Magic ain’t gonna make itself!
Theme Park Tourist’s new Genie+ 101 mini-series is meant to help you make the most of your Disney Genie+ service… and more to the point, to get your money’s worth. After all, Genie+ is an untamed upcharge with a whole new learning curve and a lot riding on it. Though it adds back the flexibility and day-of spontaneity that FastPass+ lacked in the 2010s, it also means that one wrong choice can leave you spending your day stuck in slow-moving, swampy Stand-by queues watching Lightning Lane guests race past.
It probably shouldn’t take a 1,500-word How-To guide to get your time and money’s worth from a paid-for service at Walt Disney World, but here we are… So let’s dig into our Genie+ 101 strategy for making the most of a day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom… and why you might be better off skipping the upcharge entirely for your day at Disney World’s fourth gate…
Step 1. Understand Genie+
If you’re like us, you probably find the almost-nonsensical naming of Genie, Genie+, Lightning Lanes, and Individual Lightning Lanes to be pretty baffling… almost like Disney intentionally made their new suite of services confusing and counterintuitive… In any case, step one in making use of Genie+ is to know what you’re paying for, so swing by our glossary of Genie terms for the basics, and our tips & tricks article for more.
Step 2. Buy Genie+… or DON’T?!
Here’s the first place where our guide to using Genie+ at Animal Kingdom diverges from our Genie+ plan for Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Because frankly, you don’t “need” Genie+ to have a decent day at Animal Kingdom… and even if you have it, you might not want to use it… at least, not in the way you’re probably expecting to.
Basically, a good Touring Plan can ultimately save you about as much time waiting as Genie+ can, and making use of Animal Kingdom’s Early Entry, “rope drop,” and sparsely-crowded evenings mean that even on busy days, you can probably get every major attraction at the park checked off – with plenty of time for animal experiences! We won’t comment on whether or not that makes Animal Kingdom a dreaded “half-day park,” but it’s certainly true that if you use Genie+ at Animal Kingdom the way you would at Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios, you may find yourself without much to do after lunch.
It’s worth noting that some guests opt to forego Genie+ for their Animal Kingdom day (you can only “skip” a day of Genie+ if you buy the service daily, “a la carte” style – one day at a time, each morning) and redirect the $15 per person to buying Individual Lightning Lane access to the park’s headlining ride. (Skip to Step 4 to follow that trajectory!)
That said, most guests who access Genie+ probably added it to a multi-day ticket for the flat, all-at-once $15 per day rate. Just like the Park Hopper ticket add-on, that means that you’ve got the service even if you don’t necessarily need it, and if you’ve got Genie+ anyway, you might as well get your money’s worth. So here’s our advice…
Step 3. Log on for “digital rope drop”
Every guest with Disney Genie+ can make their first ride reservation selection in the My Disney Experience at 7:00:00 AM on the dot. At some Disney Parks (see, Hollywood Studios), you have less than a minute to secure the park’s hottest Lightning Lane-equipped ride before its Lightning Lane capacity is “sold out” for the day and you have no choice but to wait in a slow-moving Stand-by line to ride it… which is a pretty bad start to getting your money’s worth.
In general, things are much, much more relaxed at Animal Kingdom. You should still be ready to make your first selection at 7:00 – our recommendation is NA’VI RIVER JOURNEY – but Lightning Lane availability for that ride will likely last through the early afternoon. The benefit to booking right at 7:00 in this case is that your return time for Na’vi River Journey is likely to be shortly after the park opens (when its Stand-by wait is at its highest), which is a good thing in terms of securing your next Lightning Lane (see Step 6)!
But as we’ll also detail, if you’re visiting with a first-timer or spending the whole day at the park, you may not want to race headlong into Pandoran crowds to start checking off rides first thing in the morning! In that case, you may want to just refresh Genie’s Tip Board every few minutes after 7:00 until you see a mid-morning return time for Na’vi River Journey instead, giving yourself a chance to enjoy the quieter hour post-opening to ride things stand-by, grab a coffee, or meet some animals. Ah, flexibility!
