Genie+ and DAS? Book DAS if you already have 2 previously booked in advance?

[CATANDSAL1009]

We plan to get DAS for my son when we go in June. If I already have 2 rides booked when I did the DAS in advance, can I pick another ride once I get in the park? And once I scan my son to go on a ride, can I book another? I have so much anxiety over this and want to plan as best as possible to avoid meltdowns. Also, I've contemplated getting Genie + in case anyone wants to venture off, but if that happens it may be for 1 or 2 rides. It'll be 6 of us total. Do you think having the Genie + with the DAS makes things run smoother too? TIA.

 

[SueM in MN]

The DAS Advance Selections that are made in connection with the DAS video chat registration are totally separate from DAS Return Times that are made on the day of visit at the park.
DAS Advance Selections don’t need to be used before making or using DAS Return Times. You can start making DAS Return Times after entering the park, but some attractions may not be available to choose right away.
Guests can only have one active DAS Return Time at a time. Another can be made as soon as you have scanned in to your attraction. Some attractions have a second scan point close to the boarding area - if so, you would need to scan at that point too.
Post 1 of this thread has updated WDW DAS changes

There are many open ‘DAS changes’ threads, but I will leave this one open for ideas of using DAS with Genie+

 

[CATANDSAL1009]

The DAS Advance Selections that are made in connection with the DAS video chat registration are totally separate from DAS Return Times that are made on the day of visit at the park.
DAS Advance Selections don’t need to be used before making or using DAS Return Times. You can start making DAS Return Times after entering the park, but some attractions may not be available to choose right away.
Guests can only have one active DAS Return Time at a time. Another can be made as soon as you have scanned in to your attraction. Some attractions have a second scan point close to the boarding area - if so, you would need to scan at that point too.
Post 1 of this thread has updated WDW DAS changes

There are many open ‘DAS changes’ threads, but I will leave this one open for ideas of using DAS with Genie+

Thank you so much. =)

 

[DisRoss]

Depending on your DAS user’s needs, consider how the specific scheduled return times with G+ might impact your day. We attempted to plan around our advanced DAS selections so we wouldn’t have to do as much walking (i.e. booked a same day return for Alien Swirling Saucers so it would overlap with an advanced return for Toy Story Mania). I’d say we were successful at actually making that idea work 50% of the time, due to needing unplanned breaks, ride being temporarily unavailable and not able to make a return time, and other day-of dynamics that just didn’t work out as we expected. I suspect it would have been even harder to plan around the random G+ return times. We didn’t use G+ and didn’t feel like we needed it, even on a very crowded day at HS last week. I think if we had used G+ and/or $ILL, we’d have been stuck letting those dictate our touring, rather than having more flexibility to shift gears as we needed.

 

[pezaddict231]

We didn’t use G+ and didn’t feel like we needed it, even on a very crowded day at HS last week.

Thank you for sharing, I’ve been debating G+ but definitely don’t want to be criss crossing the park and we take things a bit slower. Glad to hear you didn’t feel you needed it.

 

[trishascottrealtor]

I haven't been to WDW in a decade. All these changes is kinda overwhelming. Thanks for all the input.

 

[AmyMac1109]

Thank you for sharing, I’ve been debating G+ but definitely don’t want to be criss crossing the park and we take things a bit slower. Glad to hear you didn’t feel you needed it.

Slightly different take. We were there last week. We did not book Genie+ for the full trip. Only for DHS and MK days, and then for my older children on the day they planned to hop from EPCOT to MK. And having it was invaluable to us. But we didn't use it the way I think it's intended (by Disney at least).

