A reservation is added to your account if you’re doing the preview. Because of all the people doing the preview
I had a similar problem with the cast member preview for Guardians and I really doubt it’s fixed. Not sure how it would affect joining the VQ but I think you can probably count on not being able to book
genie+ until after 2. So you can either keep going to the blue umbrellas again or just try to line stuff up for after 2. Like with your example of Epcot you could probably pretty easily get a time for Remy right after 2 and then 2 hours after park open book Frozen and so on. Honestly the other stuff in Epcot you don’t really need genie+ for most of the time except Test Track which has a great single rider line and maybe Soarin’. Everything else you might save a few minutes. You could also line stuff up for MK later in the day. Whatever the case, it’s definitely annoying