Every year, millions of people return home from a trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World with autographs, photos, and stories to share. Across social media, to inquiring family, and to curious coworkers, they recount stories of their vacations… the good, the bad, and – increasingly – the ugly. After all, for the last four years or so, a single statement has served as the undercurrent for every returning vacationeer: it’s gotten really, really expensive.
For those of us who spend time caring about the parks, it’s no surprise. In the last half-decade, Disney has found itself in a place it didn’t expect: falling behind. Even a few years under the thumb of previous CEO Bob Chapek saw Disney’s corporate structure reorganized around streaming (a business that approximately no one has figured out how to make sustainably profitable) and monetization of Disney IP, shuffling creatives to the back of the line.
It’s fallen on Disney’s highly successful theme parks to make up the difference. As a result, we are living in an era of slashed perks and new upcharges; when Disney Parks find new ways to wring nickels and dimes from guests. But of all the shrunken portions, inflated prices, and newly instituted fees, few are as universally reviled as…
A Phenomenal, Cosmic Problem
Introduced in October 2021 (coinciding with Disney World’s disastrous 50th Anniversary), Genie+ is a “service” that pretty transparently offers families an experience equivalent to the formerly-free FastPass+, but at a per-person-per-day rate. Basically, Genie+ fuses elements of:
- the original, paper FastPass (one-a-time ride bookings, rolling hour-long return windows, and tier-free selections);
- the later, digital FastPass+ (app-based selections, a widely-expanded pool of offerings, first dibs to on-site hotel guests), and;
- a few ingredients of its own (vast oversold queues of redeeming guests, de facto mandatory 7AM first bookings, near-daily ride “sell-outs”, excluding each park’s biggest E-Ticket which instead requires an a la carte one-off upcharge)
… And to say it’s hated is an understatement. It turns out that guests really don’t like having to pay $20 – $35 per person per day to recreate the formerly-standard experience of getting a few line-skips a day. And they really, really don’t like that if you don’t buy Genie+, you get an objectively worse experience than you used to – trapped all day long in swampy, stagnant, Standby queues while 9 paying Genie+ guests are admitted for every 1 visitor who dared not pay for the new surcharge service.
To drop editorial standards for a moment, Genie+ sucks. Forget costing extra. It requires someone in your party to wake up before 7AM every day of the vacation or else begin your day by immediately missing out on each park’s top tier Genie+ ride. Then, to make the most of the system means spending all day booking and modifying and redeeming phone-based reservations while standing in “Lightning Lanes” that flood through the park. It feels bad for those who buy it and those who don’t. It’s a rare, universally-acknowledged, very-bad-thing. And even Disney knows it…
Resummoning Genie+
In May 2023, Disney announced via the Disney Parks Blog a host of tweaks meant to improve guest services after its long decline post-COVID. Eliminating the frustrating park reservations for most guests, returning to Disney Dining Plan, recommitting to extended hours for hotel guests… But for fans, the most intriguing potential was:
Simplifying the Disney Genie+ experience: We have heard from guests that they would like ways to plan with Disney Genie+ service and individual Lightning Lane selections before the day of their park visit, and we want you to know we are working on ways guests may do this for visits in 2024. […] While we are not yet able to share specific details, we look forward to sharing more information at a later date.
Well, we’re partway through 2024 and haven’t gotten any updates yet on what that really means… So in the meantime, here’s what we think that’ll mean…
1. Removing the 7AM Lightning Lane wakeup call
One of the “necessary evils” of booking virtual ride reservations is that those reservations have to open at a certain time. At Disneyland, you become eligible to book your first Genie+ return time once you’ve scanned in at the gate. (Frustrating in its own right, as it means that before you even step onto Main Street, you’ve got to have your nose buried in your phone.)
But Disney World’s system is worse, throwing open the doors to Lightning Lane booking at 7:00:00 sharp. And people are serious about it. It’s not uncommon for each park’s highest-demand ride to be “sold out” of Genie+ slots within minutes or even seconds. So unless someone is awake, logged in, and ready to refresh immediately when the 7 o’clock hour starts, you might find that your Genie+ purchase won’t help you get on the ride you wanted most, leaving you stuck in those slow-moving Standby lines.
