing this IA$$$ thing. I think they had MaxPass too. Could be wrong on that. Of course, it is Disney IT, so I'm glad I don't have a fall trip. But it isn't as new to Disney as people seem to think.

 

[DLgal]

Well, it isn't that new. It is just new at WDW. MaxPass has been at DL for a long time. DLP has been doing this IA$$$ thing. I think they had MaxPass too. Could be wrong on that. Of course, it is Disney IT, so I'm glad I don't have a fall trip. But it isn't as new to Disney as people seem to think.

I was gonna say this. Maxpass (surprisingly) didn't glitch too often at Disneyland. Occasionally it would not let people purchase it or the whole system would go down temporarily for a couple hours, but at least at Disneyland they still had FP machines you could use so when Maxpass was down, there was an alternative.

However, I have no faith in this being implemented smoothly at WDW.

 

[shawthorne44]

One thing I find weird. I was talking to a friend at work who is a total Disney nut. Her college-aged daughter was looking into programing internships. Disney was in the top three. As a Disney nut, she knew what a mess Disney IT is. Unless, of course, they have too many of the kids doing the actual work. Maybe that is it.

 

[Liquidice]

Actually Genie+ is a lot different than the old Fastpass+ system. It is very similar to the MaxPass system, but Disney World and Disneyland run on two entirely different systems. I'm sure the codebase for MaxPass was reused for Genie+ at WDW, but integrating them into the WDW system has not been easy. There is also a new Parkpass system that needs to be integrated as well. There was a thread during the summer where a supposed insider was commenting on the status of Fastpass+ and according to this person the "new system" and the integration challenges they were having while testing caused delays in bringing back FastPass+ or announcing its replacement. Fastpass+ actually was integrated back with the Parkpass system before Genie+ but Disney opted not to turn FastPass+ back on and instead waited until they felt the new system (Genie+) was working.

So that means they have tested the system - but obviously they haven't tested the system at scale with thousands of visitors. So we'll see how well it works once it actually launches. I don't have very high hopes of it working perfectly on day 1.

 

[shawthorne44]

Smart move would have been to offer it free to everyone for a week or so starting maybe now. Then an off time to fix the problems found. Being free people wouldn't complain too much about problems.

 

[DisOrBust]

One thing I find weird. I was talking to a friend at work who is a total Disney nut. Her college-aged daughter was looking into programing internships. Disney was in the top three. As a Disney nut, she knew what a mess Disney IT is. Unless, of course, they have too many of the kids doing the actual work. Maybe that is it.

Actually it's not far off how much some of the PI's do, which explains how some bad decisions are made.