Summary
Highly Suspect Headlines (Some of the headlines below are LIES!)
Two Years After Splash Mountain Replacement Announced, Disney Promises More Info Next Week
- Princess Tiana is based on the real life person, Leah Chase: https://www.oprah.com/entertainment/the-woman-behind-the-princess-and-the-frogs-tiana/all
Disney World planning to give space mountain a Light-year retheme
- Rumors are actually about Disneyland
- Started with silhouettes of space mountain in promo materials
- Now stickers have been seen at Disneyland space mountain
Disney’s $110,000 Trip to All Disney Parks Around the World SOLD OUT Before Going On-Sale to General Public
2022 Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party Dates and Prices Released with $100 price increase
- On 24 select nights, November 8 through December 22, 2022
- “Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmastime Parade”
- Cookies and Cocoa
- As an exclusive treat for event attendees, Space Mountain, Tomorrowland Speedway, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, and Mad Tea Party will all receive a special holiday makeover. (lighting and music)
- Ticket prices will range from $149 to $199
Genie+ and Lightning Lanes while Park hopping
Touringplans Priority Lists
DisneyTouristBlog Priority Lists
Check out our webpage for audio transcript!
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Email: easydizitpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcription
Genie+ Park Hopping
Genie+ Park Hopping
Justin: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back. We’re gonna talk about lightning lanes and how to get them, whether it’s genie plus, or individual lightning lane selections. We’re gonna talk about how to get ’em when to get ’em why to get ’em specifically, or around the topic of park hopping.
Autumn: Yes.
And how to make them less confusing. Because, because you just named like three separate things that are new. Yes. It’s confusing. And it’s
Justin: confusing. So there’s a couple things I wanna say up front, because I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. Number this is confusing. Yeah. If you’re looking at this and you’re confused and you’re feeling bad about that, please don’t this is confusing.
yeah, you should be confused if you look at this and understand it immediately, maybe you’re like a professional board game player or something, and you have like an intuitive understanding of rule sets. Yes. But no, this is confusing. This is confusing and that’s okay. Having said that giving yourself permission to be confused and you don’t have to do this.
Okay. There, you don’t need genie. Plus you don’t need lightning lanes. You can have a fun day at the parks without them. Right. Okay. [00:01:00] If you’re looking to maximize your time out of lines and you really wanna squeeze in as much as you can. Okay.
Lightning lanes are a tool, to use, but you do not need them. If this is just stressing you out, then you know what don’t do it. It’s okay. It’s.
Autumn: Don’t do it, but definitely stick with us and see, hopefully Justin and I do a decent job so that we demystify it and it, it feels a little more comfortable.
Justin: Okay. In the same spirit that I said at the beginning, giving people permission to be confused by this. I’m giving us permission to not explain this well. Oh, absolutely. because it is once again, confusing, we’re gonna do our best, but I think we should continue to do this. And maybe this summer, we’re gonna do a, a bit of Genie plus.
So stay tuned. If we didn’t explain this well this time, maybe we’ll explain it better. Next time.
Autumn: Take 126. No, we decided that it’s gonna be the summer of the genie. Yes. So definitely stay tuned. Because there are, there have been updates and changes even since it came out in terms of how to use it.
Yeah, sure. And, and I think that will continue to [00:02:00] happen cuz it’s, it’s new, it’s new to Disney. So,
Justin: and in doing this and sure I’m gonna make some mistakes. We’ll be relying heavily on Easy Diz-bot to help out with this. He’ll be doing a lot of lifting.
Autumn: Thanks Easy Diz-bot. I appreciate you.
Justin: Yeah. I wish you didn’t grumble so much, but anyway.
Okay. So autumn, I think a good way to do this is gonna be questions like, yeah, you you’ve got some questions for me about genie plus I have
Autumn: a lot of questions because I, myself am still confused. And my husband sitting across from me right now is like a dis nerd mm-hmm and a travel planner and gets it and I still don’t get it.
So I came up with some questions, actually over breakfast. It was nice, Justin and I went out to eat together and I came up with some questions that came to mind for me.
And the questions that I was thinking of specifically were around utilizing genie plus and lightning lanes when you are park hopping mm-hmm because I was keeping in mind our next trip in August that Justin and I are gonna go to Disney where we are going to attempt the four park challenge. Yeah.
Justin: We’ll be doing a lot of hopping.
Autumn: Yes. Yes. So this, these [00:03:00] questions aren’t specific to needing to do all four parks in one day, but just even if you hopped to two parks. Yeah. And so. Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got about seven questions and there might be more of that surface.
Justin: all right, let’s go.
Autumn: So my, my first question, which is a question I ask often is like, what is park hopping and why might you wanna do it?
Like, what are the, all the benefits and considerations? Like, I know it’s a thing you can do. I have never done it before. Yeah. I mean, I have a very vague sense. I could spit off one or two reasons, but that’s not based in any sort of information.
Justin: right. So why would you park
Autumn: hop? Why would you park hop? What is it?
Let’s not make assumptions. What is park hopping? What does that mean? And why? What are the different considerations for doing it? All right. So
Justin: let’s talk about park hopping in terms of the current, like what the context right now is you need to make park reservations. Right. Mm-hmm if I want to go on July 10th, I need to have a reservation for a park on July 10th.
And that’s the park I [00:04:00] can go to. Yes. In the past you were able to park hop. It basically means you go from one park to the other, one of the four parks, whatever park you want whenever you want. Right now, it means after 2:00 PM you can switch to a different park, right? You still have to go to the park that you, you picked for reservation, say it’s animal kingdom.
And the thing is you have to go to animal kingdom. you can’t wait until after 2:00 PM and say, I’m going to magic kingdom. You literally have to go to animal kingdom first. Yes. Walk in the turn styles, walk back out of the turns styles and then go to magic kingdom. Mm. So it’s not a workaround for the park pass availability.
