Hello again, Sara!
OK. This is important enough that I’m going to lead with my personal take to help you maximize the magic of the
Disney Genie+ service. So here is Tony’s Tip at the top:
Tony’s Tip: To make the most of the Disney Genie+ service, especially with a large group, I recommend that everyone in your party arrives early at your
reserved park. At the Disneyland Resort, Guests who purchased Genie+ with their
theme park tickets or who add the service on the day of their visit may begin to make
Lightning Lane reservations beginning the moment their tickets are activated for the day at the park entrances. By the way, that includes purchasing
individual Lightning Lane access for attractions
not included with Genie+ as well. Even if you arrive before the park opening and are allowed to scan into the park before the ropes drop allowing all Guests to enter the various lands of the park, you may get a jump start on reserving return times from the moment you step foot inside the park entrance.
The advantage of arriving
together for large groups is that you will have a better chance of keeping your return times in sync as much as possible. Due to the limited availability of Lightning Lane return times, the
Disneyland mobile app may limit the number of tickets that can be included in booking a single Lightning Lane time. If you have two or three leaders of your group in charge of booking return times for their separately-assigned subgroups, booking your reservations can be coordinated to happen as close to the same time as possible. Since a Lightning Lane return time is valid for a 60-minute window, you will be more likely to get return times for each of your subgroups that are close enough to each other that there will be a particular 60-minute window that overlaps with the return times booked for
all of your subgroups.
Tony’s Tip Times Two: Since I led with the tip at the top, I thought it would be nice to offer another toward the bottom. By arriving early, especially if arriving before the park opening, your group will also be able to enjoy the period with attraction wait times that are generally at their lowest for the day. What does that mean? You have a choice you can make. One possible choice is to enjoy some of your favorite attractions multiple times by perhaps using the relatively short standby queue for the first experience and the Lightning Lane queue for the next experience. Another possible choice is to favor selecting attractions whose Lightning Lane times are already beginning to only be available for later in the morning or early afternoon. New Lightning Lane return times may be booked as soon as you redeem your existing return times. But if your return times are substantially later in the day, Genie+ will allow you to book another set of return times for a different attraction as soon as 120 minutes after you book your first unredeemed return time. With multiple Lightning Lane return times already set up for later, you can then focus your early-morning strategy on attractions that don’t feature Lightning Lane. It’s a great way to experience a large number of attractions to kick off your day.
I hope you and your party have a marvelous time making magical memories, Sara!
~Tony