Genie+ is the recent paid skip-the-line offering in Disney World that replaced Fastpass+.
It’s been a few months since the offering was introduced and we’ve seen big crowds and long wait times in Disney World. Now, we’re wondering, has Genie+ actually made standby lines longer?
We keep track of all of the wait times in Disney World every single day, so if you’re curious about what to expect during your trip, you can always keep an eye out for our regular wait times posts. Not only are those wait times helpful for you, they’re also great data when we’re trying to figure out how Genie+ has affected Disney World!
So, has Genie+ impacted standby lines? To answer this question, we compared our data of wait times prior to the launch of Genie+ in August 2021 with non-holiday wait times post-launch in November 2021.
Of all the rides in Disney World, we saw a statistically significant change with five attractions:
- Frozen Ever After saw an average increase of 41 minutes to its wait time,
- Avatar Flight of Passage saw an average increase of 34 minutes to its wait time,
- Kilimanjaro Safaris saw an average increase of 30 minutes to its wait times,
- Na’vi River Journey saw an average increase of 30 minutes to its wait times,
- and Jungle Cruise saw an average increase of 21 minutes to its wait times.
Every other ride in Disney World either did not see a change in wait times, or the change was too small to consider it a direct result of Genie+. This data shows that for most rides, Genie+ had no effect, but for the five rides listed above, it DID make standby lines longer.
One ride that might also have been impacted on average is Rise of the Resistance, but this popular attraction did not have a standby queue prior to the launch of Genie+ and Lightning Lanes, so there’s no point of comparison for us to be sure. The same is true for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.
Keep in mind, we saw a similar increase in standby wait times when Fastpass+ was in use versus when it wasn’t. The difference here is that Genie+ is a paid offering.
Overall though, most ride wait times have remained largely unaffected by the introduction of Genie+. As always, keep an eye on AllEars for more Disney World insights.
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Now run the same calculations again on a busy weekend or holiday. Not to mention you just pic a random one day before and after. To do it right you will need to do a group of days before and after the launch of Genie+ to include both regular nonpeak and peak times to get a true averages between them.
On our recent trip to the World at the end of January, we headed to one of our favorite rides, the People Mover.
It had close to a 30-minute wait, The People Mover!!!!.
Usually, this was always a walk-on, and you could even ask to say one and go again.
What we noticed was the way they loaded the cars was just terrible.
Have you been on any of the park buses? Mostly one or two cars would be filled. You can’t tell me they were doing this as a covid measure.
Are they trying to make the waits longer by changing their loading practices?