Right. But it does give you flexibility with that. So that’s a good reason why right there. Yeah. So you wanna go on July 10th, right? And you just wanna go to the magic kingdom. That’s what you want. Yes, but it’s busy and it there’s no longer park pass availability for magic kingdom, but there is for animal kingdom.
okay. You can get a park hopper ticket, go to animal kingdom after 2:00 PM. You can go to magic kingdom.
Autumn: Mm that’s the workaround. Yeah. Okay. It’s a
Justin: bit of a, it’s an [00:05:00] expensive workaround, but it is a workaround. Yeah, it is. What is the cost of a park copper? Well, it, it depends on the the ticket price. I mean, it depends on how many days you’re going, but for a one day I can give that example because I’ve looked at this recently.
It can double the price. Mm. So I think we paid $220 for a single day. Park hopper for you.
Autumn: Right. So that’s been a change. So if you’re someone that’s listening and maybe it’s been 20 years since you’ve been to Disney, this happens it used to be basically with park hopping. You’d buy this hopper pass and you go to go to any of the four parks at any time.
Didn’t matter. Yeah. Now, if you want to park hop, you have to make a reservation for one specific park. Yes. And you can’t use the park hopper. I wanna make sure I have this correct. You can’t hop until.
Justin: 2:00 PM. Exactly correct. Exactly. Correct. Okay. Another reason you might wanna park hop. I think this is like a classic reason for park hopping is the dining options are Epcot are really good.
Autumn: Ah, oh, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I think that’s an excellent point. Epcot is gone to throughout the day for meals or for [00:06:00] meals and yeah. Nice joints. Yes. to visit different countries. Yeah. Take over more relaxing break and then maybe go. To another park, you know? Yeah.
Justin: It’s very popular to hop to Epcot for dinner, you know, and catch the fireworks, especially I think if you’re staying at one of those Epcot resorts, boardwalk beach club, yacht club, or the Swan and dolphin back there.
Yes. That’s, you know, finishing up the day, whatever park you go to. With dinner and Epcot is a pretty, yeah, it’s appealing to me for sure. Yeah. No
Autumn: it’s and that’s the park with the best food park wise. Yeah. I mean, other than that, there’s excellent food in Disney, but most of that’s at the resorts, not in the
Justin: parks.
Yeah. I would say it definitely has. I mean, just by the numbers, it has the greatest number of sit down restaurants. Yes. You know? Yeah. By a good chunk. And those are rated generally better than other park. You know, there’s some gems and some avoiding spots, but sure. That’s another. All
Autumn: right. So, so far two reasons you might wanna park hop one would be food, right?
Mm-hmm to go to a certain [00:07:00] park, like EPCOT mainly mm-hmm for the food. The other reason would be to get into a park that maybe you weren’t able to get a reservation for. Yeah. But the park copper allows space for that. Yeah. Okay.
Justin: And then there’s a third reason and I wanna, yeah. I want our money conscious listeners out there to be, to listen to this one.
So there is. A sense of utility, right? There’s a sense of freedom that comes along with like having park hopping. Like I can do whatever I want. Yes. And that’s cool. And I think they’re charging for that feeling, but you should definitely measure that against what will I actually do? Yes. Right. So if you have plans to hit Epcot for dinner, like three out of the five nights, you’re going, that’s something you really wanna do.
That’s a value for. Park hopping. It makes more sense. Mm-hmm but if you just want to be, feel like, Hmm. If I’m in magic kingdom and I just want to go to animal kingdom. Yeah. That freedom that’s that of choice. That’s cool. But if you, you might not actually use it. Yeah. And you might use it so little that it’s not worth it.[00:08:00]
Right. And I’ve definitely found myself in that position in the past.
Autumn: Right. I think a, a good indicator would be to really think about what are the things you might wanna do in other parks. Mm-hmm . Is that value, Justin and I talked a lot about values. Is that value in and likelihood outweigh the cost of yeah.
The park
Justin: hopper. Yeah. I mean, you could just go to magic kingdom the next day. Right. You know? Right. Exactly. But if you say maybe, maybe the case is that you wanna ride flight of passage and that’s the only thing you wanna do in animal kingdom. Right. You hate animals. You don’t care about trees, right?
The smell of barbecue nauseas you dinosaurs frighten. You, you don’t wanna be an animal kingdom, but you need to ride flight of passage. Okay. Then maybe consider a park hopper. Right also consider going to Disney world. you’re gonna run into barbecue and dinosaurs in other places.
Autumn: That’s hilarious.
That’s good. Okay. Any other considerations for park hopping
Justin: probably, but I think that’s good. Those are three good considerations. Yeah. Please write in if you got [00:09:00] any other considerations for park hopping, maybe if you’re a park hopping fan
easydizitpodcast@gmail.com or @ easydizit on Instagram. .
Autumn: Yeah. Awesome. All right. So, okay. So this ne leads me to the next question, which is as I mentioned earlier, genie plus lightning lanes, all of this is new lingo. Mm-hmm new process for Disney. Can you like, are they the same system? Are they different systems?
It’s confusing. It is because I see both words used interchangeably sometimes. Yeah. And I’m sure
Justin: I’ve done that myself.
Autumn: But also they’re different thing. You have to they’re systems that you use, you interact with them differently to obtain. Your ride selections. Yeah.
Justin: Okay. I’ll give you my best. You talk about how they’re different.
I’ll give you my best. I’ll let me give you a breakdown of this, the system as best I can. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. So there are now two lines for Disney attractions. Okay. There’s your standby line. Yep. This is what we’re familiar with with you stand in the line [00:10:00] and then you ride the ride after a period of time.
Mm-hmm standby and it’s, it’s a longer. Right. And then there’s a lightning lane, which is super fast it’s which actually that varies how fast the lightning lane is. Yeah. But it should be substantially quicker than a standby lane. So which one would you like to take to, to ride autumn standby or lightning lane?
Let’s go with the lightning lane. Right, right. I’d like to wait in line less, right? Yes. Well, to get in that lightning lane, you’re going to have to pay for it. Mm-hmm for, for. I mean, that’s not entirely true. There are other ways to get into the lightning lane for the purpose of this discussion. There’s two paid ways to get into the lightning lane.
