Throw Out Your Game Plan – Your Old Disney World Itineraries Are Officially OBSOLETE

If you think you’re an expert at planning a Disney World trip, think again.

Okay, so maybe you do KNOW your stuff, but when it comes to planning out your days, EVERYTHING is about to change. That’s because Disney recently revamped its Genie+ system, which is a way to bypass the standby lines in Disney World and access shorter Lighting Lane lines. These changes could impact a great part of your day.

Okay, we’re going to outline what’s changing with Genie+ to give you an idea of just how different things are going to be. First up, Genie+ is technically going away and will be called Lightning Lane Multi Pass instead. The Individual Lightning Lane option will be called Lightning Lane Single Pass. You’ll still pay for Multi Pass, which will cover a great variety of rides in each park, while Single Pass is a pay-per-ride option for more popular rides not included with Multi Pass.

The BIGGEST change comes with WHEN you can purchase Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass. If you’re staying at a Disney World hotel, you’ll be able to purchase both seven days before your visit and choose available times as you make your selections. If you’re not booked at a Disney World hotel, you can make those advance selections three days in advance.

In addition, the My Disney Experience app will also be updated to better take advantage of these changes. You’ll be able to purchase a Lightning Lane Multi Pass, a Lightning Lane Single Pass, or both. The app will also be updated so that it will be quicker and easier to purchase these options with fewer steps plus you can choose to purchase both Multi Pass and Single Pass with one transaction.

These are some pretty big changes that will impact how you plan your itinerary for your trip.

You need to decide if you’re paying to skip the lines in advance

One way this is going to change how you plan your Disney trip is that you’ll need to decide AHEAD of time if you’re purchasing Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass before your trip. Previously, you could only buy Genie+ on each day of your vacation — and you could do so after you got a feel for what ride lines would be like on each day. Now though, you have to make that decision before you ever step foot in the parks.

Rise of the Resistance is a very popular ride, so it might be a priority for Lightning Lane Single Pass

This will be especially true if your priority rides are some of the more popular and newer rides. You’ll want to grab times for Lightning Lanes for those rides before they’re gone (and they’ll go faster now that they’re available before trips). Granted, you can still wait to purchase Multi Pass or Single Pass, each day, but then you risk not getting Lightning Lane selections for the rides you want.

You’ll have to decide ride priorities early

With that being said, you’ll have to decide on your ride priorities before your trip, too. You’ll want to know what those priorities are to book your Lightning Lane selections ahead of time.

Rides are also assigned a tiered system, where the top tier includes the more popular rides, while the bottom tier includes the rest of the rides available with Lightning Lane Multi Pass. You can only select one ride from the top tier, and then two from the bottom tier or three total from the bottom tier. This makes prioritizing rides even trickier, but we’ve got some good advice here.

You’ll also be choosing what park you’ll be in on specific days

Now that park pass reservations are gone for most Disney World visitors, you can go to whatever park you want to go to on whatever day you wish to. However, if you make advance Lightning Lane selections, you’re basically committing to certain parks each day of your trip.

So if you have Lightning Lane selections already booked for a day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, but you want to go to EPCOT instead on that day, you’ll either just have to suck it up and go to Animal Kingdom or lose those Lightning Lane selections to visit EPCOT. This new system will take some spontaneity out of your trip.

This will also impact your dining reservations

If you’ve booked Lightning Lanes in one specific park for a given day, you’ll want to make sure your dining reservations are in the same park or are made at a time that gives you time to travel between the restaurant and park you have Lightning Lane selections for.

For example, if you’ve got Lightning Lane selections in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but you want to dine at Be Our Guest in Magic Kingdom on that same day, you’ll have to figure out how to make a reservation that won’t interfere with your Lightning Lane selections and vice versa.

You’ll want to prioritize Tiana’s Bayou Adventure

The only top tier ride you should book a Lightning Lane selection for in Magic Kingdom is Tiana’s Bayou Adventure because you might not be able to count on getting into the virtual queue. The ride is VERY new and very popular, so getting a virtual queue is difficult.

We’ve seen the virtual queue fill up within mere SECONDS, so if you want to ride Disney World’s NEWEST ride, guarantee you’ll be able to ride it by booking a Lighting Lane in advance. Note that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure does not have a standby line, so virtual queue and Lightning Lane Multi Pass are the only ways to ride it.

You’ll want to stay at a Disney World hotel

One of the perks of staying at a Disney World hotel will now be getting earlier access to book advance Lightning Lane selections: a full four days before everyone else. This will be a nice incentive to keep people staying in Disney-owned hotels.

So although you might generally stay at a hotel off property, you might reconsider that just to get that earlier booking for Lightning Lanes. We think it could be worth it.

You’ll prioritize booking Single Pass rides early, too

Those really popular rides like Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and Rise of the Resistance are going to be rides you’ll want to book with the Lightning Lane Single Pass option, mostly to guarantee that you get to access their Lightning Lanes.

Cosmic Rewind should especially be a priority because the only other way to guarantee a ride on it is through virtual queue, which you’re not guaranteed to get into.

You could save money

Like Genie+, Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Single Pass will be subject to surge pricing, meaning the price will go up on the day depending on demand. You can lock in a price by buying it in advance.

This will make budgeting for your trip easier because you’ll have a better idea of what you’ll be spending on Lightning Lane selections BEFORE your trip.

Yes, how you plan each day will change, but we’re here to answer any questions you might have about these changes, so just drop them in the comments!

Check back with AllEars again soon for more!