The big G+ rides at HS gone by 1:07!

[Tom_E_D]

We haven't been yet. Could I ask a few questions, to help us decide if we should buy?

We will not be rope dropping nor closing out the parks. Probably no roller coaster. So we wake up 7 am, MK .....we want HM, Buzz ,the calmer rides.... What can we expect? First ride at noon, second ride at 6 pm?

This Blogpost may have the data you are looking for.

 

[ckelly14]

Question:
Would you rather have paid fast pass or G+?

 

[Mrs~Incredible]

Question:
Would you rather have paid fast pass or G+?

I preferred the mechanics and flow of the old system. I also hate the feeling of being nickel and dimed and would rather have it “included” in my insanely high ticket price.

 

[lowlight]

Something that isn’t really talked about is the way Genie+ splits up parties. We were a 9 person two room trip and some of the members couldn’t afford Genie+ each day, so even though they were staying at a deluxe like us, we spent most of those days not even seeing them in the parks. It wasn’t ideal.

 

[Orsino]

Why include MMRR which, as you note, is ILL? MMRR is not G+ and shouldn't be mixed in the discussion.

Essentially you are complaining that you can 'only' get 3 of the 4 'big' rides at HS via Genie+, which seems reasonable if compared to the 3 FP+ previously offered.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

We haven't been yet. Could I ask a few questions, to help us decide if we should buy?

We will not be rope dropping nor closing out the parks. Probably no roller coaster. So we wake up 7 am, MK .....we want HM, Buzz ,the calmer rides.... What can we expect? First ride at noon, second ride at 6 pm?

Just from our experience in January (depending how busy it is the day you're going), you'll only need one person from your group to wake up at 6:50AM to make the first G+/LL reservations for your group. HM, Buzz, calmer stuff at MK, you'll likely see availability earlier than noon. It seems mostly Jungle Cruise and Peter Pan going that quickly in the morning. And if you do get Buzz, for example at 10AM, as soon as you tap into the attractions, you can grab another. You wouldn't need to wait until 2 hours after park opening. Even if you wait until 11AM for your next, the calmer rides are likely to be mid-afternoon, maybe 3/4. That could change if it's an extremely busy day. Hope that might help a little.....

 

[DavidNYC]

Question:
Would you rather have paid fast pass or G+?

Paid FP without a doubt. Not just for me - but for all of the people who prefer to tour in a way that doesn't fit Genie+. Unless you're planning opening to closing in a park - Genie+ was not designed for you. Take two families - one who prefers to do the first half of the day and one the second half of a day. With FP+ they could each get their rides in at times convenient to them. With Genie+ - neither of them are happy despite probably not using the service for a greater number of rides overall - they've just lost all ability to plan around their schedules.

It's horrible offering no increased benefit to the guest compared to what was there than possible the first ride each day is a bit easier to get for those who had previously been offsite. Other than that - you're far worse off.

 

[Grumpy by Birth]

Why include MMRR which, as you note, is ILL? MMRR is not G+ and shouldn't be mixed in the discussion.

Essentially you are complaining that you can 'only' get 3 of the 4 'big' rides at HS via Genie+, which seems reasonable if compared to the 3 FP+ previously offered.

Except that with FP+, the 3 rides you got would have included ones that now require that separate, additional ILL$ charge.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

We've had the chance to use Genie+ a few times, and find that it works fairly well for our needs. It offers more day-of options than the old FP+ system. That being said, we find 2 issues with Genie+ that were much better with FP+. The ability to get 3 'good' attractions with G+ are not good on busy days (although, people tend to forget with FP+, you could only get one "Tier 1" attraction among your 2 choices). But the biggest problem we find with G+ is the fact that they have removed 8 of the top attractions at WDW for the ILL category, and they're not available for G+. That makes G+ far less valuable than it would be if all attractions were included. But based on the financial success of ILL, that's not going to change anytime soon.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

Except that with FP+, the 3 rides you got would have included ones that now require that separate, additional ILL$ charge.

Depending on the 'tiers' of the attractions, you might not have gotten 3 of them initially with FP+.

 

[DisneyFive]

Question:
Would you rather have paid fast pass or G+?

FP+ without a doubt. I'd actually be o.k. with paying the $16 per person per day for that old system. That system had serious value, not just in the amount of rides you could get in, but also the ability to have a less stressful day sleeping in if desired, etc...

• Ability to pre-book 3
• Ability to modify or cancel without losing the ability FP that ride again
• Ability to choose from a few time windows
• ALL rides included, not the removal of two per park for $ILL

For those of you saying that headliners were gone day of, that simply wasn't true, with the excpeption of maybe one premier ride per park. (7DMT, SDD, FOP). We used FP+ for years, the most recent time with a party of 7 and ALWAYS could get day of FP's for any attraction other than the ones I already mentioned. We had no problems getting them day of for BTMRR, Space, Splash, PP; RnRC, ToT; EE, Safari; TT, Soarin... and this was during the moderate/busy summer, not low crowd days

Dan

 

[DisneyFive]

This Blogpost may have the data you are looking for.

View attachment 647896

I LOVE this post. Thank you! I love how TP lays out this information. I had been using thrill-data.com for information like this but I like how TP lays it out. Easy to understand when G+ runs out, and also what time you can expect your return time to be when trying to book a G+ at a given time of the day.

