Hey there, Carol, and welcome to planDisney! The new
Disney Genie is something we are all still working to tame. After all, this guy does have phenomenal, cosmic powers! How do you rein that in? But I’m happy to set you on the path of conquering the Genie.
Carol, we seem to be kindred spirits! My goal on my park days is to experience as many attractions as possible without waiting in any lines! As a father with young children, waiting in line is rarely feasible. Disney’s Genie+ has helped us achieve this goal on each visit thus far. The crowds have been high the past few weeks, so I hate to see that your friend didn’t have a great experience with the service. I will detail my personal strategy to Genie+ below.
With
Disney’s Genie+ you can reserve an attraction return window and access the ride through the Lightning Lane queue, which typically means shorter wait times. You can reserve your first Genie+ attraction at 7 a.m. on the morning of your Theme Park visit. You can then make an additional Genie+ reservation after you tap into your first reservation or after waiting 120 minutes, whichever happens first. You can hold more than one Genie+ reservation at a time, but you must make the reservations one at a time by waiting the required times mentioned in the previous sentence.
At 7 a.m on the morning of my Theme Park Day, I look for attractions that my family enjoys and that have the soonest available return window. For example, if it’s our
Magic Kingdom Park day and I see that
Jungle Cruise has an 8:15 a.m. return window, I will book this reservation. In my opinion, this is the best option because it allows me to tap into the attraction at 8:15 a.m. and start looking for my next attraction, without waiting until 9 a.m. - the 120-minute window. I also get to use the time in the attraction queue to book my next Genie+ reservation. I continue choosing our desired attractions with the soonest available return window until lunch. Using this method during my December visit, we were able to ride 4 Genie+ attractions before lunch in Magic Kingdom Park.
When lunch gets close, my strategy shifts a little bit. Feeding a large family like mine can take some time, so I will look for attractions reservations that we desire but are later in the afternoon. Since I’ll already be sitting with my family for lunch for about 2 hours, I don’t mind waiting the full 120 minutes. The afternoons for us are usually much slower, and attraction availability does seem to wane some in the afternoon hours, but by then we are usually winding down as a family. These toddlers can only take so much!
I hope this helps, Carol! I know that was a lot of information, so if you have more questions about anything I said
let me know. After all, you’ve got a friend in me!
Until Next Time,
PG