Walt Disney World introduced Disney Genie back in October. Over the past several months, we’ve been in the Parks testing out the new system and have developed an Ultimate Guide to Using Genie Plus.
We’ve learned a lot about the new service, and we’ve done our best to break it all down for you — with all the best tips and tricks, of course. Now, we’re bringing you a few Disney Genie tips you might not know!
Here are 6 Disney Genie tips you probably haven’t heard!
1. You don’t HAVE to maximize it as long as you’re using it in a way that works for you.
Disney Genie and Genie+ are complicated services. You might not know that your goal shouldn’t necessarily be to get as many Lightning Lanes as possible during the day.
In fact, we recommend using Disney Genie+ only on the most high-demand attractions in the park. Refresh your page for the very popular rides, and don’t bother snagging them for rides that tend to have shorter waits. In many cases, it’s better to book one for a loooong wait that’s very far out than to book one for a short wait coming up soon.
Still, you should always have one booked if you can. Again, it doesn’t have to be for the next thing you’re doing. If the time is a bit far out, it’s still worth booking! Then you can do the shows, eat, and ride filler attractions while you wait. This is especially important in Hollywood Studios. We’d recommend using it on Tower of Terror, Slinky Dog Dash, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, and Toy Story Mania.
2. Tell it what times you plan to be in which parks!
Disney Genie has a little-known section where you can tell it your park-hopping plans! Scroll down to the bottom of your My Genie Day page, and input what park you’re hopping into and what time you plan to hop.
That way, Genie can give you the most helpful suggestions in your personalized itinerary without interrupting your park-hopping plans.
3. You don’t have to have Genie+ to pay for Individual Attraction Selections.
Ok, you may have heard this one, but it is super important and worth committing to memory. If you’re looking to pay for one of the Individual Attraction Selections (or Fancy Rides, as we like to call them), you don’t need to purchase Genie+.
For instance, you can pay the single-attraction fee for the Lightning Lane on Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure without buying Genie+ for the day in EPCOT, and you can do the same in other parks!
4. Fiddle Faddle!
Back in the days of Fastpass, we coined the term “Fiddle Faddle” to represent refreshing your Fastpass options until you got a time you liked. You might not think this will work with Genie+ — but it does!
We regularly find much earlier options for Genie+ windows by refreshing our Tip Board. Pro tip! Pin the attractions you’re most interested in to the top of your board so you can refresh and scan your options faster!
5. Try to only trigger the 120-minute rule once.
Perhaps the most confusing part of Genie+ is the 120-minute rule. This rule means that you can select a new Lightning Lane after you use your first selection or 120 minutes after you booked your first Lightning Lane. That means that if you book Slinky Dog Dash for 6PM, you don’t necessarily have to spend your whole day waiting for that Lightning Lane window.
Slinky Dog Dash and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run both regularly book up during the day. Your goal should be to walk into the park with one of these attractions already booked so that you only trigger the cooldown once.
6. Plan ahead if you’re going to use Genie+ for shows.
If you want to use it for shows, plan ahead. There are a finite number of shows (as few as five a day), and therefore show return windows, unlike a ride that has return windows all day long every five minutes, require more planning. Shows also have a 15 to 20-minute return window instead of an hour. And once that window opens, it’s no longer bookable.
It’s not a bad use of a Lightning Lane to use it on a popular show like Festival of the Lion King in Animal Kingdom, just make sure you plan ahead for the more restrictive Lightning Lane window.
Got questions about Genie+? Ask them in the comments!
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I would love to see a combo Genie+/Molly Brain challenge in Magic Kingdom. Let both Molly and Quincy have Genie + , but Quincy must follow Genie’s recommendations, while Molly maximizes her knowledge and Genie+ to create the REAL perfect park day.
Basically Molly vs Genie (Quincy as Tribute for strictly Genie/+).
With big groups, will we all be able to book the same ride together or will genie+ split us up?
If the crowd level is 5/10 do we need to buy/use Genie+?
My other tip…just like FP, don’t ever leave the park for a midday break without booking a future ride for the evening.
Am I the only one dreading a future trip due to the stress of Genie+? We want to go on the “fancy rides”, but I can no longer stand in long lines. We’re doing this for three grandkids and then we’re done. Mickey used to make things easy, but those days are long gone and we were very frequent guests.
Just had a similar trip. We did not purchase Genie plus, but we did select a couple lightening Lane rides @ 7am on two mornings. Well worth not waiting for two hours at Epcot for Frozen and Magic Kingdom for 7 Dwarfs Mine Train. Other than these two rides we just use regular Genie to track wait times and determine our days. Also had “filler” rides and shows between ordering food and picking up food.