Okay. There are 40 plus attractions across the world, the Disney world, where that fall into this genie plus category, where if you pay the $15 for genie, plus you can pick one of those lightning lanes, one at a time
Autumn: okay.
Justin: Yeah, that’ll get you into it for the super headliner rides.
Those aren’t available in genie, plus they’re not [00:11:00] in the genie plus bucket. Oh, they are what? Disney calls? Individual lightning lane selections. I like. Can I go ahead. I’m
Autumn: gonna pause you. Okay. Cause I think this is a moment of clarity. Mm-hmm so there’s old school. We know standby lanes. You literally walk up to a ride at any point mm-hmm and you just wait in line, just wait.
In that
Justin: line. Lightning lane,
Autumn: lightning lane, you pay extra money. Mm-hmm to get in a queue where when your time is up, you go. Right. You it’s faster. Yeah. It’s faster. Yeah. You
Justin: move, there’s a lane and, and you, there’s two ways to get in that lane. There’s the genie plus system. Yeah. And there’s individual lightning lanes.
Yes.
Autumn: So, but in order to get a genie plus ride, right. Mm-hmm cause somes rides are genie plus mm-hmm and individual lightning lanes are differentiated rides. You have to purchase genie plus. Exactly. So you need genie plus to. to have the availability of the lightning lane yes. To
Justin: purchase, to make those lightning.
Reservations reservations.
Autumn: You don’t lightning lane. You don’t, it’s not a separate [00:12:00] purchase in addition to the genie plus only individual lightning lane. that’s great.
Justin: What you said is correct, but the sentence itself is incredibly confusing. Yes. And that’s not your fault. That’s, you know, the people who chose this verbiage, but yes, exactly.
Those are two separate things. Okay.
Autumn: Yeah. So if you want access to a lightning lane, which is a, a quicker line yeah. You have to purchase genie plus.
Justin: Mm, that is not entirely accurate. There are two ways to get in the lightning lane. One of them is with genie plus. Okay. The other is on certain rides. You have to buy them separately.
You don’t need genie. Plus to get those separate rides, right? Let’s call them fancy rides. This is what all ears.net uses fancy rides, fancy rides. Okay. There are fancy rides and there are genie plus rides. The fancy rides you have to buy separately. You do not need genie plus to buy them the genie plus rides, you pay $15 for the whole package.
For access to the whole package. Okay. Only one at a time. And you have to use the app to make the [00:13:00] reservation, but you pay $15 for that whole package of genie. Plus the other option, the fancy rides or individual lightning lane selections, you have to pay per ride. Right.
Autumn: Got it. Okay. So I, I think I’m a visual person.
Mm-hmm if you were to draw. a tree, just draw a basic triangle. Mm-hmm right. I’m seeing at the top of this tree would be genie plus, and then like the first arm down will be lightning lane. Like you need genie plus to get you to,
Justin: no, you do not need genie plus to get you to a lightning lane. there’s you can use gen that’s plus one way.
Okay. That’s what I’m
Autumn: saying. So there is another branch. That’s why I’m saying a triangle. Cause I’m a visual person. Okay. So draw triangle. Imagine a triangle genie. Plus at the top of one branch you have going down. Lightning lane. So one way to, to get, be eligible for lightning lane is to purchase genie plus.
Sure. Okay. The other way is independent right. Of genie plus. Yes. Which is you pay like say [00:14:00] $15 to just get right on a ride. Yes. That’s an individual
Justin: lightning lane. Yes. But I think what’s important to note here is these are separate buckets of rides. There’s a genie plus bucket, which is huge. And then there’s individual lightning.
Bucket, which is small, smaller, and you’re just buying one bucket at a time.
Autumn: got it. Yeah. Okay. No, but this is, this is basically, this is the two categories I’m seeing is purchase gen plus to get the, the wider variety of lightning lane rides. Yes. If you want a faster. Yeah. And then the other opportunity is to just purchase.
Individual lightning lanes, which you do not need genie plus four that’s right.
Justin: That’s it. And, but it just keeping in mind that those are separate rides. Like you can’t choose like an example of a genie plus ride is haunted mansion. Right? You cannot choose to just buy haunted mansion. You have to buy that bucket.
Right. You have to buy the whole genie plus bucket. Right. And then for example, a individual lightning lane selection is flight of passage in animal kingdom. That is. Included in genie, plus you have to purchase [00:15:00] that separately. So you could to, to do both, you need to pay for both. You need to both buy genie plus, right.
And that will get you on haunted mansion. Right. And now if you also wanna ride flight, a passage lightning lane, right. I should say then that would, that’s gonna cost you, you know, 12, $14.
Autumn: So, so what’s interesting here is then what Justin’s also pointing out is there’s not you can’t necess. you, you might have to interface with both systems really?
Because yeah. Certain ride. Are are cued for yeah. Either the genie plus the lightning lane through having genie plus, right. Or, or the individual lightning lane. Yes. There might be a ride that you really wanna ride. That’s an individual lightning lane, even though you have genie plus and plan to use the lightning lane.
You know what I mean? Like you’ve purchased the genie plus and then find out, oh, wait, this is a bummer. I wanna ride flight a
Justin: passage. Well, hopefully you won’t do that. Cuz you heard this podcast and you’re like, now you’re prepared, but
Autumn: now you, but that’s the, but I just wanna
Justin: just, I would be very mad if I paid $15 thinking that was gonna get me lightning lane access to every ride.
And then I realized I had to pay another $15 to get on rise of the resistance. [00:16:00] Yes, I would be very mad that’s okay.
Autumn: So, so listeners. Understand. There’s two buckets. This might also be a good visual one bucket is genie plus, which gets you access to the rides that are eligible for lightning lane, which is just quicker access for genie plus lightning lane for genie plus lightning lane.
Yep. Separate. This is a separate bucket. Imagine a separate bucket, or if you have a paper and you fold it in half on the other side, You have what’s called individual lightning lane or fancy rides or fancy rides. And you have to, you have like the rides that are chosen for that to ride them. You would you’d have to pay a separate or additional if you’ve already purchased uni plus amount for that ride.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Justin: So I do wanna clarify one thing sorry. We got interrupted by our neighbor mowing the lawn suburbs, you know? All right. So the, the you talked about like two different systems.