Almost certainly, the persistent 6:55 AM alarms have been a frequent note in Disney’s evaluation, and removing the wakeup call will be a must-have in any “Genie 2.0.” But remember, if virtual queues are going to open, they have to open at a certain time. So the question is “when?” And we’ve got the likely answer…
2. Pre-booking Lightning Lanes
FastPass+ – the digital version of the service that launched as part of the billion dollar MyMagic+ initiative – wasn’t perfect. Critics often complained that the pre-booking experiences down to the minute (weeks or even months out from your trip) removed spontaneity and flexibility. One of Genie+’s “selling points” was that it would return the spontaneous, day-of decision-making guests remembered fondly from the paper FastPass days, choosing rides one-at-a-time with rolling reservation windows.
Turns out the grass isn’t always greener. Fans actually don’t like not knowing until the day-of whether or not they secured a high demand Lightning Lane, and they don’t like the pressure of having to constantly redeem and refresh and rebook. We will almost certainly see Disney shift to a system where guests secure their Lightning Lane arrival times before their trip. But of course, that’ll mean a very controversial change…
3. Stratified booking
One of the more controversial issues with FastPass+ is that it gave guests with confirmed Walt DIsney World resort hotel reservations a substantial, 30 day head start on booking rides. It may have been frustrating for day guests, but it was a major perk for those staying on-site. It meant that – 60 days out – those with on-site hotel stays could sweep in and book up in-demand rides like Avatar Flight of Passage, sometimes leaving just scraps for non-hotel guests when their booking window opened 30 days prior to their trip.
Genie+ removed that stratification, forcing everyone – yep, even those staying at Disney’s very high priced Deluxe hotels – to fight for day-of reservations at 7AM every morning. Almost certainly, if Disney shifts Genie+ to pre-booking slots, they’ll take the opportunity to “reward” on-site hotel guests with early access. It’s a “perk” that doesn’t cost Disney anything, but will increase the value (and maybe, price) of a Disney resort hotel.
4. Price increases
It’s hard to believe that when Genie+ launched in October 2021, it was a set price: $15 per person per day. Since then, Disney has made waves of change to the program’s pricing and availability. First, it became untethered from being a ticket add-on, requiring guests to purchase it each day, on the day. Then, its pricing became “demand-based” – i.e. more expensive on busy days. Then, that flexible pricing also changed depending on the park (or multi-park). To date, Genie+’s record high is $39 per person per day. But weirdly, if you ask some fans, it should be more.
After all, Genie+ is expensive… but it’s not prohibitively expensive. A family may grimace and groan at having to spend $70 – $100 per day for their family to have Genie+, but for families financially secure enough to afford one and in the scope of a Disney World vacation, it’s not a make-or-break number… As evidenced by the massive lines that spill out of Lightning Lanes, Disney is either overselling Genie+, pretending downtime doesn’t happen, or allowing far too many reservations in each hour-long return window.
The obvious “apples to oranges” comparison is Universal’s Express service, which has a massive upfront cost… but also has a far smaller impact on a typical guest’s visit because far fewer people use it. Disney’s relatively low-cost service makes it a new “default” for most families (making us wonder why Disney didn’t just hike the cost of tickets $15 and keep the beloved FastPass and all the decades of goodwill that came with it). Almost certainly, Disney’s revamp of Genie+ will come with price jumps… but as before, they’ll probably be incremental enough that they don’t really help keep people away.
Look, as much as fans may daydream about Disney Parks leadership coming to their senses and doing away with the awful ideas that have spawned post-pandemic, we have to face the truth: Disney’s key performance indicator isn’t guest satisfaction anymore. It’s per capita spending. Though only Bob Chapek was brash enough to “say the quiet part out loud,” Disney’s actions make it clear that the plan is still to have fewer guests, who spend more. At a time when the company is hurting, the added revenue from Genie+ and other park upcharges is essential. The question is, will shifting Genie+ to pre-booked selections like FastPass+ make a difference to you?
