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Matt Berry
Whether you’re a Disney World theme park veteran or a newbie, you’ve never had a friend like Genie+. Essentially, Genie+ is a paid service that allows park guests to skip the traditional lines for Disney World attractions. Considering the already high cost of Disney World theme park tickets, the idea of paying extra fees can make your head spin and wallet quiver. However, Genie+ can really improve your Disney World experience. After all, you didn’t visit Disney World to wait in long lines.
Genie+ gives you access to Lighting Lanes, which is the new name of the old FastPass queues. After paying a flat, per-day fee, Genie+ guests can make time window reservations for rides through the My Disney Experience app. Once you arrive at the attraction during your reserved time, you’ll bypass the traditional line to join the Lightning Lanes lines.
While the Genie+ reservation process is designed to encourage guests to schedule one attraction at a time, a hack called Genie+ stacking allows you to reserve times for multiple rides incrementally throughout the day, maximizing the value of a Genie+ purchase. You can do this by following the “120-Minute Rule.”
How to stack attractions using Genie+
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As a general rule, to maximize a Genie+ stacking approach, you’ll want to start as early as possible. You can reserve your first attraction at 7 a.m. when the schedule is first available. At this time, you may want to reserve the most in-demand ride before other guests begin filling up time slots. Reservations can sell out. In essence, this 7 a.m. reservation counts as if you made it at the park’s opening. You then need to wait two hours before making your next reservation. So, if the park opens at 9 a.m., you’ll need to wait until 11 a.m. to make your next Lighting Lane reservation. After making a reservation at 11 a.m., you can make another at 1 p.m. and another at 3 p.m.
At this point, you have afternoon reservations for four different rides. Your time slot windows can also overlap, meaning you can move quickly from one ride to the next without lag time. You just need ample time to get from one attraction to another.
Remember, the Genie+ reservations also reset after checking into a reserved attraction, so you don’t need to completely adhere to the “120-Minute Rule”. In other words, you could use Genie+ to schedule attractions for later in the day, then find a few rides that are immediately available while you wait for your later reservations.
Cost and value of Genie+
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You can reserve Lightning Lane placement with Genie+ for almost all of Disney World’s rides — but not all. Currently, you cannot reserve a spot for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in Magic Kingdom, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind in EPCOT, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance in Hollywood Studios, or Avatar Flight of Passage in Animal Kingdom. However, you can purchase Lighting Lane admission for these rides individually à la carte.
At the time of this writing, the cost of Genie+ can range between $15-$35 per day at Disney World. Following a dynamic pricing model, the price of Genie+ will typically be more expensive during peak seasons and less expensive during the off-season. That said, it’s probably the most valuable during peak seasons. The additional cost of Genie+ may help you avoid hours of standing in line, especially when you effectively stack your reservations for popular attractions and rides.