So when we access this though, like it’s all gonna be in the same app. It’s all in the, my Disney experience app. There’s, what’s called a tip board, right. And a tip board is gonna, it’s gonna list down all the rides. That [00:17:00] are available. It’s gonna tell you the standby line and it’s how long the standby is.
And it’s also gonna tell you if there is a lightning lane available, and if you click on the lightning lane button, it will, that’s how you’re gonna purchase it or make the reservation. Okay. If you already purchase genie, plus you can just click on that. The ones that say Disney it’s what is it? It’s L L Disney genie plus.
Like they’re really, they really wanna clarify with you. This is a Disney product, so we have to put it on every button possible. So if you have genie plus purchased and you want to ride barnstormer, you’re gonna click on LL Disney genie plus, and you can make a reservation there. Some rides. Like like flight a passage in animal kingdom.
It’s going to say LL individual lightning lane , which I think stands for lightning lane, individual lightning lane. thanks, Disney.
Autumn: Yeah. no, I like that. You mentioned that it’s all encompassed in this app. Yeah. So if you’re going to Disney, get this Disney, my experience app. You can have everything in there.
Yeah. We’ll hold your reservations for [00:18:00] dining. It will hold like
Justin: you can put, and you can take a look at this ahead of time too. Yeah. You can look at this tip board. You could go right now and look at, and I encourage you to look at the tip board.
Autumn: Sure.
So now I question, or if I’m a listener, I’m wondering, so what happened to the good old standby? You’re still there. They’re still there. So they’re still there. Okay. So that’s, , that’s the question. So there are still good old standby lanes. Absolutely. You’re free. You can stand to them, which you can just, you can just stand in them and wait without having to purchase genie plus or an individual lightning.
Yeah. That’s the easiest
Justin: way to dizit.
Autumn: You could just write, you could just, not, if you were like none of this appeals to me and you don’t mind waiting. Yeah. And, and this is really good to, it’s still an option, I guess. I wanna just point
Justin: yeah. Still an option and definitely go ahead and make a. You know, and do the early morning, still do your rope drop and do your evening touring, skip the middle of the day and, and prioritize the rides you want to ride that are gonna have the longest rides for the beginning of the
Autumn: day.
Right. And that solidly rope drop. I think that’s something Justin and I, yeah. Either way we’re gonna rope drop. We’re gonna rope drop. Yeah. But in particular, yeah, if you don’t, you can, if you really [00:19:00] are rope dropping I think even magic kingdom, there’s two to three rides. You can the first two to three rides.
If you rope drop, you can pretty much walk on depending on how fast you walk solidly too. I think
Justin: depends. Yeah. It depends if you’re onsite or off and which rides those are, but yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Get another question
Autumn: for me. So thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you for Glen writing. So as we are learning and understanding genie plus better, the other thought that I had was if you’re park hopping, right?
Because there are different rides with either regular lightning lane or individual lightning lane selections. Do you have to purchase genie plus? like per park, like if I’m in magic kingdom and then I wanna park hop to animal kingdom, do I then have to purchase another genie plus
Justin: for animal kingdom? No.
No, you just have to purchase it once and that’s good across the world. Ah, for genie plus now, like we said before, lightning lanes are in individual buckets and you’re paying per ride anyway. Mm-hmm so so yeah, but genie plus that gets you the 40 plus attractions throughout the entire Disney. [00:20:00]
Autumn: nice.
Okay. So if you’re park hopping, no. You just buy the genie plus. Yeah. If you’re interested in it once and, and that’s,
Justin: that’s it. And I think that’s an appeal for a lot of people who are, who are considering park hopping, you know, like you can kind of maximize your value because you’re opening yourself up to a lot of different opportunities.
Yes. To get these lightning lane reservations. Right. And how
Autumn: long does that cover? How long does purchasing genie plus the entire. It’s the, so each day. Yeah. So you’d
have
Justin: to, you have to purchase it in the, you have to purchase it each day. Yes. Right, right. Okay.
Autumn: Per person. Yeah.
Justin: Per person per it’s per person.
It’s 1596 per person. It’s we should say $16, not $15, cuz it’s much closer to 16 after tax. It is indeed. let’s make that a goal for on the podcast. When you talk about gen, plus we say $16,
Autumn: we say $16 per person per day. and you can go anywhere in the world for that day. And have if you have park hopper.
Yeah. If you have a park hopper. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. All very good. Very good. So then the next question that I’m thinking about is, okay, so I’ve [00:21:00] made the decision.
Mm-hmm , I’m getting genie plus. I might do a few treat myself, do a few individual lightning lanes. What I’ve purchased my park hopper mm-hmm are there certain parks that you would advise? Starting with or ending with, is there any method to the madness of which parks you hop and when you hop them? Yes.
Yeah.
Justin: Okay. So I’m at first, I’m gonna give you the easy, Easy Diz It answer, then I’m gonna give you the longwinded Justin Easy Diz It answer. Okay. Okay. So we can listen to the first one. And if you want to hit the plus 30 on your on your podcast app, you can just skip past the long windedness. So the easy is yeah.
Start at animal kingdom or Epcot where you’re not going to use lightning lanes start where you’re not going to use lightning lanes. Mm.
Autumn: So are you telling people most people aren’t gonna use lightning lanes in either of those parks?
Justin: Yeah. Animal kingdom and Epcot. I would start there and I would not book lightning lanes for those parks.
I’d experience through the standby queue. And why is that? As opposed to the other part now let’s get into the long winded. Let’s do it. [00:22:00]
Autumn: you know me, I like to talk.
Justin: All right. So. and we’ve talked about this in the past, but I’ll give shortly again, the way lightning lanes work. You book them.
