MAJOR changes to Genie+!

[Jrb1979]

I was surprised at Cedar Point $85 ticket price mentioned earlier so looked it up. It’s $85 for a ticket that includes parking and food all day. Normal ticket starts at $45. Passes run $99-230 and include the ability to buy tickets for 6 guests a day who will get to share the passholder’s perks like early access, parking, discounts and even the skip the line aspect on platinum pass.

That's online only. If you go to the gate it's $85.

 

[Genie+]

That's online only. If you go to the gate it's $85.

It pays to plan! Then you get parking and food included for $85.

 

[Jrb1979]

It pays to plan! Then you get parking and food included for $85.

If you're me I have a platinum pass so I only pay for food when I go.

 

[Genie+]

If you're me I have a platinum pass so I only pay for food when I go.

Awesome! If I buy a ticket through you it’s $45 and I’d get all your perks for that day.

Yee-Ha

 

[Madame]

I need some advice (or help making a decision). We’re at BCV Dec 31 - Jan 6. I was trying to hold on for AP sales to start, but who knows if they’re ever returning and what form they’ll take when they do

I was going to start a 3 day hopper on Jan 1 to give us flexibility on which park days we wanted. Now of course, I feel boxed in. The 3 day hopper started Dec 31 will only be valid through Jan 4. We might want to go to a park on our last day. I really hate how inflexible Disney has become

So, consensus is a big price hike on Genie and maybe even tix? I’d be better off buying a 4 day hopper now right?

Oh & DH hates the parks, but I was going to get him a 1 day ticket to ride the big rides at DHS with the kids since I am not a fan. I really can’t purchase that until after the new release as we want to do that day at the end of the trip.

We miss the old Disney

 

[Marionnette]

I need some advice (or help making a decision). We’re at BCV Dec 31 - Jan 6. I was trying to hold on for AP sales to start, but who knows if they’re ever returning and what form they’ll take when they do

I was going to start a 3 day hopper on Jan 1 to give us flexibility on which park days we wanted. Now of course, I feel boxed in. The 3 day hopper started Dec 31 will only be valid through Jan 4. We might want to go to a park on our last day. I really hate how inflexible Disney has become

So, consensus is a big price hike on Genie and maybe even tix? I’d be better off buying a 4 day hopper now right?

Oh & DH hates the parks, but I was going to get him a 1 day ticket to ride the big rides at DHS with the kids since I am not a fan. I really can’t purchase that until after the new release as we want to do that day at the end of the trip.

We miss the old Disney

Your problem is three-fold:

1. A 3-day ticket will only be valid for part of your trip. That probably won't change. If you want a ticket that's going to cover all of your dates, you will need a 4-day ticket. So from that perspective, you have to buy a 4-day hopper eventually. And that sucks.
2. You're worried that prices will go up. It could be just the base ticket price that increases, or the cost of hopping goes up or both. Let's face it, prices never go down and that favors purchasing sooner instead of later. The G+ pricing is a different animal. It's my belief that the price will go up and dynamic pricing will be a part of that price increase. Your tickets start on NYE, which is one of the busiest days at the parks. I would expect G+ to sell out and it will be at a higher price. This favors buying before the June 8 deadline.
3. Getting a 1-day ticket for a day in Jan. 2023 for your husband is not possible at this time. There is nothing that you can do about it right now. The bigger problem will be that everyone else will have G+ already on their ticket if you buy those soon and he will not. I don't think that G+ will be completely gone in 2023. I think Disney is taking the pause in advance sales to do a reset to control how many G+ are available each day. Too much time is being spent by GS CMs dealing with customers who are upset about what they thought they were getting and what they actually got. But since you cannot buy a 1-day ticket for a date in 2023 right now, there's nothing that you can do about that one except wait it out.

I hear you about wanting the old Disney back! Between a park reservation system that requires the purchase of a park ticket before you can make the reservation and the lack of 2023 tickets for purchase, it makes advance planning (like we DVC owners tend to do) extremely frustrating.

