The Genie Usage, Tips and Strategy ONLY Thread

[aeasterling]

Thanks.

Are the LL lines always a shorter wait than standby?

Generally, our LL wait was 5-10 minutes. So if you did a LL for Spaceship Earth, for example, you might not save any time - but that is not a ride where you really need LL. The one LL that seemed to go slower was Test Track - because they merge you at the design room and then it can still be a 15 minute wait after that.

 

[CBMom01]

We got back yesterday and I will give my analysis of Genie +. During our trip, I jotted down the posted standby time and our actual wait on all of our LL rides (I'm a dork). I've already put this in a spreadsheet and done some cost/benefit analysis (like I said, I'm a dork).

We had 7 day tickets for 3 of us (me, husband, daughter) as well as 2 day tickets for my college aged son who flew down separately for the weekend. We also had Park Hoppers. Over those 7 days, we purchased 7 ILL$ ranging from a total of $29 (Space for 3) to $60 (FOP for 4). We did run into a little snag our first day because I bought ROTR ILL for us at 7am but couldn't get one for my son because he wasn't on our hotel reservation. We went to Guest Services as soon as we got to HS and they were nice enough to give us a recovery pass for him - so saved us $15 there. Total we spent almost $300 on those 7 ILL$ - more than I had planned to... it's very easy to drop 30 bucks on Space Mountain when you don't feel like standing in line for 45 minutes. We got FOP and ROTR twice each, plus Everest, Space and Remy. I wouldn't recommend doing Everest since you can ride single rider... but my son wanted us all to ride together, so we spent the money. In total, we saved ourselves about 4.5 hours for our group.

For Genie Plus, we spent $367 total and rode 33 rides. We saved a total of 13.5 hrs for our group. On our best day, we rode 8 rides and saved about 5 hours. On our worst day, we rode 2 rides and saved only 15 minutes - that was our EPCOT day where the plan was to do F&W. I had made a decision ahead of time that I'd rather waste money on that day then have to buy Genie + every morning for the other 6 days. I still standby that, but admit I could have saved myself some money buying it on a day by day basis. We averaged 5 rides with LL per day.

If I divide the time saved by what we spent, then I estimate the cost per hour saved as $37 for our group or $11 if you look at the time saved as multiplying by each person. I'm not sure the $11 is valid since we would be together anyway, but that treats the time of each individual as having a value. So essentially, I have to decide is paying $37/hour to NOT stand in line was worth it for me. Since I hate standing in line, I think I would lean towards saying that it is. I definitely feel like if you plan the Genie+ game well you can get more done than with the FP system. I really like that I could hop with it, since we hopped every day except for the EPCOT F&W day.

Final note, be aware that buying your ILL$ ahead of time can be a crap-shoot in terms of how much time you'll save. For rides where it runs out (ROTR and FOP) or if you are trying to get a certain time, you have no choice but to buy in the morning but you can't always know what the standby will look like. Our example is probably an anomaly - but I bought FOP one day because we wanted to ride it before our Sanaa dinner so we needed a specific time. It rained that day and the parks cleared out... when we rode FOP the standby was FIVE minutes!! So glad I spent that $30, lol.

All in all - great trip. I'm a project manager and planner by nature, so I had no problem with constantly getting LL and trying to stack (got up to 3 at a time one day) - I actually found it fun. But I could see how it may be stressful for other folks.

Hope this helps someone!

This is very helpful and how I like to analyze things: marginal cost/benefit

My concern is buying Genie+ for a busy week and not getting to use it fully because of demand + limited availability.

 

[mrsxsparrow]

Resort guests get to start earlier, but I was able to do it when I wan't even in the right park. We were able to use it hopping, and it adjusted to after 2 for hopping hours. The system relies on park reservations. If you don't have a park reservation (or a hopper for after 2) it won't let you do anything in that park.

We changed parks, and we had to cancel the park reservation and make a new one to get the whole thing to work.

Had you made LL reservations already when you cancelled and rebooked your park reservation? Did they still work?

 

[Cotta]

So then we had 3 stacked for HS + an ILL, all to use between 2 and 4pm. We walked over from Swan, got about 2:15. We did TOT first, then ROTR and then hung out in GE for a bit until 2:45... then walked over to Toy Story land and rode SDD and TSMM. As soon as we rode TOT, I got a LL for Test Track (4:55pm) and then grabbed Soarin (4:55pm) after we rode SDD. I could have gotten a 3rd one after TSMM, but there wasn't anything else we wanted to ride at EPCOT.