This is for both the fancy rides and genie. Plus the a, a window opens up, the first window opens up, say eight to nine. And once that fills up, once reservation’s filled up, it moves to nine to 10 and that fills up and it moves to 10 to 11 mm-hmm and so on and so forth. So throughout the day the windows where you can get a lightning lane reservation moves up and up.
Right? Right. So the most popular ride. The rides where everyone wants to get a lightning lane reservation. Autumn, where do you, in terms of like availability, what do you think’s gonna happen there?
Autumn: Oh, well, people are gonna go to the rides, the
Justin: popular rides. Right? So those booking windows are gonna get pushed back furthest in the day.
Right. Right. If there’s like, call it boring ride number one. Yes. Right. And no one ever books, lightning lane for boring ride number one. Right. [00:23:00] So that’s gonna stay at. Eight or it’s gonna stay at the time all day long. You’ll always be able to get a lightning lane reservation cuz no one booked it. But if you think about boring ride number one, the standby queue, what do you think the standby queue for boring ride?
Number one is. Right. Also not large. It’s probably also walk on because no one is waiting in line for boring ride number one. Right? So the idea here is if you wanna maximize how much time you’re gonna save and ride, right. And rides, that’s actually gonna correlate with faster booking windows. Right. So now go to super exciting ride number one, right?
Mm-hmm Flight of passage. Well, no. Oh, let’s stick with genie plus for now. Okay. Let’s stick with genie plus for now, but no, it does apply. It does apply the same. Okay. But say let’s call this. This is basically slinky dog. Everyone wants to ride slinky dog, everybody. And the line is very long and everyone knows this.
So this book’s out very quick. So you could make a booking at 7 on the dot in 10 seconds for 8:00 PM at [00:24:00] night. Mm. It books out like that. Or you could just not get it at 7 0 1. Yeah. Not gonna, yeah, you could just not get it at seven. Oh.
So, but, but the point here of what I’m trying to say is that there is a correlation between how much time you’re gonna save in line, how popular a ride is and how fast the windows are gonna book out, how much later in the day those booking windows are gonna be. Right. So now you ask me the question, why wouldn’t you just go to animal kingdom and use your lightning lanes there?
What I’m gonna say to, to maximize the use of this system? Yeah. Is pick, you’re gonna be picking lightning lanes for later in the. Right. For those popular rides at the other park that you’re going to mm you’re. Because those are gonna be the ones that save you the time, because they’re booking out later in the day.
Right. And this is what people call the stacking strategy, where you’re going to book lightning lanes on purpose later for later in the day.
Autumn: That’s, you’re more likely to
Justin: get them. Not that you’re more likely to get them. Makes sense too. It’s that? They’re more valuable because they’re gonna save you more [00:25:00] time.
Getting a lightning lane for boring ride. Number one is gonna save you zero minutes in the. oh yeah. Getting a lightning lane for exciting ride. Number one is these are terrible names, but exciting ride. Number one is gonna save you two hours. Right? So it makes sense if you’re trying to save time to prioritize those more popular rides and in, so doing, you’re going to be booking out later in the day, right?
Autumn: got
Justin: it. Yeah. So if you can imagine, like, from a story point of view, the ideal situation is you go to animal kingdom. You’re at the animal kingdom, right? Say we went to animal kingdom first and we’re gonna be booking. What’s the second park. We’re going to magic kingdom or Hollywood studios. Hollywood studios. Okay. So we’re gonna be booking for Hollywood studios.
When can you, so you can make your first genie plus selection at 7:00 AM. Everyone can make their first genie. Right. That’s the selection of 40 rides, right selection at 7:00 AM. Say, you can make your next one because we’re stacking. [00:26:00] You’re gonna go for slinky dog. You’re gonna get a 7:00 PM reservation, right?
You can make your next one, 120 minutes after you made that first one or park opened. Mm that’s
Autumn: tough. It
Justin: is. So that’s tough. So say we make the reservation at seven park opens at. Or animal kingdoms opens at eight. We can make our next genie plus selection at 10. So
Autumn: I’m gonna be, that’s a long time though.
Yeah. That’s, it’s so hard. Like so many
Justin: things are set a timer especially because, I mean, if you’re gonna be, I mean, you don’t have to set a timer, but if you want be on it, you know? Yeah. You, you want to get your reservations in as soon as possible, because like we said, these are booking up throughout the day and the sooner you get it in the sooner you, you reset the timer for your next two hour slot, right.
In terms of stacking. So we are, you know, we, we go into animal kingdom, we ride a flight of passage. We ride Kilimanjaro safari. Maybe we even got on nav river journey. And now we’re we’re gonna get a little mid-afternoon [00:27:00] snack. It’s about 10:00 AM. Yeah. If the park opened at eight, now I’m gonna open up the app and I’m looking for the next Hollywood studios thing.
I can book. and I think we’ll get into, you’re probably gonna want to know like which ones to pick and we’ll get into that. But I should just say there that 120 minute rule is important when you’re stacking. Yeah. To understand that every two hours you can basically book another ride, right. For later on in the day.
And once again, you’re gonna be picking rides that purposefully aren’t available until later in the.
Autumn: right, right. So that’s key to know. Alright. So my next question is how many, like thinking of the time it takes to park hop, there’s traveling, there’s walking. There’s a lot of walking. Mm-hmm transportation.
How do you, how many ride selections per park is like a reasonable amount? Like, like a target do. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I guess it depends on if you’re right. Are you trying to do all four parks? Are you trying to do two parks? It depends three parks, but.
Justin: It, if you utilize the stacking strategy, [00:28:00] the way I recommend it, there’s no reason you can’t get four.
Right? Right. They might not be the four that you wanted, but there’s no reason you can’t get four or five or more. Right. Okay. What Disney’s saying? When you purchase this now is people typically get two or three. . Yeah. Right. And so they have to do that because they want to protect their, their whole, like, you know, under promise over deliver thing.
Right. But just, let’s just do the math. You do your first one at seven. Yeah. Park opens at, we’ll say it’s a later day. The park opens at nine, right? So you get your second one at 11, your third one at one. And your fourth one at three. And if you look at, and we’ll talk a little bit about later, maybe like how, you know, what rides will be available later in the day. Sure. By three o’clock, there are still lightning lanes is, is tower of terror going to be, still available at three? Probably not rock and roller coaster. Probably not. But alien swirling saucers, maybe. Right. You know, toy story mania maybe.
