Can someone explain Genie+ and Lightning Lane?

[Wines Not Whines]

I’ll be at Disneyland in August, and this will be my first trip since they started Genie+ and LL. Is it basically like the old Fastpass, where you could choose one ride at a time? What’s the best strategy to use it?

I understand there’s an upcharge for LL for certain rides. Can you also pick your ride time for these rides, like Rise of the Resistance, or is it like the Virtual Queue from last year where it randomly assigns you to a time and you have to plan your day around it?

Also, how does all of this work if you park hop? Can you choose rides in both parks, or only your morning park?

[dcrunnergirl52]

We didn't park hop so I don't know about that.

But, yes, it's like FastPass in that you can choose one ride at a time and you get a time to go to that ride and get on in the fast lane (lightening lane). As soon as you go through the LL, you can select your next ride, so I did that every time. And, the LL lets you onto the ride generally 10 minutes before the actual booked window opens, which was nice b/c we were able to keep moving at a faster pace.

It's easy to use after you get the hang of it. I watched the vide on the app to figure it out and played around with it a bit before we arrived.

The other part of is that that it will recommend which rides to do and when due to lower than average wait times. We didn't usually use that b/c often it suggested things that were across the park from where we wanted to be.

As for the upcharge (individual Lightening Lane), yes, you can pick your time (it's an hour window, I think). But, they do sell out early in the day. So if you want to do Rise at early in the day, you should be in the park at rope drop to buy a Individual LL for that time b/c they will sell out or the times available will get later and later.

While you can only have one Lighening Lane pass at a time, you can have a iLL and a LL at the same time. So after you purchase your iLL, you can still continue to use regular LL. And, you can split your party up on the LLs so some of you do one ride and some of you do another during the same time period.

Several times, we had LLs for a ride the shutdown. In that case, they provided (via the app) a multi-experience LL pass that could be used at any time on certain rides. That was really nice.

[mrsslocombe]

I'll add: just like the old Fast pass system, you can get your next Genie+ reservation either immediately after scanning at the ride OR if your reservation is later in the day, 2 hours after you make a reservation. So say at 8am you make a reservation for Space Mountain at 6pm, at 10am you can make another reservation. Or at 8am you make an 8:30am Pirates reservation, you scan it at the ride at 8:30, you can now make another reservation for Haunted Mansion at 9am, scan at 9am, make another reservation for Small World at 10:30 am, etc.

Strategy-wise, there's basically two: Quality vs Quantity. Decide ahead of time what you would rather do-book as many Genie + Reservations as you can, or prioritize the attractions you REALLY want. If you focus on certain attractions that are popular, like Indiana Jones, your first reservation may be later in the day. If you choose quantity, depending on how busy the park is, you might wind up booking a bunch of reservations for rides that only have a 15ish minute wait. OR you might have to criss-cross the park a whole lot.

For park hopping-you can make Genie+ reservations for after 1pm at the other park. You have to indicate on your app that you will be park hopping for the other park to show up, I believe.

For the individual Lighting Lanes-Rise sells out so fast that honestly if you see a reservation available, buy it. It will give you a specific hour block of time. The ride breaks down A LOT though. If it's broken and you don't get to use your LL, you can get a refund.

[was5]

Jul 13, 2022 8:52:35 GMT -5 dcrunnergirl52 said:

We didn't park hop so I don't know about that.

But, yes, it's like FastPass in that you can choose one ride at a time and you get a time to go to that ride and get on in the fast lane (lightening lane). As soon as you go through the LL, you can select your next ride, so I did that every time. And, the LL lets you onto the ride generally 10 minutes before the actual booked window opens, which was nice b/c we were able to keep moving at a faster pace.

It's easy to use after you get the hang of it. I watched the vide on the app to figure it out and played around with it a bit before we arrived.

The other part of is that that it will recommend which rides to do and when due to lower than average wait times. We didn't usually use that b/c often it suggested things that were across the park from where we wanted to be.

As for the upcharge (individual Lightening Lane), yes, you can pick your time (it's an hour window, I think). But, they do sell out early in the day. So if you want to do Rise at early in the day, you should be in the park at rope drop to buy a Individual LL for that time b/c they will sell out or the times available will get later and later.

While you can only have one Lighening Lane pass at a time, you can have a iLL and a LL at the same time. So after you purchase your iLL, you can still continue to use regular LL. And, you can split your party up on the LLs so some of you do one ride and some of you do another during the same time period.

