The Best NEW Disney World Genie+ Trick Now That Park Hopping Has Changed

It has brought us changes at Disney World like park passes no longer being required for most visitors and the Disney Dining Plan coming back. Also, since park hopping has returned to normal for the first time in years, we wanted to go over a Disney World Genie+ trick that you have to know about.

Before we get into anything, let’s do a quick recap of what Genie+ is.

As a reminder, Genie+ is Disney’s pass-the-line virtual assistant. It replaced FastPass+ at Walt Disney World. You buy this service for everyone in your party, each day that you want to use it. The price varies based on demand, but in general you can expect it to cost between $20-$39. You can use this service to book return times for most of your favorite rides and attractions so you can skip the (usually long) standby line. These are Lightning Lanes.

Those Lightning Lanes are different from Individual Lightning Lanes. Those are ones you can purchase outside of Genie+ for an additional price. If you don’t like standing in long lines, then these systems could be very beneficial to you!

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, what happened to park hopping? Well, as of January 9th, 2024, anyone with an eligible ticket can hop to another park at any time they want! This includes anyone with a park ticket with Park Hopper or an Annual Pass.

Since January 1st, 2021, you could technically park hop, but you could not hop to another park until 2 PM. But now, just over three years later, park hopping has returned, and those with park hopper tickets can visit any park at any time.

There is always a chance you could be turned away from a park when trying to park hop if the park is at capacity, but this only happens on the rarest of occasions — less than a handful of days each year. If you are in Disney World on the busiest of days like New Year’s Eve, we recommend calling the park capacity hotline at (407) 560-5000 before you leave your current park, just in case the park you plan to hop to is full.

But what about virtual queues and park hopping, I hear you asking. Great question! Currently, there are only two attractions in Disney World that use virtual queues — TRON Lightcycle / Run and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. There are two virtual queue drops during the day, one at 7 AM and another at 1 PM. It’s during these two times that you can go into the app and select to enter the queue.

Up until now, you had to only pick one of the rides at the 7 AM drop based on the park you had a reservation for (TRON for example if you had a reservation for Magic Kingdom). But that has now changed!

Since you no longer need a park reservation for date-based tickets, you can select either of the rides at the 7 AM drop, and you don’t have to be inside the parks. However, you will need to be in the park for the ride you wish you pick at the 1 PM drop.

Click here for more on how Virtual Queues Just Got Less Complicated in Disney World

Last of all, here’s the new Disney World Genie+ trick that you’ll have to take advantage of: Since your ticket type is not required to have a Disney Park Pass theme park reservation that day, you can book any attraction you’d like at any theme park at any time! So, we recommend you make ALL the Lightning Lane selections you want to for your second (or third or fourth) park first thing in the morning!

Keep all of these tips and tricks in mind as you plan for your next Disney World trip and until then, keep following AllEars for all the latest!

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What do you think of park hopping returning to normal? Let us know in the comments.

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