Right, right.
Autumn: And still lines at that time too. Were again standby.
Justin: right, right. Yeah. But this is like, if you wanna avoid standby. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you, there’s no [00:29:00] reason you can’t get four. There’s no reason you can get four, yeah,
Autumn: no, I think that’s good. Just to give people a ballpark number. Mm-hmm so there are so many rides and again, when you’re going with just not just one person, which I think is how most people go to Disneys in a group or with a family, there’s a lot of rides.
Do you have any suggestions for. Picking rides using genie plus like when you’re park hopping, like I wanna go to Hollywood studios and I wanna ride all nine of these rides, but okay. I’m probably not gonna be able to genie plus all nine of these rides. Like how would you yeah. What’s your
Justin: practice for?
Yeah. So I think the way to look at this is, and this applies to, if you’re not parking hopping, This sta because we’re stacking, right. We’re doing the stacking thing we’re talking about. Yep. You want to prioritize the rides that are most popular, the ones that fill up quickest and the ones that have the longest wait times, and there’s two different ways to do this.
Okay. There’s the easy, Easy Diz It way, and [00:30:00] this is just go to touringplans. Or disneytouristblog. These are the two websites I like for their priority list, cuz they’re largely data based. Okay. There’s a lot of lists on the internet and people with opinions and a lot of echo chambering in. Yeah.
But touring plans, they both and Disney, tourists blog, both show their work. Touring plans is going to use their own data, which is brought me back to math class. Yeah. Show your work, show your work. So touring plans, they collect data through. Sure, you know, their lines app and then Disney tourist blog does a pretty good job analyzing the data on thrill data.com.
So they’re both database decision making. And, but also with that, they’re bringing in, you know, anecdotal experience as well. It’s not strictly, you know, data based. I think they do a pretty good job. I don’t love the there’s some qualms, you know, that I have with you know, what variables they allow in their analysis.
Okay. in terms of like touringplans specifically they, they put guest satisfaction. They factor that in. No, and I don’t think guest satisfaction should really be a decision point because I think you should, you [00:31:00] should determine. For yourself and your family, which rides you wanna ride. Mm. You determine that.
And don’t let like a satisfaction score an aggregate satisfaction score, cuz that’s like that’s so well you do. How often does your family agree with the average? It’s not, you know, no, I, in terms of satisfaction, I wouldn’t use that. Sure. So yeah, you can just find a list on one of these websites and you can just pick the rides that you want from that list, using that priority list. They’ll give you a rundown. And most of them in Hollywood studios are gonna say slinky dog first. Right? Right. And then it’ll be either tower of terror and rock and roller coaster after that usually.
And, and those are great. And I think that’s the way to start, especially if you wanna do this. That is Easy Diz It right there. Right? Just they’ve done the work for you. They’ve crunched the numbers, use their list, pick the ones you want and go in that order. Get this one first, then that one, then this one, if you want something a little bit more custom, you can go to thrill-data.com yourself.
You know, I’ll link it in the show notes. Yeah. And on thrill data, you can find the projected wait times throughout the day. Right? So like, you’ll know what standby queue [00:32:00] looks like. And it’ll also tell you there are heat maps for availability. So that you can see when did this ride sell out of lightning lanes, right?
Or at 12 o’clock on average, what booking window is happening at 12 o’clock. Right. So you can do a little bit more in depth planning there. That’s cool. So yeah, in this case, the very custom case I’d make a. of my must dos, like have to do these mm-hmm and do those first. And if you don’t have enough of those, if you don’t have three or four of those, add in some really want to dos, right.
And then you, you organize this list based on the time savings, the average length of time, right. That the that the queue is gonna. And then you take that and cross reference it. Yeah. This is not easy. So you cross reference this with the, the list against availability. So, okay. Riding tower of terror is going to save me.
This is an example, a hundred minutes probably. And, and well, we’ll say that a tower of terror is a hundred minute line, [00:33:00] right? Cause that’s not necessarily how much time it’s gonna save you. Cuz lightning lanes aren’t instant. That’s a complicating factor. That touring plans actually does a pretty good job mitigating.
Sure. Cause they have, they have better data, but in our own custom version, we’ll just use standby cues a hundred minutes. Right. But when I need to make a booking window at 11:00 AM, will they even be available? That’s a question we need to ask when we’re doing this custom version. Right? So if you’re super nerdy, you probably figured this out already.
Or, or, or you heard me say that and you’re like, I’m in, I’m going to do this. It’s a lot more work. It’s a lot more fun for someone like me and that’s why I’m a travel planner. And that’s why I’ll do this for you. Actually I’ll get the list of rides from your. Right. Right. And I will give you a customized list of of ride selection order.
Right. And I will cross reference that against average availability of lightning lanes. Mm-hmm like, I will do my best to not tell you to pick ride number three. If I know that ride number three will not have windows when I want you to pick it. Right. [00:34:00] So, yeah, that’s, that’s a highly customized thing. You can totally do it.
I can totally do it for you, even if I’m not travel planning for you. If you wanna send me an email, easydizitpodcast@gmail.com, I can, I can help you through the process.
Autumn: that’s cool. I’m you know, I’m imagining as you’re talking again, cuz I’m, , I’m very visual, some kind of little infograph or, or, or flow chart maybe.
Justin: I’ve started a flow chart at least twice now. And, but Disney changes the rules every time I start a flow chart. So but yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s coming the flow chart’s coming. I think there’s two flow charts. I have how, whether you should pick genie plus whether you should purchase genie plus, and then the second flow chart would be how to, how to select the right.
Autumn: How to select it. The diff yeah. No, I think that would be just a visual that PE you can see. Cause I think when you see it, it’s like, oh, okay. Mm-hmm , it’s gonna be a. It’s gonna feel better. It will definitely feel better. So once
Justin: again, after hearing me ramble on about like that really custom way of developing a priority list, probably just go to touring plans and check out theirs.
