3. FastPass+
STATUS: Replaced with two(!) upcharges
When Disney launched the FastPass service in 1999, it was a revolution. In fact, we explored the history of Disney Parks lines and the advent & evolution of FastPass in our Member-exclusive “Waiting Game” Special Feature. A golden standard Disney’s trademark balance of overt guest satisfaction and covert revenue generation, FastPass was designed to reduce the time guests spent waiting in line at E-Ticket attractions and instead distribute them to lower-demand rides, shops, and restaurants.
Included with park admission and equally available to all (including on-site, off-site, Value, Deluxe, etc.), FastPass was an operational innovation and a brilliant PR boost! Okay, okay, technically FastPass wasn’t the operational panacea it was envisioned as… but the service was so immensely popular and deeply integrated into the idea of Walt Disney World, only a global reboot could ever justify its end. The COVID-19 pandemic was that reboot.
When Walt Disney World’s parks re-opened in summer 2020 after a three month closure, limited capacity and physical distancing requirements meant that FastPass was suspended. And indeed, the longer the parks went without it, the more clear it was that FastPass wasn’t coming back… Following trial balloons for paid line-skipping at other Disney Parks, the impossible became the inevitable.
3A. Genie+ Lightning Lanes
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: An average of $20/person/day ($400 for a family of four with a 5-day ticket)
In October 2021, Walt Disney World launched a multi-tier approach to line-skipping with the most obvious being the “Genie+” service. This app-based add-on grants guests access to priority-boarding reservation system for a daily price of $15 per person per day. (With demand-based pricing as high as $25 per person per day instituted by the end of 2022.)
As its relatively low cost should indicate, Genie+ is not a front-of-the-line, VIP, best-Disney-day product that’ll have you gleefully skipping to the front of every E-Ticket like Universal Express. Instead, it’s quite literally a thinly-veiled reconfigure of FastPass with a dash of FastPass+. Essentially, buying in gives you access to an app-based, day-of, priority-access queue reservation system and the chance to book hour-long return windows governed by the same “rules” that dictated FastPass distribution, plus some new ones.
We’ve dedicted a lot of coverage to how Genie+ works, and nearly all of it has been invalidated by continuous waves of new policies, price hikes, edits to the included attraction list, and operational overhauls. But at least as of the last quarter of 2022, guests must wake up before 7AM to add Genie+ to their admission each morning, then – at the stroke of 7:00:00 – start hammering away to try to book their first FastPa – er, “Lightning Lane” entry. (Each park’s most popular ride generally has its entire “Lightning Lane” capacity booked within a minute of 7AM, so if you choose “wrong” or sleep in, your purchase won’t save you from stagnant, slow-moving Standby queues.)
To access the system, our family of four on their imaginary vacation would need to budget – on average – $20 x 4 people x 5 days, or $400 on top of park admission. And remember, having Genie+ doesn’t necessarily guaruntee anything. You’ll still need to wake up before 7 AM every day of your trip to try to snag popular attractions while Lightning Lanes last.
Disney would likely assert that Genie+ is not FastPass, and is worth paying extra for because it offers app-based convenience that paper FastPass did not, and day-of flexibility that FastPass+ did not. But on top of daily 6:55 AM wakeups every day of your vacation, Genie+ is also unintuitive, complex, and easy to get “wrong.”
Worse, it takes a feature that was “standard” and baked into the operational and guest service expectations of a Disney Parks vacation (getting priority access to a few rides to offset the Standby waits you faced elsewhere) and raises it to a paid tier. Now, if you “just” buy admission to the park (which, remember, is very very expensive), you’re relegated to a sub-par experience tier, while those who pay get only what used to be typical.
Disney even edited its fine print in 2022 to state that on average, guests should expect to book only “2 or 3 Lightning Lane entries,” and only “if the first selection is made early in the day” (which, as we know, is 7 AM). Granted – just as with FastPass – many in-the-know guests and locals are able to manuever their way through 5, 6, or 7 Lightning Lane entries in a day. But since the free FastPass+ guarunteed 3 priority entries, that means many guests are literally paying for less… Speaking of which…
3B. Individual Lightning Lanes
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: An average of $15/person/day ($300 for a family of four with a 5-day ticket)
Buying into the Genie+ service may give you the chance to book reservations at most Lightning Lanes… but “most” is the operative word. In a fun new twist, Disney has intentionally excluded the one (sometimes two) most popular ride at each of its theme parks from the Genie+ service.
So even though Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and Avatar Flight of Passage have Lightning Lanes, you can’t book into them with Genie+. Instead, these premium attractions require separate, a la carte Individual Lightning Lane purchases of between $11 and $25 per person for a single ride.
Individual Lightning Lanes not only allow Disney to double dip on selling its formerly-free FastPass stock – they also operate by different rules. For example, while Genie+ Lightning Lanes auto-assign guests the next available return time (like FastPass), Individual Lightning Lanes default to displaying the next available, but will allow guests to select from any available return window, like booking a Dining Reservation. (Imagine, just for a moment, being the Cast Member who’s tasked with explaining all of this to an international family who doesn’t speak much English, keeping in mind that it all needs to happen from a hotel room at 7AM, so by time you get to the park, it’s too late!)
Guests are able to purchase up to two “ILLs” each day. (When the service launched, each park had two “ILL” attractions. As of the end of 2022, each park offers only one, so you’d only buy two if you intended to Park Hop.) Given that Disney (naturally) prioritizes access to those who paid for premium “ILLs,” most tend to average admitting 9 “ILL” parties to every 1 or 2 allowed in from the Standby, leading to multi-hour waits. So if you’re visiting on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, chances are you’ll find it worthwhile to pop an Advil and eat the expense of at least one “ILL” a day – let’s say, $15 x 4 people x 5 days, or $300 total.
Yes, just to recreate the formerly-free experience of FastPass, a family of four on a five day trip to Walt Disney World would need to expect to spend an additional $400 for Genie+ and $300 for Indivdiual Lightning Lanes – an added cost of $700 on top of continuously-rising ticket prices.
As for when you can buy “ILLs”? That needs a multi-paragraph explainer, too…
4. On-site FastPass+ Advantage
STATUS: Discontinued; reborn as an upcharge “ILL” advantage
PRICE YOU’LL PAY: See “Individual Lightning Lane” above
Whether you loved or hated FastPass+, there’s no denying that on-site guests got a major perk – 60-day out ride reservations as opposed to off-site guests’ 30-day window. That gave on-site guests an obvious advantage in the daily scramble to pre-book into hot E-Tickets and in-demand experiences. Off-site guests, meanwhile, would essentially be stuck picking up the scraps, settling for Philharmagic FastPasses, or furiously refreshing to try to find a last minute Flight of Passage time slot.
With the switch to day-of Genie+, on-site guests lose their advantage in booking Lightning Lanes, since the service switches “on” for them at the same time it does for any off-site guests who’ve bought Genie+: 7:00:00 AM. But staying at a Disney Resort Hotel does confer at least one benefit when it comes to Lightning Lanes…
Whereas anyone with a ticket can buy Genie+ and book their first Lightning Lane at 7AM, “ILLs” only become available for on-site hotel guests at 7AM while those without a linked Disney Resort Hotel stay must wait until the park opens, by which point “ILLs” may have sold out. Technically, the ability to buy “ILLs” before off-site guests is one of the few remaining perks of an on-site stay, even if the “benefit” amounts to… being able to pay Disney more money.