Just in case going to Disney wasn´t quite a game of strategy for you and your family, Disney removed free, simple Fast Pass and added three new options. Each day you are at Disney and throughout your day in the park, you will encounter three options including, Genie+, Lightening Lane (a la carte) and Virtual Queues. At first these three seem like different names for the same thing...nope, these serve three completely different purposes.
FREE, it´s Disney and we know finding something free is a shock, so let´s start with that one. Virtual Queues are lovely and started a few years back to eliminate wasting your entire day in line for the newest ride. These appear to be for new rides only then as the popularity begins to subside the queue is no longer needed. At the time that we traveled you could join the Virtual Queue for Tron before park opening from your hotel room, as long as you were staying on property and had that park chosen for the day. The queue would open at 7 am and within 5 seconds it would close because all morning spots were taken. The queue would reopen at 1 pm for the next set of ride times, but you had to be inside the park to access this queue. So, even if you have purchased park hoppers and plan to switch to the park in time to make use of the queue, you would still not be able to attempt to get one until you have scanned into that park. Again, this feature is free but is open earlier to those staying on property and there are no guarantees that you will get a spot. Once it opens, we have everyone simultaneously attempt to get it by refreshing and clicking the button to join the queue. Once one person secures it, it takes you to the following screen where you can pick everyone in your party that are linked to the MDE app and qualify (in the correct park if needed). Then it tells you a boarding group to give you an approximate time to return. Once riders start going and barring any issues with the ride, you will be notified by app that your time is approaching and you scan in at the ride showing your pass. We waited for Tron after our queue time for about 45 minutes. You can only get one Virtual Queue per ride, per rider each day.
You receive this distinction by buying Genie+ and reserving a spot in the lightening lane, or by purchasing a ride pass to one specific ride for one turn to ride it (a la carte).
In addition to virtual queue, you can bypass that 45-60 minute wait by upgrading your position AFTER scoring the spot in the queue. This is purchased on the app using the ¨a la carte lightening lane¨. Once you are in, you can pay $15 per person to go to a separate return line with very little wait. We never bothered to do this, for our group of 5, I felt it wasn´t a good use of funds to spend $75 to avoid a 45 minute wait. You can buy these for a few of the busiest attractions.
Finally, the Genie+ is the hardest option for me to decide on each day. The Genie+ allows you to choose times throughout the day to ride specific rides with little to no wait as long as you return at a specified time. The Genie+ offers many but not all rides and doesn´t let you choose them at one time for the entire day.
In trying to decide to purchase the Genie+ each day, I feel like I am either wasting money by buying it (times 5) or wasting time by not buying it. The best advice I can give you, is that you have to know your people and their tolerance for waiting. Another issue is guessing the park demand, there are certainly times that the parks are not overcrowded and the waits would be tolerable with good planning and taking advantage of early park hours. If you decide to buy the genie, it will be $15-22/per person/per day. It does transfer with you from park to park if you have the park hopper but as the day goes on there are less available options so it won´t be as effective. You cannot purchase this until the day you choose to use it but you can purchase it first thing in the morning before the park opens directly from your app. You will want to make your selection as quickly as possible beginning at 7 a.m. Once you get the first one chosen it will tell you when to go to that ride to go in the Lightening Lane return space to basically walk straight onto the ride. This is the same type of return detailed above as ¨a la carte lightening lane¨ but the Genie+ does NOT include key, in demand rides that force you to arrive at rope drop (Pandora, 7 Dwarfs Mine Train), pay for lightening lane, or go to a special event (Halloween or Christmas party), or WAIT...ugh! So, genie+ is basically second tier rides.
No comments:
Post a Comment