ETA: If your husband's one day at DHS is a day that you will likely not use G+ for yourself, you could just make G+ reservations for you and the kids and then pass your MB off to your husband to use the LL for those thrill rides you have G+ for.

 

[Madame]

Your problem is three-fold:

1. A 3-day ticket will only be valid for part of your trip. That probably won't change. If you want a ticket that's going to cover all of your dates, you will need a 4-day ticket. So from that perspective, you have to buy a 4-day hopper eventually. And that sucks.
2. You're worried that prices will go up. It could be just the base ticket price that increases, or the cost of hopping goes up or both. Let's face it, prices never go down and that favors purchasing sooner instead of later. The G+ pricing is a different animal. It's my belief that the price will go up and dynamic pricing will be a part of that price increase. Your tickets start on NYE, which is one of the busiest days at the parks. I would expect G+ to sell out and it will be at a higher price. This favors buying before the June 8 deadline.
3. Getting a 1-day ticket for a day in Jan. 2023 for your husband is not possible at this time. There is nothing that you can do about it right now. The bigger problem will be that everyone else will have G+ already on their ticket if you buy those soon and he will not. I don't think that G+ will be completely gone in 2023. I think Disney is taking the pause in advance sales to do a reset to control how many G+ are available each day. Too much time is being spent by GS CMs dealing with customers who are upset about what they thought they were getting and what they actually got. But since you cannot buy a 1-day ticket for a date in 2023 right now, there's nothing that you can do about that one except wait it out.

I hear you about wanting the old Disney back! Between a park reservation system that requires the purchase of a park ticket before you can make the reservation and the lack of 2023 tickets for purchase, it makes advance planning (like we DVC owners tend to do) extremely frustrating.

ETA: If your husband's one day at DHS is a day that you will likely not use G+ for yourself, you could just make G+ reservations for you and the kids and then pass your MB off to your husband to use the LL for those thrill rides you have G+ for.

Thx Marionette! I appreciate you laying it all out like that & definitely think buying now is the right choice for us.

We’ll deal with DH’s possible 1 day ticket in June, if at all. That’s a great idea for ToT & RnR too!! I had totally forgotten about that; it’s been do long since we’ve done that with FPs.

 

[Ricguz]

Unless they significantly cap Genie+, I can see this leading to even more guest dissatisfaction. If you add Genie+ when you book your trip, it kind of becomes part of your package and it's easy to forget about the cost. If you're adding it on the same day you visit the parks and it's a disaster, you're going to be very unhappy that you paid for the service just a few hours before.

Exactly, we have a trip planned for Dec 2022 and I just added Genie+ for that reason before the June deadline. If we are spending 10K on a trip I don’t want to be disappointed if Genie+ is blackout. Disney wins again.

 

[daisylovesdisney]

We haven’t been to WDW in 12 years (have been doing Europe) and so we have a lot of new rides and experiences to do. (and yes Disney is VERY expensive). We’re getting older. We loved to do ADRs and plan out our days. Now big conflict because unlike many of the regulars on here, we haven’t seen anything there in 12 years. So all the new rides and experiences are very important but we feel like as a result we are gong to have to skip all the normal ADRs we would make. Anyway just a different perspective because we’re not regulars anymore so big conflict with ILL/Genie+ vs ADRs.

We always plan a daily adr if not two, but will likely skip most of them this time around. Seems to hard to plan when we won't know our ILL and Genie+ times till the day of, and also have several new things we don't want to miss. I would really like to try for the Space 220 lounge adr though, would just be a drink and appetizer or dessert so hopefully wouldn't take super long.

 

[Ricguz]

Dreams Unlimited Travel of course ! Let the experts figure it out for free.

That’s what I did yesterday. I had them add it on my already scheduled trip in Dec 2022. Al it took was a text!

