I'm totally biased here, obviously. But please don't use Genie for itinerary planning.
Genie has only two purposes:
- To upsell you things like buying droids, Genie+, and ILL
- To get you on less-popular rides instead of popular ones
Reason (2) is because Genie+ is a paid service.
From an park operations perspective, Disney's old FastPass+ was vastly different, both in concept and in how guests perceived its value.
1. FastPass+ was free, on purpose.
Disney's research showed that guests who used even 1 paper FastPass were more satisified than guests who didn't. So Disney thought that by giving away three or more FastPass+ reservations, they'd increase guest satisfaction.
You don't have to take my word for it. Here the page from Disney's 2010 pitch deck to their Board of Directors for Fastpass+ (then called xPASS), saying exactly this:
(How'd I get this file? It fell off a truck.)
2. In order to give out that many FastPasses per day, Disney needed to put FP+ at a lot of attractions.
That had the effect of distributing crowds more evenly throughout the park. We're pretty sure that waits at the few headliner rides in each park dropped a lot, while waits at the (many more) secondary rides only went up slightly. And because of how human psychology works, you remembered how great you felt saving 50 minutes in line at Space Mountain, more than you noticed the extra 5 minute wait at Pirates of the Caribbean, so you were pretty happy overall with FP+. And that was true even if you had to use some FP+ choices on secondary rides. The feel-good effects were that powerful.
3. But Genie+ costs money. That changes how people use it, and therefore it changes crowd distribution.
Over the vast millennia and diaspora of human existence, not a single person has ever asked to pay $15 for shorter lines at Country Bear Jamboree. Because you're paying for Genie+, you want to use it on Disney's best rides, to get your money's worth.
The problem with that, of course, that Disney *needs* you to go on Country Bear Jamboree, and Tiki Room, and other, less popular attractions, because there's not enough capacity at Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Space Mountain for everyone who wants to ride, without wait times blowing up.
4. Disney really, really doesn't want to raise Genie+ prices high enough to have Genie+ demand match supply. It's the obvious solution, but they're already overwhelmed with negative guest survey results and bad publicity. Right now, the amount of revenue they're making from Genie+ is worth those costs, at least in the short term. And management only cares about the short term, because they know that most of them won't be around in 5 years.
Likewise, Disney doesn't want to build more high-capacity, popular rides unless it absolutely has to. Headliner rides cost a lot of money, take years and years to build, and there's always the risk that a ride won't be well-received.
5. So Disney now needs a way to distribute crowds more evenly. That's Genie.
I think the above explains it pretty well, but let me give you my experience with it. I visited DHS by myself, starting at 8 a.m. one morning. Over the course of a full day, Genie suggested 3 of the park's 5 most popular rides. And the only reason I got the third was because Rise broke down, and Genie knew it had to divert non-ILL guests from the standby line, because it had hours of ILL sales to make up.
Genie did, however, suggest all 7 of the lowest-rated rides in the park. That included - to me, a middle-aged guy by himself - Disney Junior Dance and Play, Lighting McQueen Racing Academy, and Alien Swirling Saucers. First -
ewww. And second, Genie's day never included the rides I specifically said I wanted to ride.
So that's why Genie exists. It's not for guests. It's to move around people who aren't knowledgeable about the park, in ways that they woudn't by themselves, and to upsell guests on things they wouldn't otherwise buy. It's entirely for park management. It's not in your best interests, it's in theirs.
