DISNEY WORLD: How to use Genie Plus and Lightning Lanes: FULL tutorial

hey guys jen here i am coming to you with a little bit of disney help and tips and information today to help you plan for your trip [Music] just to give you a little bit of background on my disney experience in case you're new to my channel i've been going to disney world since i was a little girl back in the 1980s so i'm talking pretty much annual trips throughout my entire life for a very long long time i've seen all the changes all the new systems let me cut to the point you guys today i want to talk about genie genie plus and lightning lanes and if you have no idea what i'm talking about you definitely have to watch let me help you so you can have a better trip i do want to remind you that ever since disney reopened after the pandemic closure they now have a park reservation system in place what does that mean it means once you buy your tickets you need to go in and reserve which park you want to do on which day so you can't just wake up one day and decide you want to go to magic kingdom there might not be any more magic kingdom reservations left for that day so before your trip you need to go into the my disney experience app on your laptop or desktop or on your phone or mobile device either way once you buy your park tickets you want to choose which park you want to do on which day now let's dive into this whole new genie genie plus lightning lane stuff you might be familiar with the former fast pass system well they've rebranded it they call it the lightning lane and now you have to pay for it you guys there are no more free fast passes now i was just in disney world two months ago tried out different strategies while i was there using genie plus not using genie plus using individual lightning lanes not using individual lightning lanes so let's get into what these things mean again lightning lanes are the new fast passes and they cost money this might seem a little confusing but i'm going to do my best to break it down so it's not i want you to think in like three categories we have genie which is free genie plus which costs money and individual lightning lanes which cost money now when you hear the term genie just genie not genie plus just the genie system this is just a subsection of the my disney experience app where it kind of makes suggestions to you of what ride you should do when but it only allows you to stand in the standby line just the normal regular line it won't get you any kind of front of the line lightning lane fast pass experience genie as it stands is just kind of like a helper part of the app so that's just basic genie that's free all right so let's talk about the former fastpass genie plus lightning lane individual lightning lanes now this is where it gets complicated you guys in each park there are rides that have the regular standby line which is just the normal line or a lightning lane line and if you get in that lightning lane line it gets you to the ride really fast within minutes in my experience now to get in that special fast lightning lane you have to pay money but depending on which ride it is you have to pay different amounts of money let me explain so if you purchase something called genie plus that's 15 a day per person that will get you into the lightning lane on most of the rides that have lightning lane again that's 15 bucks per person per day some of the most popular attractions in each park do not allow you to get into the lightning lane with just that 15 bucks for the day for those rides they're called individual lightning lanes so i'm going to use an example of rise of the resistance the most popular ride at disney right now if you want to go and rise at the resistance that's not included in your 15 per day genie plus that you have to pay for separately this is why they call it individual lightning lanes so genie plus will get you into the lightning lane for most rides but on some rides you have to pay extra they are individual they are separate you do not have to have that 15 genie plus for the day if you just want to book the ills the individual lightning lamps so for example if you want to go to animal kingdom and ride flight of passage the avatar ride which is really cool that costs extra money on my animal kingdom day i just purchased the ill for flight of passage period and a story well that was my only extra ride expense in animal kingdom and again i know you guys this is all on top of the tickets that you're already paying a lot of money for if you don't like it complain to disney so your genie plus 15 bucks a day per person lets you have access to get into the lightning lanes on the majority of rides but separate from that we have our individual lightning lanes or ills ills if you want to call them this is where you pay extra for just that ride it is separate from genie plus you can have both of them on the same day or you could have either or doesn't matter say you want to do this i don't want to want to wait in the standby lines how do i do how do i get genie plus how do i get my individual lightning lanes where do i do that when do i do that all right that's our next step of the conversation what do i need to do to book the lightning lanes how do i get genie plus how do i get my individual lightning mains again you need the my disney experience app on your phone okay if you don't have a smartphone or you don't want to be on your smartphone while you're at disney i i have to break it to you you have to have your smartphone with you all day to use these systems the only way i'd say uh to get around that if you don't want genie plus at all and you just want to book your individual lightning lanes all right i'm going to say that's the exception all right let's conquer this complicated scenario by doing one at a time i'm gonna actually first tell you how you book your individual lightning lane attractions [Music] you go into your my disney experience when do you do this if you're staying on site at a disney resort and participating hotels you do this at 7am this kills me i'm going to give you my honest opinion this is this is not the objective disney video i am going to share with you my opinions i hated getting up at 7 00 am to do this because i'm not an early riser especially on vacation if you're staying on a disney resort set your alarm for 6.50 and be ready to go at 7 00 am on the dot why do i say this because some of those individual lightning lanes go very quickly your my disney experience app already knows which park you have your reservation in for that day so if you want to make an individual lightning lane selection for earlier in the day it will only allow you to book your ill for the park you have reserved so let's say it's your hollywood studios day and you want to get on rise of the resistance at 7 00 am ready to go start going as far as you can in that my disney experience app to book rise of the resistance it goes within minutes no daily dallying you guys go go go book that lightning lane okay and and i'm going to share my experience disney it is notoriously not the greatest when i tried to book our rise of the resistance the disney app kept kicking me out for no reason and kept signing me out and i had to keep resigning in i was seeing the times for rise of the resistance get later and later and later and i'm like oh no i'm going gonna miss it or it's gonna show up for one of my like for during my dinner time i finally got my rise of the resistance ills but it took 12 minutes keep trying keep going now if you're not staying on site at a disney resort you can't book your ills until park open so if the park opens at nine you can't