I’ll link them in the show notes or [00:35:00] go to Disney, tourist, blogs, and check out theirs. I’ll link them in the show notes as well. Sure.
Autumn: All right. So one of my last questions is we’ve talked a lot about the differences benefit. Cons of staying onsite or offsite. Are there any what is the impact of staying onsite or offsite in regards to genie plus or individual lightning lanes?
Yeah.
Justin: So in regards to genie plus nothing, the genie plus bucket of 40 plus attractions. Yep. You can make that first selection at 7:00 AM, whether you’re onsite or offsite. Great. If you are onsite. In terms of those, those fancy rides, you know, your AKA
Autumn: individual lightning lanes, it
Justin: just kinda, or as Disney puts it in the app, lightning lane, individual lightning lanes.
Geez, Louis
That bothers Justin so much. Does Disney naming conventions kill me. We were playing a board game the other day based on hoki Pocus and the, all the, the back of every card. It was like Disney’s Hocus Pocus based on Disney’s Hocus [00:36:00] Pocus, the movie, the game. what Disney are you? How many times you need to put Disney on the back of this playing card?
It was hilarious. So yeah, for those, the question is, does onsite give you any benefits? And the answer is yes. For those fancy rides for those lightning lane, individual lightning lanes, it allows you to book those at 7:00 AM. Mm. Which for popular new rides, such as cosmic rewind. Right. Especially when it’s very busy, that’s gonna book up very quickly in minutes.
Sometimes, you know, the first day it booked up in three minutes,
Autumn: that’s like we booked.
Justin: And that that’s not just, you know, we won’t get into virtual queues today. That is the lightning lane, the fancy ride lightning lane that you have to pay
Autumn: mix like individual money for basically per ride. Yes.
Justin: Booked up.
So if you weren’t an onsite guest, you could not purchase a lightning lane for that ride. You could still do virtual queue, but you couldn’t purchase a lightning lane. . Wow. Yeah. And then in terms of flight of passage I’m actually not sure if [00:37:00] that’s actually booking up before park opens, but yeah, if you, if you’re offsite, if you’re not staying on site, then you have to wait until the park opens before you can book your first fancy, fancy
Autumn: ride.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So there is an impact if you’re considering at all interested in individual lightning lanes, which again is where you like $15 just to walk right on this ride is kinda nine
Justin: to 15.
Autumn: Yeah. Depending on, depending on the ride. So if you stay actually
Justin: 17 I think cosmic rewind opened at 17,
Autumn: so much money.
Yeah. But yeah. So the, so there’s that, there’s that? So, so if you’re on site you can book at 7:00 AM. Mm-hmm if you’re offsite, you can’t right. You have to
Justin: wait until the park, wait until the park opens for individual lightning lanes. So for individual, for fancy rides. Yeah.
Autumn: Okay. For fancy ride yep.
I love that for fancy ride. And then the other stipulation was what was the other one? You said? Nope, that’s it.
Justin: Okay.
Autumn: Next question. Okay. I thought there were two things That’s it. That’s all the questions. That’s the seven questions. That’s all
Justin: the questions you got. Yeah, that’s good. Cuz we are like over 40 minutes into this.
Yeah. So yeah, that’s [00:38:00] that’s all a lot of information. We, we talked more about genie, plus I feel like than park hopping with genie. Plus I think here are my key takeaways with park hopping with genie, plus you’re. You’re going to opt for the stacking. I would recommend opting for the stacking strategy.
On previous episodes, we talked about the stacking strategy versus the get as many lightning lanes as you can strategy, right? Where you go in and you wanna book a lightning lane because as soon as you Bing into your first lightning lane, you can book another one. right. So instead of waiting 120 minutes, you can just Bing lightning lanes all morning.
Right? And the reason that that doesn’t make a ton of sense in my point of view is because you’re not gonna save as much time in line. You’ll get more lightning lanes, but overall, you’re not gonna save as much time in line. And that equates to, well, if you’re, what do you, I mean, If you save time in line, you’re riding more rides.
You’re experiencing more, right. Unless you really love lines, which damn. Why are you doing genie, plus? Yeah, just enjoy the lines. This is, this is your place. this is your
Autumn: time. I [00:39:00] love that. No, I love that
Justin: cuz so that’s great. I would definitely recommend stacking, I think usually gonna recommend stacking, but especially if you’re park hopping.
Yeah. Because it gives you the opportunity to ride, to go to a park with better standby lines. Whilst preparing yourself for another park, with terrible standby lines, like Hollywood studios, right. Or a lot of good options, like magic kingdom. Right.
Autumn: Well, and because of the way that genie plus works, right.
It gives you a timeframe mm-hmm like, you don’t tell it, it tells you when you want yes. When you can ride the ride that if you’re park hopping. I think too, that’s that I think that has an impact and is helpful for planning. Like, okay. If I’m gonna be in magic kingdom, From two o’clock on. And I really wanna ride Peter Pan’s flight of patches, which is constantly a very long line.
It’s gonna help, you know, you know what I mean? Peter
Justin: Peter Pan’s flight of passage out is, is a really busy ride. Peter, Peter Pan’s flight. There’s no passage and Peter pan doesn’t go for a flight of passage. [00:40:00] Oh,
that’s avatar. Yeah. Oh, I did that. That would be a great ride though. They should skin . That would be cool. They should skin one ride with the other . That would be
Autumn: good. I said Peter Pan’s flight of passage. Mm-hmm that’s great. It’s just Peter Pan’s flight. That’s right. It does feel a little naked now though.
Well, I’m I feel like it’s a little flight flight flight. What flight fight where we’ll
Justin: fix this. Well, I’ll, I’ll talk to Disney and we’ll fix this. So some, some additional things that are spec, some genie plus things that are specific to park hopping that didn’t come up in your questions. Mm. You can tell Genie about your day. You’re gonna tell Genie about your day and what parks you’re going to be in. It’s kind of a complicated process.