 

[meremac]

I was surprised at Cedar Point $85 ticket price mentioned earlier so looked it up. It’s $85 for a ticket that includes parking and food all day. Normal ticket starts at $45. Passes run $99-230 and include the ability to buy tickets for 6 guests a day who will get to share the passholder’s perks like early access, parking, discounts and even the skip the line aspect on platinum pass.

That's just for admission though. If you add FastLane Plus, it's much more than that. For a random weekday in June, a family of four can expect to pay over $760 for admission and FastLane (not including parking or food). At peak times, it's easily over $880.

 

[Jrb1979]

That's just for admission though. If you add FastLane Plus, it's much more than that. For a random weekday in June, a family of four can expect to pay over $760 for admission and FastLane (not including parking or food). At peak times, it's easily over $880.

Much cheaper to buy a gold pass.

 

[meremac]

Much cheaper to buy a gold pass.

I agree that's cheaper if you'll be visiting multiple times, but you still don't get FastLane access with that. Theme parks are just expensive IMO, all the way around.

 

[NavyDad]

My family has only stayed at Deluxe resorts. Last time was just before the pandemic. We’d planned to come back for my 50th which coincided with WDW 50th (same day) but then all these changes started happening…

Yeah, we have no plans to go back. Will probably go to Universal next time we are in Florida. I LOVE planning Disney trips. Seriously love it - I design shirts, I design a planner/scrapbook, the whole nine yards. I could do that with FP+ because I could PLAN. With Genie+ I could only partially plan - because I couldn’t pre-order ILL and that was already enough to make me not want to go - because who wants to be stressed out EVERY MORNING wondering if you’ll get the rides you want at the times you need to go with the meals you’ve already booked at all the most expensive restaurants? Not me! Now having to even purchase Genie+ itself at MIDNIGHT?! Yeah, forget that.

And blah, blah, blah, I’m sure there are ten people who will take my place. Good luck to them. They’re gonna need it.

We were at WDW in April at the tail end of Spring Break. Very high crowd days.

I loved the FP+ system in the past. I had become very comfortable with how that system worked and I loved having the ability to lock in my Fast passes ahead of time and make a plan to RD the rides we couldn't get FP's for because of tiers or whatever. I went into this last trip highly skeptical of Genie Plus partly because I had to pay for it but mostly because I was nervous about not getting what I wanted, when I wanted.

Well, I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy and stress free Genie plus and ILL were to use this trip. We got every ride we wanted at the times we wanted (not just our first three). When we booked our ILL rides each morning we could pick the exact 1 hour window we wanted and the Genie Plus rides it was pretty easy to cancel and grab a different time if we needed to do that. I am a major planner too. I usually have our entire day pre-planned on a spreadsheet every day. I was a bit nervous coming into this trip but just kept my expectations low and honestly it worked out to be the least stress of any of our trips the last 10 years.

I'm not trying to change your mind. It's your money and it's a lot of money so you should be free to spend it on what you want to spend it on. I'm letting the other people who are on the ledge know that they don't need to be stressed about fitting in Genie plus and ILL around ADR's because in our experience it was actually easier to do than FP+

 

[NavyDad]

We haven’t been to WDW in 12 years (have been doing Europe) and so we have a lot of new rides and experiences to do. (and yes Disney is VERY expensive). We’re getting older. We loved to do ADRs and plan out our days. Now big conflict because unlike many of the regulars on here, we haven’t seen anything there in 12 years. So all the new rides and experiences are very important but we feel like as a result we are gong to have to skip all the normal ADRs we would make. Anyway just a different perspective because we’re not regulars anymore so big conflict with ILL/Genie+ vs ADRs.

There is no reason to skip you ADR's if you can get them.

I feel like I'm repeating myself a bit but my wife and I were at WDW last month during high crowd times. We paid for Genie Plus each day and one ILL ride each day and had no problems doing every single ride we wanted to do when we wanted to do it. We had a pretty busy schedule, hopping from one park to another each day and also following my daughter and her friends around to different events they had at certain times.

