Hi Larry,
The countdown is on for your Disney vacation. I'm sure you must be excited!
It sounds like you've done some research on
Disney Genie+ and you know that you can get Lightning Lane access to over 40 attractions throughout Walt Disney World, but also know that you can only book one Lightning Lane reservation at a time. You're trying to figure out if it's worth the purchase, right? My last trip to Walt Disney World was only three days, and we wanted to see as much as we could in all four parks, so for my family, it was absolutely worth the added cost. However, we were definitely able to reserve more Lightning Lanes on some days than on others.
Do you remember the days of the old FastPass kiosks when you would insert your park tickets, and get tickets for a FastPass return time? If so, Genie+ is like having that kiosk in the palm of your hand. You can only get one at a time, but after you've checked into that ride, you can book your next Lightning Lane and continue that process throughout the day. The only challenge is that sometimes the Lightning Lanes you want to book may be gone before you are able to make a reservation. I can tell you that on the day we went to
Magic Kingdom we were able to get more than 7 Lightning Lane reservations. Some were for attractions that didn't necessarily have extremely long wait times, but we were comfortably able to see and do everything we had planned before watching
Disney Enchantment light up the sky that evening.
We had a similar experience in
Disney's Animal Kingdom, although besides
Kilimanjaro Safaris and
Na'vi River Journey, the standby wait times for attractions in that park were more than manageable. So did we need it? Probably not. Was it nice to have? Definitely! Even if a standby wait time is only 15 minutes, walking straight onto a ride is still nice. Now, there were only 3 of us on the trip, so the added expense was pretty minimal. If we were our usual party of 5 or 6, I might have opted to save money on Genie+ and use those funds to purchase an Individual Lightning Lane for
Avatar Flight of Passage on that day.
I recommend spending the next week occasionally checking the "Tip Board" on your
My Disney Experience app. It will give you a feel for the wait times for attractions and when the next available Lightning Lane return times are. If you are on the fence about adding Genie+ to your entire trip, the great news is, you don't have to. There's no discount for purchasing in advance, so you can decide to add it to your tickets each morning. I would do it before 7:00 AM, so that you're able to make your first Genie+ selection right at 7:00 AM.
Hope this helps. Have a magical vacation!
Diane