It’s not easy to explain on a podcast. Yes. You know, there are, there are resources on YouTube to do this. Right. But what what’s important here is if we’re park hopping right. And say, I, if, if I try and book a lightning lane through genie plus or individual lightning lane selections for a park I’m not in, right?
Yeah. It will default it to at least 2:00 [00:41:00] PM. Right.
So let’s go back to our animal kingdom example. Okay. We’re waiting in line we’re rope dropping at 7:00 AM and we’re, we’re getting ready to get into the park.
I’m gonna make my first reservation on Hollywood studios. Yeah. And say it’s Mickey and mini’s runaway railway. Say we don’t wanna ride slinky dog. Right. The window for Mickey and mini will probably be like nine or 10. at that point. Right? Right. It’ll be pretty soon. Right. But because we don’t have a park reservation there, genie will automatically push it to 2:00 PM.
That makes
Autumn: sense. Cuz it’s got, if you’re try it’s it’s saying right. I mean, you can’t park up until two. So if you’re not in that park, it’s just gonna
Justin: bump you like, but that’s nice. It’ll give you the reservation at two. This is gonna be very helpful to us. That is nice.
What, and one thing I wish it would do, because you can tell genie, plus which hours you’re gonna be in each park. I wish I could say, oh, cause you know, especially now we’re doing the four park challenge. I wish it, it knows we’re not getting to Epcot until three 30. Right. But if I try and book an Epcot ride, it’ll still book it at two o’clock.
If I try and book like an [00:42:00] Epcot ride with availability at 9:00 AM, it’ll book it at two o’clock when we’re supposed to be at Hollywood studios. When we told Genie we were gonna be at Hollywood studios, but they don’t factor that in. Right.
Autumn: So for your first park hop,
there’s there’s hope to get a popular ride. Yes. Because it’s gonna at two
Justin: o’clock push it out. And, and, and another thing about the genie and individual lightning lanes, that’s different from fast pass is it lets you book multiple things within the same window. Hmm. So if we were to say we were to park, hop to magic kingdom at two o’clock, we could definitely have like three lightning lanes into two to three o’clock window, we could mess ourselves up a little bit like that.
I think in Hollywood studios, there’s less options by the time you, you make your 11 o’clock booking, it’s probably already gonna be past that two to three o’clock window. yeah, sure. But your first one will probably our first one, when we do our four park challenge will probably be in that two to three o’clock window.
Correct? If, if everything goes correctly, right? [00:43:00] Yeah. So , the consideration there that if you try and make a lightning lane reservation in a park, you’re not in I, before two o’clock before park hopping stop, it’s going to push it to two o’clock
Autumn: right. Yeah. And which, again, if it’s a popular ride, that’s actually probably bodes better.
Justin: Yeah. And I mean, it doesn’t hurt to have lightning lanes at the busiest part of the day two or three o’clock too, if you’re gonna be in
Autumn: the park too.
No, that is, that’s what I mean. Yeah. That works out. So you have like the, the first ride or two if it’s a pop, very popular ride in your park hopping doing that first park hop. That’s a good, yeah. Chances are very good there.
Justin: Well I think that wraps up. Do you have any additional questions?
I don’t have anything else to say.
Autumn: No, I mean, there’s more lingering, but I think we’ll have to, I think we’ll, we’ll, we’ll have many parts to this. Yeah. D genie plus lightning lane, individual lightning lane.
Justin: Yes. So I’m gonna try and get more people on to talk about this. Both people who, who aren’t familiar with the system and people who are familiar with the system.
Yay. To kind of talk through some of this cause I think the more you hear it, the more comfortable that you’ll be with it and yeah.
Autumn: Yeah. All in all I wanna say, [00:44:00] think of this as three. Three buckets, one
Justin: bucket. You’re gonna only two buckets by line . Oh, okay. Yeah. That’s all.
Autumn: No, that’s a third bucket.
It’s not a bucket. We’re telling people about the beginning of this. You don’t have to do any of this, so that’s you just walk up at any point you could do your whole day in the park, just waiting in line. If you want. It sounds miserable, Justin doesn’t like this, but yeah. Well,
Justin: I don’t like your, no, I don’t mind that.
I just don’t want you using my bucket analogy for standby line because those aren’t separate buckets. You can go into a lightning lane and a standby line on, on the same ride. So it’s not really a separate bucket. Oh,
Autumn: okay. but I I’m, I’m gonna look at it as in terms of like your general options. Okay. All of these, you can really mix and match.
You could do a whole day of don’t mix up my bucket, plus in just a mix of like standby and then paying for rides with individual lightning lanes. Like you could do that. I might do that. Sure. , but yes, you have that. And then you have purchasing genie plus, which gives you access to lightning lanes, which is about 40 rides across the world.
Mm-hmm all four parks. There’s that bucket genie pluses. What’s the cost of it. [00:45:00] $16. You say mm-hmm 16 and that gives you quicker access to 40 rides. The third bucket is what we call individual lightning lane, which is you basically imagine like an old school carnival where you pay per ride. That’s the, that’s the idea there.
Okay. You’re paying anywhere between what? 15 and $20
Justin: for the lightning lane, between nine and 15, I think 9, 9, 15 for the 9, 15,
Autumn: 17 fancy rides. The, the most popular you might say. Yeah, you just walk up.
Justin: well, you pay on your app. You’re not paying well, you pay on your app. Yeah. Okay.
Autumn: I’m sorry. no walk up and pay.
I was, I said old school carnival. So I was thinking of like the, do you know there’s no tickets. You get the tickets. But so that, so that’s that, that’s how that, that’s how that works. And certainly you can use the three interchangeably. Yeah. And stay tuned, cuz we’re definitely gonna come up with some kind of infograph or, or flow chart on this.
Yeah. I think that that would be
Justin: really helpful for sure. And yeah, if you please write in with your opinions, your experience with genie plus and park hopping, I’d really like to hear it. Uh, it’s easydizitpodcast@gmail.com or @easydizit on Instagram.
Autumn: Thanks [00:46:00] everyone.
Easy Diz It 