Several times, we had LLs for a ride the shutdown. In that case, they provided (via the app) a multi-experience LL pass that could be used at any time on certain rides. That was really nice.

Not the OP, but do you use Genie+ to get in the regular LL line? I'm always confused between the two things.

Also, is Genie+ a set cost for the full day and iLL is a cost per ride?

[mrsslocombe]

Jul 13, 2022 11:30:38 GMT -5 was5 said:

Jul 13, 2022 8:52:35 GMT -5 dcrunnergirl52 said:

We didn't park hop so I don't know about that.

But, yes, it's like FastPass in that you can choose one ride at a time and you get a time to go to that ride and get on in the fast lane (lightening lane). As soon as you go through the LL, you can select your next ride, so I did that every time. And, the LL lets you onto the ride generally 10 minutes before the actual booked window opens, which was nice b/c we were able to keep moving at a faster pace.

It's easy to use after you get the hang of it. I watched the vide on the app to figure it out and played around with it a bit before we arrived.

The other part of is that that it will recommend which rides to do and when due to lower than average wait times. We didn't usually use that b/c often it suggested things that were across the park from where we wanted to be.

As for the upcharge (individual Lightening Lane), yes, you can pick your time (it's an hour window, I think). But, they do sell out early in the day. So if you want to do Rise at early in the day, you should be in the park at rope drop to buy a Individual LL for that time b/c they will sell out or the times available will get later and later.

While you can only have one Lighening Lane pass at a time, you can have a iLL and a LL at the same time. So after you purchase your iLL, you can still continue to use regular LL. And, you can split your party up on the LLs so some of you do one ride and some of you do another during the same time period.

Several times, we had LLs for a ride the shutdown. In that case, they provided (via the app) a multi-experience LL pass that could be used at any time on certain rides. That was really nice.

Not the OP, but do you use Genie+ to get in the regular LL line? I'm always confused between the two things.

Also, is Genie+ a set cost for the full day and iLL is a cost per ride?

yes to both. There's a "standby" entrance for regular old line waiting, and then a LL lane for Genie + reservations (using the former Fast Pass entrances). 

[jaycee]

I recommend looking on youtube for tutorials from Disney or from posters that have lots of views. They will show you screen shots and walk through everything. It'll be much easier to explain than anyone here typing out a response.

I thought I would never figure it out and it was way to complicated, but it was SUPER easy once we got in the park. We went to Disneyland over spring break and it was super crowded but we went to the parks at rope drop and used ILL over and over and over again.

[sarahsas]

A lot of good tips up above. I'll add a couple things. I recently went to Disneyland/California Adventure on a 1 day park hopper ticket.

You can only have one reservation at a time EXCEPT the ones that are an extra charge do NOT count as that. So you can make your Rise of Resistance reservation and another one at the same time. We got ours right away when we entered the park (you can't make a res til you enter the park). We got it with no issue pretty early, and got the other SW ride next to it right after.

Our strategy was to IMMEDIATELY make our next res after scanning in on one ride (like while we were waiting) and it worked great.

One thing to be aware of is that you are only allowed to purchase 2 of the "extra" cost LL reservations in a day. I didn't know this and didn't get one for Spiderman.

Also, if you have a reservation and then the ride goes down or is overbooked (happens constantly), you'll get a token to use whenever and whereever you want. We got a couple of these and they were like gold.

We were able to make a reservation at CA Adv while we were in DL, and vice versa after the 1pm time of us being able to hop. We actually went back and forth a couple times to get the best rides using LL.

It was an adventure!

[ny96]

Bumping this thread to ask about whether or not I should get the Genie passes. We are likely going on Sunday. We live in the area and go about twice a year. The last time we went was last November before Genie +. Part of me wants to get the Genie + because we’re already spending so much money on tickets, but then it’s $100 for the 5 of us, and that’s a lot of money. Also, we haven’t had too many issues with crowds in the last year, but it’s summer, not November. My other hesitation is that we would want to do it specifically for Rise of the Resistance, but if we have to pay and additional fee on top of Genie + for a lightening lane pass, we wouldn’t do that. So should we get Genie +?

[mrsslocombe]

ny96, my sister is there today. She did wind up getting Genie+ because she only had 1 day to do both parks (she lives in the midwest, so not going to be back anytime soon). By 1pm she had already booked/used 6 reservations at CA, so she'll probably wind up with more than 10 LL reservations by end of day. For her it has been worth it, but she's also not going back. Crowd's aren't awful today, but she wouldn't have been able to do as much in both parks without it.

If I lived locally and went twice a year I don't think I would bother personally.