So when you say you could have gotten a third one after TSMM I am curious if there is a time limit associated with that 3rd stack? Could you have made it for something later at MK?

 

[aeasterling]

So when you say you could have gotten a third one after TSMM I am curious if there is a time limit associated with that 3rd stack? Could you have made it for something later at MK?

The challenge is that you have to take the next available time. Since we were trying to do all four parks AND we had a reservation for the Fireworks Treats & Seats in MK at 7 (not great planning on my part), we were on a time crunch to get through HS and EPCOT.

If we had more time at HS, we could have gotten RRC - that one I think was usually available right away. There's not really anything besides Soarin and Test Track that you need a LL for at ECPOT - The Seas, SE, MS and LWTL are always short waits. I suppose I could have gotten a LL for one of those just to keep the stack of 3 going, but we basically rushed through ECPOT in an hour and were still 15 minutes late for our dessert party res.

If I didn't have the dessert party res, I probably could have also gotten one for MK as long as I would get there in time to use it - PPF would be a good choice as those were usually several hours out.

So, to answer your question - no Disney time limit on the stacking... just the limitation of me trying to get to all four parks.

 

[mickeymom629]

We got back yesterday and I will give my analysis of Genie +. During our trip, I jotted down the posted standby time and our actual wait on all of our LL rides (I'm a dork). I've already put this in a spreadsheet and done some cost/benefit analysis (like I said, I'm a dork).

We had 7 day tickets for 3 of us (me, husband, daughter) as well as 2 day tickets for my college aged son who flew down separately for the weekend. We also had Park Hoppers. Over those 7 days, we purchased 7 ILL$ ranging from a total of $29 (Space for 3) to $60 (FOP for 4). We did run into a little snag our first day because I bought ROTR ILL for us at 7am but couldn't get one for my son because he wasn't on our hotel reservation. We went to Guest Services as soon as we got to HS and they were nice enough to give us a recovery pass for him - so saved us $15 there. Total we spent almost $300 on those 7 ILL$ - more than I had planned to... it's very easy to drop 30 bucks on Space Mountain when you don't feel like standing in line for 45 minutes. We got FOP and ROTR twice each, plus Everest, Space and Remy. I wouldn't recommend doing Everest since you can ride single rider... but my son wanted us all to ride together, so we spent the money. In total, we saved ourselves about 4.5 hours for our group.

For Genie Plus, we spent $367 total and rode 33 rides. We saved a total of 13.5 hrs for our group. On our best day, we rode 8 rides and saved about 5 hours. On our worst day, we rode 2 rides and saved only 15 minutes - that was our EPCOT day where the plan was to do F&W. I had made a decision ahead of time that I'd rather waste money on that day then have to buy Genie + every morning for the other 6 days. I still standby that, but admit I could have saved myself some money buying it on a day by day basis. We averaged 5 rides with LL per day.

If I divide the time saved by what we spent, then I estimate the cost per hour saved as $37 for our group or $11 if you look at the time saved as multiplying by each person. I'm not sure the $11 is valid since we would be together anyway, but that treats the time of each individual as having a value. So essentially, I have to decide is paying $37/hour to NOT stand in line was worth it for me. Since I hate standing in line, I think I would lean towards saying that it is. I definitely feel like if you plan the Genie+ game well you can get more done than with the FP system. I really like that I could hop with it, since we hopped every day except for the EPCOT F&W day.

Final note, be aware that buying your ILL$ ahead of time can be a crap-shoot in terms of how much time you'll save. For rides where it runs out (ROTR and FOP) or if you are trying to get a certain time, you have no choice but to buy in the morning but you can't always know what the standby will look like. Our example is probably an anomaly - but I bought FOP one day because we wanted to ride it before our Sanaa dinner so we needed a specific time. It rained that day and the parks cleared out... when we rode FOP the standby was FIVE minutes!! So glad I spent that $30, lol.

All in all - great trip. I'm a project manager and planner by nature, so I had no problem with constantly getting LL and trying to stack (got up to 3 at a time one day) - I actually found it fun. But I could see how it may be stressful for other folks.

