Never trust a Genie... (My thoughts on Disney Genie+)

     Hey friends, I'm Jonathan and as you know, I've always been very vocal about my love of almost all things Disney, especially the parks. It brings me no satisfaction to tell you that today, I'm writing about something that I'm disappointed by, even though it comes alongside some pretty neat things for Walt Disney World's 50th anniversary. A few years ago at the D23 conference, they discussed the plans for this momentous occasion, and alongside new rides and shows as well as the major changes over at EPCOT, there was talk of a new app. Disney Genie was going to be a new planning tool that would help families of all ages and descriptions tailor their day to be as magical as they wanted it to be. They gave almost no details other than the fact that it was being worked on and that they would have more information in the future. Fast forward to just a month or two ago, when they finally lifted the curtain. This new system is unfortunately not great. I hope it will be better than I fear it is, but we'll have to see, and it won't take long since the service is being implemented at Walt Disney World beginning the day that I'm writing this, October 19, 2021. This probably won't be an incredibly long post, but I just want to get the point across of what this new add-on to the "My Disney Experience" app is for, and how it works. Get your wallets ready, because this could get pricey fast.

You ain't never had to pay like this!

    First of all, I have to make a disclaimer, for the most part, Disney Genie is just like My Disney Experience, in that it lets you look and see how long wait times are for rides, allows you to order food at quick service locations, and even recommends rides that have shorter lines. This is kind of nice that it tells when lines are short, though it also tells everyone that the lines are short for those rides, I would imagine, which could cause a bunch of people to run over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, making that line not as short as the app told you that it would be. There are some good ideas here, I'm not going to tell you that this app is the antichrist or anything. The big issue that I, along with many others, have is Disney Genie+. This new system completely replaces the old FastPass+ system that used to work really well, and replaces those FastPass queue lines with new Lightning Lanes. Why the name change I wonder? Oh, the only way into the Lightning Lane is through Genie+, which costs an extra $15 per day, per ticket. Do you have a family of four and are hoping to use FastPass-like features so you don't have to wait in line as long? Well, that's an extra $60 that is taken out of your pocket for a feature that used to be free. I don't mean to sound entitled or anything, but Walt Disney World is already obscenely expensive, even without this addition! They've been bumping prices on individual food items, ticket prices, and even parking in the years prior to this, but only little bit by bit price increases. This, however, is a pretty major expense depending on how many people are in your family's party. In addition to it just being a lot more expensive, it looks like you now can only choose one attraction at the beginning of the day, instead of the standard two choices which came with the complimentary FastPass+ system.

    There's another big kicker here... Genie+'s standard $15 per ticket per day fee doesn't apply to everything. The really big rides that everyone will want to ride because they're new or because they're just the most popular like Rise of the Resistance or the newly opened Remy's Ratatouille Adventure require separate purchase. The pricing is based on how busy the season is (aka how crowded the park is on the day of your visit) and the attraction, meaning that the more popular the attraction is, the more likely it will be that you'll have to cough up $21 for one Lightning Lane access for Space Mountain. They phrase it like "You can only purchase up to two individual Lightning Lane accesses per ticket per day," but there are also only two Lightning lane individual attractions in each park. Magic Kingdom has Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Space Mountain, Epcot has Frozen Ever After and Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, Hollywood Studios has Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, and Animal Kingdom has Expedition Everest and Flight of Passage. It's honestly crazy to have to pay that much extra just to have a slightly shorter wait for one experience, and I'm saying that as someone who waited in line for three hours to ride Flight of Passage. I'm really looking forward to riding all of these different rides, but if the best chance of riding them comes from just paying that much extra money, it really sours the whole experience in my book. They're really catering to the financial elite members of society, or trying to encourage spending beyond your means even more than they already do, especially when you look at this in addition to the changes in how Magic Hours work.

Pay to play (late)

    The rule was once that if you stayed in a Disney resort on property, you got added perks, obviously including transportation between your hotel and whatever parks you wish to go to. In addition to that, there were magic hours, which meant that if you stayed in a Disney resort, then you would sometimes have an extra hour in the morning before the park opened to people not staying on property or in the evening after it was supposedly closed. Now, however, it seems that if you stay in a deluxe resort, you get an extra magic hour or two because you're staying in a more expensive hotel. The value resorts are already pretty expensive, but they're nowhere near as pricey as a night in the Grand Floridian or the Polynesian Resort. Again, it's crazy that they want people spending this much money and encouraging irresponsible spending to this degree. Of course, Disney is a company, and as such, their main goal is to make money, like it or not, that's how it goes. It just makes me sad to see them taking steps like this to shamelessly wring every cent out of the pockets of their main audiences. 

    If there's one concession that I can make to the Genie+ system is that it's still a good bit cheaper than Universal Studios's Express Pass, which as of time that I'm writing this, is 79.99 per person for one park, which lets you ride once in what's essentially the FastPass line or Lightning Lane per day. You can also get unlimited rides in Express with Universal Express Unlimited, for $109.99 per person per day. I sincerely hope that Disney backs off on this system a bit, but at the very least, I hope they don't increase the prices exponentially to the level of Universal's system. Even with the tiered access to the certain attractions that I mentioned, I don't think it's quite as pricey as having to pay $80 per person per day. I don't know a lot about how Universal Express works, so I could be wrong about this point, but looking at the website, that's what it looked like.

    As I've said many times before, I'm a huge Disney fan, and that hasn't changed with this decision, I just wish that they wouldn't do things like this. Ultimately it hurts their public image, and despite the ads they've put out and calling it a cute name like, "Genie," it's a pretty transparent cash grab added onto an already very expensive vacation for people to take. Will I still go there? Probably, though I'm not sure if I'll be paying the extra money to use the Lightning Lane. I'm very excited for the 50th anniversary of the most magical place on earth, as you can see if you read my post from a few weeks ago where I detailed the plans that started on October 1st, I just wish those magical plans were behind a slightly less tall paywall.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends. First of all, I have to acknowledge that I'm fortunate to be able to go to Disney World at all, much less to go there and stay in a Disney resort, when I know so many people aren't as lucky. I just want to share these new changes to the pricing of the parks and just to make sure that people are aware that these changes are here, and probably won't go anywhere for a while. The next time you go there, there won't be any Fast Passes unfortunately, and I just don't want you all to be surprised. I hope you're all having a great day or week and thanks again for all of your support. Until next time, I've been your somewhat disappointed Self-Proclaimed Disney Fan, and I'll see ya real soon.