I got up each morning at 7 AM, booked our ILL ride for the hour window I wanted and then booked my first Genie Plus ride usually for around 10AM. We were able to keep booking new rides throughout the day and averaged 6-8 Genie Plus rides per day. We had zero problems arraigning these around our busy schedule. A couple of times we needed to move things we just cancelled and then re-booked for later in the day. No problem at all.

if you have not been there in 12 years the biggest thing you need to do is make yourself comfortable with the My Disney Experience App. Make a list of the attractions you want to do. Watch youtube videos about how best to use Genie Plus (we like Molly's videos the best) and be prepared. I expected to be on my phone a lot but really spent about 5 minutes on it every 1-2 hours.

 

[TheBigErn]

Gives them a good excuse for a price increase.

They don't need an excuse to jack up the price....of anything.....again.

 

[Pinnochio]

I was going to start a 3 day hopper on Jan 1 to give us flexibility on which park days we wanted. Now of course, I feel boxed in. The 3 day hopper started Dec 31 will only be valid through Jan 4. We might want to go to a park on our last day. I really hate how inflexible Disney has become

 

[Pinnochio]

I was going to start a 3 day hopper on Jan 1 to give us flexibility on which park days we wanted. Now of course, I feel boxed in. The 3 day hopper started Dec 31 will only be valid through Jan 4. We might want to go to a park on our last day. I really hate how inflexible Disney has become


Why not start the tickets on Jan 1?....that way you'll move the end date back.....

 

[Frozen2014]

We were at WDW in April at the tail end of Spring Break. Very high crowd days.

I loved the FP+ system in the past. I had become very comfortable with how that system worked and I loved having the ability to lock in my Fast passes ahead of time and make a plan to RD the rides we couldn't get FP's for because of tiers or whatever. I went into this last trip highly skeptical of Genie Plus partly because I had to pay for it but mostly because I was nervous about not getting what I wanted, when I wanted.

Well, I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy and stress free Genie plus and ILL were to use this trip. We got every ride we wanted at the times we wanted (not just our first three). When we booked our ILL rides each morning we could pick the exact 1 hour window we wanted and the Genie Plus rides it was pretty easy to cancel and grab a different time if we needed to do that. I am a major planner too. I usually have our entire day pre-planned on a spreadsheet every day. I was a bit nervous coming into this trip but just kept my expectations low and honestly it worked out to be the least stress of any of our trips the last 10 years.

I'm not trying to change your mind. It's your money and it's a lot of money so you should be free to spend it on what you want to spend it on. I'm letting the other people who are on the ledge know that they don't need to be stressed about fitting in Genie plus and ILL around ADR's because in our experience it was actually easier to do than FP+

This is really helpful feedback as I feel the same as your first paragraph about liking the prior way with having 3 FP+ booked ahead of time (made it easier to plan ADRs as well). And like you...I have a spreadsheet with different tabs...also a major pre-planner. For our last trip, DH would joke "when in that schedule can I pee?" ...lol

We bit the bullet and added Genie+ to our trip for August. Am a bit worried too so good to hear your feedback. We did use Max Pass at Disneyland a few years ago so have a bit of an idea. One thing I'm not thrilled with is being tied to my phone...but guess we would anyways now with just checking wait times.

I started watching the Disney app to get an idea of the times and have noted the hard to get rides and suggested order (which so far seems very true to what is documented). My biggest worry...or what seems overwhelming...is the rules of when you can book your next one...and stacking. Did you find that hard to keep track of when you an book next, and what time you have booked for things?

As for ADRs, we are sticking to just 2...and one is on departure day when we aren't going to a park. It just seems stressful to try and coordinate (and nothing is standing out as a must aside from the our planned two...plus some of our budget went to Genie+...but we're ok with quick service)

 

[Madame]

I’m trying to get the old price & Genie added. Jan 1 tickets aren’t available until after the coming changes.

I haven’t the faintest why the quote/reply isn’t working.