Dan

 

[BrightMorningStar]

This is why I am hesitant to pay for it. A CM told me that would never happen. I did not believe her from the off. And it really seems there are no "best park days" with the reservation system.

 

[Mrs~Incredible]

Why include MMRR which, as you note, is ILL? MMRR is not G+ and shouldn't be mixed in the discussion.

Essentially you are complaining that you can 'only' get 3 of the 4 'big' rides at HS via Genie+, which seems reasonable if compared to the 3 FP+ previously offered.

Fair point on MMRR.

on face value, I would agree- but with G+, I cannot rebook re-rides and the flow of the day is at the mercy of the genie. I loved picking my 3 main FPs for am or pm- for our family, that helped our vacation flow better. We could be more structured for part of the day and more spontaneous for the other part. And in the FP days, we generally had no problem booking 4th, 5th etc. Tiers or no tiers. lso, we always stay off site so our pickins were at 30 days or less.

We went in Nov and did 3 or 4 G+ days out of 8. For one of the days, we rocked it and did like 8 things I think including all the “big” rides at HS. But the other days there was less availability. And I hated having random amounts of time to “kill” before the next G+. I love the muppets as much as the next gal but there’s only so many times I want to see them. And there’s only so many rides I’m willing to wait 60+ minutes for.

I don’t need 8-10 rides on G+ to be happy. 5-6 would probably be good value for me if it included the “big” rides. Only 3, and stressing to book every couple hours while on vacation, only to find out there’s no availability left by 1:00 and missing the ability to book one of the “big” rides would make me frightfully mad.

I guess it depends on your perspective, touring style, and what your priorities are. For me, I know i need to move on and a lot of this is here to stay. Some of it i can live with. But i sure hope they do some fixing to the system to distribute some improved access throughout the day.

 

[DduzDis]

We used G+ for DHS and MK(x2) last week. DHS was disaster. MK a little better, but found some LL wait times were as bad or worse than standby. ILL$ were better. I do like the flexibility to choose a time with the ILL$. G+ does not allow you to schedule around ADRs or breaks. I found G+ was better for stacking afternoon-evening LLs, but the time spent at 7am and each 2-hour period after park opening was not what I want to do on vacation. I may use ILL$ on some attractions like RotR where we would never wait in standby. But even that one is on occasion and not something we do each trip. G+ is a no-go for me going forward. We will just leave the parks and go do something else if wait times are unbearable.

 

[dd316]

Disney needs to do something to fix this mess.

If they're making money, in their eyes there is nothing to fix.

Be careful what you wish for - their "fix" will probably be to increase the price.

 

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

In my limited experience on my last 10 day trip, it seems to be designed for those who don’t have small kids or less abled members of their party, that wake up and rope drop and stay late into the evening without leaving the park or eating table service. Of course it works for others sometimes, but you have to be completely open to missing naps, meals, and zig zagging all through the parks from sun up to sun down to truly utilize it.

I think I used it 5 out of 8 park days, and I usually was able to grab one morning ride (10ish), then at 11 when I could book again the slots were during lunch and naps so I waited a bit, and was then in the 6 pm slots, did one more ride and called it a day. It really did not work well when rides were down for a few hours.

It is one of those things were it’s not very useful for me, but if I don’t buy it, the two rides we do get to do with it would turn into 1 without it. It’s a bad situation to be in where I feel I was robbed of my 70 bucks each time I used it.

Yup, this exactly. Kind of hard to make the most of your money with kids who need an afternoon break. We're planning on using it for our upcoming trip just under the assumption that even if we only do three rides, skipping the lines for those rides is better than NOT skipping them with little kids. But if we start feeling like this is highway robbery, odds are we just won't be back for awhile.

 

[DizneyLizzy]

Whom do we tell our dissatisfaction, beside each other?

I emailed Guest Communications as soon as I got back from a trip. It took about a week for someone to write back. The more guests they hear from, the better. It can’t hurt at this point.

 

[twodogs]

The "fix" to the current system might be that Disney offers a more expensive option that includes some of the features people are mentioning on this thread. How much MORE would you be willing to pay to pre-book your LLs, modify your LL time, etc? Because they are most definitely never going back to a free system or a cheaper system from the current G+ and ILL$. Remember that a VIP tour, where you can re-ride rides (though even with a VIP tour, you can't reride the super headliners like Remy and ROTR) all day anytime, costs around $4000-5000/day (not including park hopper tickets and tip for the guide) for up to 10 people. So whatever system you are wanting and willing to pay an up-charge for, you have to compare it to Disney making a minimum of $400-500/person/day (even more pp if there are less than 10 on the tour; on our tours we usually have 4-6 people) for a VIP tour. Improvements to G+ from the guest perspective will be very pricey, IMO, when you consider how much they can and do charge for the VIP tours.

 

[Mrs~Incredible]

If they're making money, in their eyes there is nothing to fix.

Be careful what you wish for - their "fix" will probably be to increase the price.

#truth

feels like the only way they will change things to improve the guest experience is if they feel that’s necessary for their profit margin. I wish their aim was to make the best product/experience possible, and the money would come.