If you just take next available Genie+ times and use their tip board, or whatever it's called, it will have you criss crossing the park and it will make you miserable. Instead, we tended to stack our Genie+ return times for the afternoon and used DAS almost exclusively in the mornings (and waited in a few short lines). For our Genie+ reutrn times, we tried to stack them in specific areas of a park. And then when it was coming near, we started looking for DAS reutrn times in that area. Utilizing DAS (and booking another one as soon as we tapped in for the last one) allowed us to go from one ride, straight to the next, to the next, to the next as we moved between Genie+ return times and DAS return times. Once we were nearing the end of a particular section of a park, we started looking for DAS and Genie+ return times in another area. Doing it this way, my little guy was able to ride all the rides he wanted with relatively little wait time in between.

I will say though, our "strategy" if you can even call it that, would have been useless in EPCOT and Animal Kingdom because there aren't enough rides close enough together. So we didn't buy/use Genie+ in those parks at all. We relied entirely on DAS and it was fine.

 

[DisneyOma]

You can buy Genie + at any time during your trip, so I'd wait and see. If you plan on splitting up, the party that is not staying with the DAS holder may want to use Genie + or even buy an ILL or two. It's pretty flexible, it seems. Also, what will you all do while waiting for the DAS return time? If the DAS holder can't handle going in any standby queues, Genie + may give you a few more rides (at MK and DHS) in the LL queue each day.

 

[CATANDSAL1009]

Slightly different take. We were there last week. We did not book Genie+ for the full trip. Only for DHS and MK days, and then for my older children on the day they planned to hop from EPCOT to MK. And having it was invaluable to us. But we didn't use it the way I think it's intended (by Disney at least).

If you just take next available Genie+ times and use their tip board, or whatever it's called, it will have you criss crossing the park and it will make you miserable. Instead, we tended to stack our Genie+ return times for the afternoon and used DAS almost exclusively in the mornings (and waited in a few short lines). For our Genie+ reutrn times, we tried to stack them in specific areas of a park. And then when it was coming near, we started looking for DAS reutrn times in that area. Utilizing DAS (and booking another one as soon as we tapped in for the last one) allowed us to go from one ride, straight to the next, to the next, to the next as we moved between Genie+ return times and DAS return times. Once we were nearing the end of a particular section of a park, we started looking for DAS and Genie+ return times in another area. Doing it this way, my little guy was able to ride all the rides he wanted with relatively little wait time in between.

I will say though, our "strategy" if you can even call it that, would have been useless in EPCOT and Animal Kingdom because there aren't enough rides close enough together. So we didn't buy/use Genie+ in those parks at all. We relied entirely on DAS and it was fine.

I love this!! That's such a really great way to utilize it and probably would make the most sense for us to use it this way too. Did you book your 1st genie+ at 7am and then 11am and then 1pm? Thank you so much for sharing.

 

[AmyMac1109]

I love this!! That's such a really great way to utilize it and probably would make the most sense for us to use it this way too. Did you book your 1st genie+ at 7am and then 11am and then 1pm? Thank you so much for sharing.

We were complete newbies to all of this, since our last trip to WDW predates Genie+ and this was our first time with DAS. But it worked really well for us, and we'll definitely do it this way in the future. Hope it works as well for you!

As for booking Genie+, I tried to look for the first one around 7ish, but truthfully, I kept forgetting. So, at no point was I there refreshing it right at 7 and grabbing a return time. More like 7:45ish. And by that time, many of the return times were already 11:30-noon. So, it worked well for our "strategy" to stack. If I had remembered to check right at 7 and got an earlier return time, I don't know that it would have been as helpful. After that initial one, I did try to check at the 2 hour intervals. But, much like the 7am one, I kept forgetting or I was on an inside queue without cell service and couldn't check right away. It didn't seem to matter much though. Up until about 5pm, there were still Genie+ return times available that we could use with our youngest. (My big kids who stayed open to close every day were able to utilize Genie+ well into the night, long after we had left the park with our youngest.) It was nice not to be stressed over making sure we got a Genie+ return time every 2 hours on the dot.

I will also say that we took advantage of the early entry almost every day. It's only 30 minutes, but we were able to knock out 2-3 rides (not the big ones, we saved those for DAS and Genie+) each morning before the park even opened. That helped move our mornings along without using Genie+.