try and get rise of the resistance until nine or whatever time the park is opening that day what does that mean it means a lot of times you're not going to get rise of the resistance and you have to ride at standby so you have to make the decision if you're just going to wait in a long standby line there aren't as many perks to stay on site at disney resorts as there used to be but there still are some and unfortunately getting up at 7am is a perk but it does get you access to the rides that people off site don't have access to another nice thing about the ills is you can choose your return time for the most part that you can't do with td plus alright so hopefully that explains the ills if you want to know which rides are available for the ills in each park that will be that information will be on disney's website why do i say it that way because it's implied that these will change it's always going to be the most popular rides in each park and the prices range bucks fifteen bucks eleven dollars per person it changes based on the ride now let's talk about genie plus so you might think you know what i paid my 15 bucks for the day we can just walk up to any regular ride that has the regular genie plus lightning lanes and just get in the lightning lane right no i'm sorry it doesn't work like that it's not like the express pass at universal where you literally just walk up to the ride and get into the special short line doesn't work that way now if you recall i did do an on-site demonstration of booking genie plus rides while i was in disney two months ago so i do have that up on my site i'm gonna put a link up here so you can go find it but there are different strategies so here's how it works genie plus works that you can either book it as you go or every two hours let me give you a scenario at 7 00 am you can start and choose your first ride what does that mean you're going to open up your my disney experience app okay you're going to go and click on the my day and then you know look look through the rides and then choose the first ride you want for your lightning lane genie plus lightning lane you can start choosing at 7am this is everybody everybody can start choosing at 7am not just on-site guests let's say hey i'm already up at seven i'm just gonna get to the parks when they open so i'm gonna choose the earliest possible lightning lane of a ride that i want to do so let's say it's magic kingdom and i want to go on pirates of the caribbean let's say magic kingdom on that day opens at nine o'clock if you're an on-site guest you can get in a half hour early as of right now so maybe you choose your time for 9 15 so you can enter at 8 30 go immediately to a ride when the park opens hit the standby because there won't be a line yet because it just opened and everybody's flooding in so let's say walk back to haunted mansion ride that standby you've got your first genie plus scheduled at 9 15 over for for pirates of the caribbean go ride that as soon as you scan into the ride as soon as you scan into your first ride in this scenario pirates of the caribbean then you can whip out your phone and choose your next genie plus ride based upon availability so let's say uh you know what we want to go on jungle cruise oh the next one is available in an hour so let's say i choose that and then after i get off pirates i have a little bit of time until maybe a 10 15 return time for jungle cruise again these are just hypotheticals ideally it works that you can just go from ride to ride and use those now what happens if the next available ride of that i want to go on the next time is like five hours from now oh damn what am i gonna do you can choose that return time but you don't have to wait five hours to choose your next continuing plus lightning lane you have to wait two hours so genie plus works that you can either book it as you go or every two hours whichever comes sooner if you're going to hit the parks when they open in the morning an as you go system works really really well i would advise that for magic kingdom now let's say you don't want to go to the parks first thing when they open in the morning night owls everywhere what i recommend then in that situation is what they call ride stacking what's that jen what's ride stacking all right let me give you an example so it's a hollywood studios day because ride stacking did work for us at hollywood studios so i'm getting my butt up at 7 00 am to book my rise of the resistance individual lightning lanes while i'm up you know what might as well also reserve my first lightning lane genie plus ride but i don't want to book one for like 9 a.m or something like that because i'm not going to be at the park at 9 00 a.m i'm going to try and go back to sleep so what i'm going to do of all the rides i want to do i want to find the one with the latest the latest return time so let's say i booked my individual lightning name for rise of the resistance at 4 pm and then the very next thing i do is choose my return time for my first genie plus lightning let's say slinky dog and oh awesome slinky dog has a 3 p.m return time sweet book that now i have to wait to be able to book the next one here's where i've seen a lot of confusion online i booked my first one at 7am so i can book the next one at 9am right no it's two hours after park open so let's save the park opens at 9am you can now book your next experience at 11. so by then i'm up i maybe might be meandering out to grab something to eat right at 11 or 1101 or whatever it allows me to do i'm gonna go in and i'm going to book my next genie plus lightning lane in hollywood studios so let's say it's rock and roller coaster oh rock and roller coaster has return time for 4 45. awesome boom i'm gonna book that so already now i've have a few rides stacked for the afternoon i've got like a 3 pm slinky dog i've got a 4 pm rise of the resistance and i got a 445 rock and roller coaster now they do give you a window it's not you have to be there exactly at that moment they'll give you an hour window with a little bit of a few minutes buffer on each end here's an example of ride stacking from my own trip i was able to get afternoon times really close together for tower of terror rock and roller coaster and rise of the resistance they do have cms cast members who are going to be there willing to help you you're going to see the blue umbrellas throughout the parks the other big big recommendation i give is have a wireless phone charger with you you know one of those portable ones that you could also shove in your bag make sure you hit your park with a full charge on your phone and a full charge on your backup battery you need to be able to charge your phone your phone won't last all day so hopefully you guys that makes it a little bit more clear as always i welcome comments and questions down below if any of this is still a little bit overwhelming for you or if it's your first trip to disney ever or if it's your first trip in like a number of years use a disney specialist travel agent i can't emphasize this enough if you don't use myself as your disney specialist travel agent please make sure you get somebody who really understands all of this hit that like button subscribe to my channel i not only talk about disney stuff but all kinds of travel and music along the way and again let me know if you have any questions i'll see you guys next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Jen The Singing Traveler

Views: 48,606

Keywords: Disney World, Disney, Genie, Genie Plus, Genie+, Lightning Lanes, Individual Lightning Lanes, Fastpass

Id: gzEeai6aNDM

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022