Is Disney's Genie+ worth purchasing?

This article is about the history of Disney's FastPass, FastPass+ and Genie+ systems and discusses the pros and cons of purchasing Genie+.

If you've spent any time checking out YouTube reviews or reading about Disney's Genie+ you may have noticed that most people really don't like it. However, before we jump into all the negative aspects of Genie+ let's start with a little history lesson. For an in-depth look at the history of Disney's FastPass check out A Look Back at the History of FastPasses in Disney World at AllEars.net.

When I first visited Disney World in Florida in the late 1970s there was no FastPass system. In fact, there was only one park, The Magic Kingdom and one water park, River Country. We spent 5 days at Disney, 4 of which were spent in The Magic Kingdom and one day at River Country, which was next to where we stayed at Disney's Fort Wilderness campground. This allowed us to really explore the park at a very leisurely pace.

I didn't visit Disney Orlando again until the late 1990s. Now there were 4 theme parks, 2 water parks and an area called Downtown Disney (what is now Disney Springs). We spent 5 days at Disney, one day in each park and one day at a water park. We purchased a 4 day pass with a 4 day park hopper add-on. Since we were staying at the Boardwalk Inn this allowed us to walk or take a short boat ride to Hollywood Studios and EPCOT and walk through EPCOT to get to the Magic Kingdom via the monorail. We explored the parks at a leisurely pace making our way around each park in a logical clockwise or counter clockwise direction.

The next time we went to Orlando in the late 2000s we decided to check out Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We purchased a 2 day pass with a park hopper and ExpressPass add-ons for each day. This was the first time we used anything like the ExpressPass or FastPass and it was fantastic although pricy, costing almost as much as the ticket itself unless you are staying at one of their premium hotels in which case it comes with the price of the room. The ExpressPass worked great and we had no trouble riding rides 2 or 3 times in a row with no wait.

Our next visit wasn't until mid 2009 and this time we had 2 small children with us. We spent one day in the Magic Kingdom, one day in Animal Kingdom and 2 days at SeaWorld. By this time Disney had implemented their FastPass system, which consisted of areas near ride entrances that had ticket dispensing machines. You could go there, insert your park access card and get a FastPass for later that same day. You could only get 3 FastPasses initially and could not get another one until you had used all of the previous FastPasses. This system required you to run around the parks trying to collect a FastPass for the 3 rides you thought would have long wait times, go ride other rides or eat in-between and come back to those rides within the time window on your FastPass ticket. This was kind of a pain and made for a more hectic park day, but they were free so I treated them as a bonus.

Before proceeding lets discuss the difference between Disney's system and Universal's. Disney's FastPass, FastPass+ and Genie+ are all virtual queues while Universal's system is simply providing you access to what you hope will be a much shorter queue. A virtual queue is actively managed to only give out a certain number of tickets per time slot. Therefore, virtual queues can run out of space in a given day and many of Disney's most popular rides do run out of FastPasses. This is not the case with Universal's approach. They charge a lot of money for an ExpressPass expecting that only a certain percentage of guests will want to pay that much and therefore limit the wait times in the ExpressPass lines. However, if everyone entering Universal in a given day purchased an ExpressPass then the ExpressPass lines would be no better than the stand-by lines.

Disney did upgrade their FastPass system to FastPass+, which allowed you to book FastPasses using an app on your smartphone and thus no longer required the FastPass ticket dispensers. This offered a few improvements like not having to make an extra trip to get the FastPass ticket, booking FastPasses days or weeks before your park visit and making it much easier to get new FastPasses throughout the day. However, there were also a number of drawbacks like guests staying at Disney hotels could book their FastPasses much earlier than regular park guests and it still made going to the parks a bit more hectic if you were trying to maximize your FastPass use. But they were still free and so I still considered them a bonus.

When Disney Orlando re-opened after the COVID-19 shutdown they temporarily suspended the FastPass system as they were drastically limiting the number of people in each park per day and really trying to ensure that social distancing was being observed in their ride queues. Everyone expected Disney to bring FastPass+ back once the parks re-opened fully. However, Disney eventually announced that they were discontinuing FastPass+ and replacing it with something called Genie and Genie+. They promised that it would be much better. Some people hoped that it might be a system like Universal's, expensive but simple and easy to use. However, Disney had other ideas.

What is Genie and Genie+? They are services that are accessed through the Disney World Mobile App. Genie is free and provides services that help you plan each day you are in a Disney park. Genie+ costs extra, but provides you with access to Lightning Lanes on most rides in each park. A valid park ticket and reservation are required to access Genie and Genie+. Once you purchase Genie+ you can start booking your first 3 Lightning Lane passes at 7:00AM the day of your reservation. Individual Lightning Lane passes (these do not require Genie+ to purchase) can be purchased at 7:00AM the day of your reservation if you are staying at a Disney Resort. All other guests will have to wait until the park opens. So what big improvements did Disney give us?

• Genie+ is no longer free and, as of this writing, costs $15 to $29 per day per person. Otherwise, it basically works the same as the old FastPass+ system.
• Guests claim that Genie+ still has a lot of bugs, causing the app to crash or lock up their phones and sometimes Lightning Lane passes that have already been booked simply disappear prompting many guests to take screen shots of each Lightning Lane pass so they can show it guest services and retrieve their passes manually.
• Additional Lightning Lane passes become available after 2 hours of obtaining the previous one throughout the day allowing guests to hold more than 3 passes at a time, but there are some limitations if you are park-hopping. This may be why you will see guests obsessively swapping at their phones while walking around or standing in lines because new passes randomly become available throughout the day and the only way to find them is to keep refreshing the app until one pops up that you want.
• The really popular rides in each park are not included in Genie+, but must be purchased separately. Each of these Lightning Lane passes are good for one person to use the Lightning Lane for that particular ride one time. Disney is also using flexible, demand based pricing for these rides so the price will vary depending on the demand, but will typically run between $15 and $25.

Many Disney fans feel like this is just another example of Disney trying to maximize revenue and profits while offering a worse experience for their park guests, myself included. Both Disney and Universal parks are providing more and more immersive experiences (i.e. Universal's Harry Potter lands and Disney's Galaxy's Edge). To fully experience these places I really don't want to be running across the park (these parks are big!) just because I have a Lightning Lane pass for a certain window of time. Nor do I want to be on my phone constantly trying to get new passes for something later that day. Let us know your thoughts on Disney's Genie+ in the comments below.