Hope this helps someone!

Thanks for the report and glad you had a great time! It seems like a lot of $ (to me) to not wait in line, especially when you add it on to the cost of the original tickets. However, I'm sure I'm going to be tempted on our upcoming trip, especially if the wait times are long.

 

[aeasterling]

Thanks for the report and glad you had a great time! It seems like a lot of $ (to me) to not wait in line, especially when you add it on to the cost of the original tickets. However, I'm sure I'm going to be tempted on our upcoming trip, especially if the wait times are long.

Oh, I totally agree it is a lot of $$. I'll fully admit that I had a lot of "we cancelled all of our vacations for the last 18 months, let's live it up" mentality on this trip and was not very disciplined on spending. I also totally recognize the privilege in that statement.

I did not intend to spend as much on the ILL$ as we did. It was really easy in the moment to say, Space Mountain line is 45 minutes or we can spend $30, why not? That could totally add up. If I was trying to do a more budget trip and was staying at a Disney hotel, I would utilize rope drop. We got a lot done on the mornings we were there before the parks opened.

 

[elgerber]

Oh, I totally agree it is a lot of $$. I'll fully admit that I had a lot of "we cancelled all of our vacations for the last 18 months, let's live it up" mentality on this trip and was not very disciplined on spending. I also totally recognize the privilege in that statement.

I did not intend to spend as much on the ILL$ as we did. It was really easy in the moment to say, Space Mountain line is 45 minutes or we can spend $30, why not? That could totally add up. If I was trying to do a more budget trip and was staying at a Disney hotel, I would utilize rope drop. We got a lot done on the mornings we were there before the parks opened.

We had the same mentality LOL, but I went into it knowing I would spend all the genie $$$. It was only two of us, and not 4 of us, which helped. I refused to spend it on Space Mountain though LOL, everytime I ride that, I says "why am I doing this?", so I didn't pay to be rattled and tormented .

 

[fly girl]

Back from a very short weekend trip (only 2 park days).

Here are my thoughts. Take it as MY opinion only. YMMV.

G+, better than nothing. No where near as good as MaxPass or FP+. App is glitchy would crash out on occasion. It is annoying how you have to keep switching parks on Tip Board if you are offline for a bit. Refresh is easy to do on app, but good ride times aren't easy. (I was a refresh pro with MP and FP+) I think it all depends on how busy the parks are. Afternoon at MK, HS, it is hard to get a LL time that is not over 1.5 - 2 hours out for good rides. And personal preference, but I could't stand how I had to keep hitting that additional check mark for my whole party every time. Wish it would be automatic and you had to un-click if you wanted to remove someone. G+ not worth it in Epcot. AK only if you are park hopping. Also, if you passed the 2 hour window but already hit that first LL access point, you must wait to hit the second point to book next LL. It happened twice to us and I found it very irritating. You'd think it wouldn't be a big deal as the first and second touch points aren't far, but they are for the 2 rides we got stuck with it on - Navi and Jungle Cruise. I missed a fabulous BTMRR LL return because of it.

ILL$, mixed bag. Used it for FOP, SDMT, ROTR, and Remy. FOP, SDMT worth it. ROTR would have been worth it if the ride was fully functioning. But don't charge $15 + tax per person for a premium product and deliver a sub par experience. I don't want to risk spoilers, but second half of ride was not fully functioning and as a non Star Wars person, I noticed and felt ripped off. I can see if this was a sudden issue. Apparently it has been in this "B" mode for over a while. If I would have known this, I would have saved $47+ dollars. I am not pleased with nickel and dime Chapek Disney right now. YMMV. Remy, wasn't worth the price point but seeing we only had 2 days and Epcot wasn't our starting park it worked for us. However, just go for the boarding group if you can. Ride is cute but not worth extra.

I didn't feel totally ripped off with G+, it just felt like I was getting a cheap and crummy knock off of Max Pass. Instead of getting a Mattel Barbie Doll, I was getting one of those Dollar Tree Fashion Dolls. It will fit the bill, for a small time. Long haul, , I just don't see it as a great alternative.

 

[RoseGold]

Had you made LL reservations already when you cancelled and rebooked your park reservation? Did they still work?