Step 4. ON-SITE: Purchase any Individual Lightning Lanes
Just to add a little extra dose of confusion, Genie+ doesn’t get you into every Lightning Lane. Disney’s Animal Kingdom has two rides that require separate, a la carte “Individual Lightning Lane” purchases.
The first is Expedition Everest, which is likely to be a walk-on after rope-drop and return to manageable waits in the evening. We don’t recommend buying an “ILL” for Everest unless you miss the early morning lull (for example, by being trapped in Flight of Pasasge’s queue) and will miss the evening lull (probably because of Park Hopping), meaning you have no choice but to ride when its wait is the longest and have the kind of expendable income to not. (We expect that once Everest closes for its half-year refurbishment in January 2022, the park will simply offer one ILL ride rather than promoting another to the paid-for tier, but hey, it is Disney…)
If you’re going to buy an Individual Lightning Lane at Animal Kingdom, you know which we’d suggest… and in fact, some guests skip Genie+ on their Animal Kingdom day entirely and instead spend the money on…
Step 4. ON-SITE: Purchase any Individual Lightning Lanes, continued
Let’s be honest. If you’re going to buy one Individual Lightning Lane at Animal Kingdom, it’s got to be AVATAR Flight of Passage. It’s not uncommon for the wait for Flight of Passage to hover between 90 minutes and 2.5 hours during even moderately crowded times of year. Again, Animal Kingdom has so few rides that you can wait two hours for the “big one” and still get to everything else – especially with a wise touring plan. Flight of Passage also has an absolutely incredibly queue that’s somewhat of a “walkthrough” in its own right.
But if you do wait Stand-by for Flight of Passage, you’ll experience the “joy” of seeing (at typical minimum) eight Lightning Lane guests boarding for every two Stand-by, which is, honestly, pretty miserable.
Flight of Passage “ILLs” typically run $14 per person. Obviously, that’s a pretty gutsy money grab from Disney given that the ride’s FastPasses were, of course, free. But many guests begrudgingly buy the add-on, recognizing that spending $14 to avoid a two-hour line works out to $7 an hour – an amount most of us would agree our time is worth. Note that you do not have to have purchased Genie+ to buy priority boarding at an Individual Lightning Lane attraction, which is why some guests forego Genie+ on their Animal Kingdom day and put the money toward a Flight of Passage ILL instead.
Here’s the only caveat: unlike Genie+ Lightning Lanes (which open to all guests with Genie+ at 7:00), only guests with a linked on-site hotel reservation can purchase access to the Individual Lightning Lane rides at 7:00 (one of increasingly few “perks” of staying on-site). If you’re staying off-site, you have to wait until park opening. The good news is, Animal Kingdom typically opens the earliest out of all of Disney World’s parks (often 8:00 AM), so chances are that some Individual Lightning Lane slots will still remain. (EPCOT, on the other hand, routinely opens at 10:00, leaving a 3-hour on-site-exclusive purchase window for its ILL rides).
Individual Lightning Lane access to Flight of Passage does sell out within an hour or two, so if you’re going to buy it, buy it as early as you can. Unlike FastPass and Genie+ Lightning Lanes that assign you the next-soonest return window, “ILL” purchases at Disney World allow you to select from any available return windows. The app will display the soonest on the Tip Board, but you can select any hour of the day to view available return windows during that hour like booking a Dining Reservation. It’s not a bad idea to book a return time before or after lunch. (Note that having an Individual Lightning Lane has no bearing on holding Genie+ Lightning Lanes. In other words, no one-at-a-time rule to worry about. You can even select a return window that overlaps with a Genie+ Lightning Lane.)
Step 5. Make use of rope drop
We always recommend being present for rope drop if rides are at the top of your to-do list. As of October 2021, that’s doubly true for on-site guests, who automatically gain access to every theme park 30 minutes before off-site guests. (This helps spread out on-site crowds much better than Extra Magic Hours at one park per day used to, but also means off-site guests start every day at every park at a disadvantage.)