We decided to skip AK and go MK instead. It wouldn't let us book anything at MK because our park reservations said AK, even though we hadn't gone to the park yet. We canceled park reservations, rebooked into MK, and then used G+ at MK.

 

[RoseGold]

G+, better than nothing. No where near as good as MaxPass or FP+. App is glitchy would crash out on occasion. It is annoying how you have to keep switching parks on Tip Board if you are offline for a bit. Refresh is easy to do on app, but good ride times aren't easy. (I was a refresh pro with MP and FP+) I think it all depends on how busy the parks are.

I actually paid $50/person/day for the extra FP with club level, and I'd take G+ all day every day. G+ was a real VIP no waiting line, not a line in another part of the ride called FP full of APs who have ridden this 20 times. I felt like I could get all my B-level attractions in a day or two, I was thrilled. I was a FP pro, and I still did better on the fly with G+ than I did in the early hours 90 days out. I think G+ is absolutely awesome. I'm thrilled to have a VIP option that isn't a $800/hour VIP tour.

 

[fly girl]

I actually paid $50/person/day for the extra FP with club level, and I'd take G+ all day every day. G+ was a real VIP no waiting line, not a line in another part of the ride called FP full of APs who have ridden this 20 times. I felt like I could get all my B-level attractions in a day or two, I was thrilled. I was a FP pro, and I still did better on the fly with G+ than I did in the early hours 90 days out. I think G+ is absolutely awesome. I'm thrilled to have a VIP option that isn't a $800/hour VIP tour.

Honestly, I am so glad you are happy with it! Like I said in the beginning of my post, YMMV.

My situation was different. I waited in G+ lines similar to FP+ and MP for Jungle Cruise, SDD, TSMM, Star Tours (that one shocked me), Navi, and KS. It is ok. We aren't pumping our fist to the heavens cursing Disney. We just don't think it was as good as FP+ but especially MaxPass what they claimed was the new spin on.

We all have different takes. That is why we share it on here so people can read both sides, maybe learn a little bit on what to expect, and make it work for them!

 

[happiest in Disney]

We will be there in 13 days and plan on using Genie+, but not purchasing IA$ - we will rope drop those rides and try for a virtual queue for Remy.

What time is rope drop if you stay in resort hotel?

 

[fly girl]

What time is rope drop if you stay in resort hotel?

30 minutes before park opening.

 

[DisneyKidds]

We got back yesterday and I will give my analysis of Genie +. During our trip, I jotted down the posted standby time and our actual wait on all of our LL rides (I'm a dork). I've already put this in a spreadsheet and done some cost/benefit analysis (like I said, I'm a dork).

What a dor……oh, wait, you said it.

JK. Thanks for the analysis. If you don’t mind me asking a few dorky questions of my own….

13.5 hours x 60 minutes = 810 minutes. Regardless of party size (whether 1 person or 4) , is that the amount of standby time G+ succeeded in avoiding?

810 minutes /33 rides = approximately 25 minutes per ride. So, on average, you avoided 25 minutes of standby time per return by using G+. In reality I assume some G+LL saved you very little, while others saved you much more than that average.

If you drop out of the 33 LL rides those that didn’t actually save you much time (say more than 15 minutes) how does that change the numbers?

 

[aeasterling]

What a dor……oh, wait, you said it.

JK. Thanks for the analysis. If you don’t mind me asking a few dorky questions of my own….

13.5 hours x 60 minutes = 810 minutes. Regardless of party size (whether 1 person or 4) , is that the amount of standby time G+ succeeded in avoiding?

810 minutes /33 rides = approximately 25 minutes per ride. So, on average, you avoided 25 minutes of standby time per return by using G+. In reality I assume some G+LL saved you very little, while others saved you much more than that average.

If you drop out of the 33 LL rides those that didn’t actually save you much time (say more than 15 minutes) how does that change the numbers?

LOL - I am a proud dork.

Yeah, let's go with the time regardless of party size. Total time saved (regardless of party size) was 812 minutes. The best was the two days we rode SDD - one day saved 55 minutes and the other 65 minutes. On the other end, I got a LL just because I could for Spaceship Earth and that saved us maybe 5 minutes.

If I only look at rides saving 15 minutes or more, that is 23 rides and 747 minutes, so average 32.5 minutes per ride.

I would also add that these numbers are all based on Disney's listed stand-by time... so if they are inflating that then my numbers are off.

 

[happiest in Disney]

I think it is becoming very clear that Genie+ will only be one tool to help get though lines the quickest. You cannot rely only on Genie+ to shorten your time waiting each day. Early park hours and rope drop are still very important. Your best bet seems to get there early and just wait standby while picking up the occasional LL and buying the IALL for park headliners.

What time are early entry for the parks now and what time is rope drop?

 

[happiest in Disney]

30 minutes before park opening.

do buses leave an hour before that to the parks or earlier? thank you.

 

[bsmcneil]

We got back yesterday and I will give my analysis of Genie +. During our trip, I jotted down the posted standby time and our actual wait on all of our LL rides (I'm a dork). I've already put this in a spreadsheet and done some cost/benefit analysis (like I said, I'm a dork).

We had 7 day tickets for 3 of us (me, husband, daughter) as well as 2 day tickets for my college aged son who flew down separately for the weekend. We also had Park Hoppers. Over those 7 days, we purchased 7 ILL$ ranging from a total of $29 (Space for 3) to $60 (FOP for 4). We did run into a little snag our first day because I bought ROTR ILL for us at 7am but couldn't get one for my son because he wasn't on our hotel reservation. We went to Guest Services as soon as we got to HS and they were nice enough to give us a recovery pass for him - so saved us $15 there. Total we spent almost $300 on those 7 ILL$ - more than I had planned to... it's very easy to drop 30 bucks on Space Mountain when you don't feel like standing in line for 45 minutes. We got FOP and ROTR twice each, plus Everest, Space and Remy. I wouldn't recommend doing Everest since you can ride single rider... but my son wanted us all to ride together, so we spent the money. In total, we saved ourselves about 4.5 hours for our group.

For Genie Plus, we spent $367 total and rode 33 rides. We saved a total of 13.5 hrs for our group. On our best day, we rode 8 rides and saved about 5 hours. On our worst day, we rode 2 rides and saved only 15 minutes - that was our EPCOT day where the plan was to do F&W. I had made a decision ahead of time that I'd rather waste money on that day then have to buy Genie + every morning for the other 6 days. I still standby that, but admit I could have saved myself some money buying it on a day by day basis. We averaged 5 rides with LL per day.

If I divide the time saved by what we spent, then I estimate the cost per hour saved as $37 for our group or $11 if you look at the time saved as multiplying by each person. I'm not sure the $11 is valid since we would be together anyway, but that treats the time of each individual as having a value. So essentially, I have to decide is paying $37/hour to NOT stand in line was worth it for me. Since I hate standing in line, I think I would lean towards saying that it is. I definitely feel like if you plan the Genie+ game well you can get more done than with the FP system. I really like that I could hop with it, since we hopped every day except for the EPCOT F&W day.

Final note, be aware that buying your ILL$ ahead of time can be a crap-shoot in terms of how much time you'll save. For rides where it runs out (ROTR and FOP) or if you are trying to get a certain time, you have no choice but to buy in the morning but you can't always know what the standby will look like. Our example is probably an anomaly - but I bought FOP one day because we wanted to ride it before our Sanaa dinner so we needed a specific time. It rained that day and the parks cleared out... when we rode FOP the standby was FIVE minutes!! So glad I spent that $30, lol.

All in all - great trip. I'm a project manager and planner by nature, so I had no problem with constantly getting LL and trying to stack (got up to 3 at a time one day) - I actually found it fun. But I could see how it may be stressful for other folks.

Hope this helps someone!

This is cool and could be helpful but sometimes you use numbers for your group of 3 and and then the group of 4 and I can't tell if the 367 you spent on G+ also included the 2-days for your son. Could you clarify a little bit? And then - you added the G+ and ILL costs and times? Because otherwise the math doesn't seem to add up (and I keep trying to break it down to a single unit (since I won't be in a group of 3 or 4 for 7 days) and it's just not quite making sense (so I recognize there's something I'm missing).

 

[soniam]

What time are early entry for the parks now and what time is rope drop?

do buses leave an hour before that to the parks or earlier? thank you.

Try this thread, especially first post.
https://www.disboards.com/threads/everything-early-theme-park-entry-etpe-please-read-post-1.3855945/