Rope drop is a powerful moment at Animal Kingdom especially. Thousands of guests routinely show up to make the Cast-Member-led walk back to Pandora and its two rides. If you were going for a day with no upcharges, you’d want to join them, making your way to Flight of Passage. If you skipped Genie+ and put the money toward Flight of Passage ILLs, you’d follow the crowd, but break off toward Na’vi River Journey to wait Stand-by. (Note that you won’t be the only one with this idea.) If you missed the initial morning walk back, you’d probably be better off waiting until evening for both.
However, if you’re fully loaded with both a Genie+ reservation for Na’vi River Journey and an Individual Lightning Lane purchase for Flight of Passage, take a moment to reflect on the $29 per person that cost… then enjoy your morning! We’d recommend joining the much, much smaller crowd that heads from rope drop to EXPEDITION EVEREST, which will likely be close to a walk-on. You can probably even jump on DINOSAUR afterward with a minimal wait, keeping in mind that you can then use a Lightning Lane reservation later in the day to re-ride DINOSAUR.
If you’re staying off-site, your secondary rope drop is still worthwhile… just recognize that lines will have already formed thanks to on-site guests getting one (or even two) rides in before you’ve hit your first. Avoid Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey unless you’ve got a Lightning Lane booked. In general, the wait for either will never be higher than it is first thing in the morning.
Step 6. Feel out your second Lightning Lane
Again, the Lightning Lane “game” at Animal Kingdom is, in general, much less intense than at Hollywood Studios or Magic Kingdom. Think about it: if you followed our guide (and dropped $29 per person out the gate), you’ll have booked a return time at Flight of Passage and ridden both Na’vi River Journey, Expedition Everest, and maybe DINOSAUR within an hour of park opening. That leaves just two major rides left: Kilimanjaro Safaris and Kali River Rapids. In other words, you got this… and you can probably see why Genie+ isn’t mandatory for a day at the park.
Remember, unlike FastPass (where your next selection became available as soon as your return window for the previous booking began), you have to physically tap into a ride (and often via its second tap point) before you can book the next. If you booked Na’vi River Journey right at 7, you’ll probably get a return time sometime between the 8:00 and 9:00 hour, making it one of the first things you do once the park is open, and allowing you to pick up that second booking very early.
In our experience, your best bet is to book KILIMANJARO SAFARIS for your second Lightning Lane, which begins another countdown to either tapping into that ride during your return window or two hours from the moment you booked it – whichever is sooner. But contrary to what you might expect, our advice is that you don’t always have to take that opportunity…
Step 7. Keep booking… but not too fast!
In our experience, outside of Na’vi River Journey and Flight of Passage, Lightning Lane return times at Animal Kingdom tend to be only 30 minutes to an hour out (during slow seasons, even immediate) meaning you’ll pretty continuously be able to book-walk-ride, book-walk-ride. But before you tackle the park’s entire ride lineup before noon, remember that in another deviation from FastPass, you can only enter a ride’s Lightning Lane once per day. Which means, finish the entire park via Lightning Lanes by lunch and you’ll be staring down a lot of Stand-by rerides…
In that way, the best advice we can give for touring Animal Kingdom with Genie+ is to remember to take your time. Like, for example, maybe throw out everything we said here and instead be a little less aggressive. For example, you could keep an eye on Na’vi River Journey Lightning Lane return times starting at 7:00, but wait until you see a mid-morning return time before actually booking it.
By keeping an eye on Disney Genie’s Tip Board, you can see which Lightning Lane return times are moving further into the morning than others, booking rides so as to spread them out rather than marathoning them. Maybe instead of furiously booking a second Lightning Lane after tapping into Na’vi River Journey, spend those few minutes taking in the queue’s details, then check return times for a second Lightning Lane once the ride’s over! Or even get breakfast at Satu’li Canteen after the ride, then check for a second Lightning Lane!
In other words, you can masterfully use Genie+ at Animal Kingdom, but your “reward” might be running out of major experiences by early afternoon. So why not slow down, take it in, and spread them out among shows and animal experiences? It’s certainly not the way we’re trained to visit Disney Parks in the age of Genie and app-based everything, but it is a whole lot closer to the emotional, thoughtful, and spiritual touring that would probably make Joe Rohde proud!
