Do I Want To Buy Genie + For Magic Kingdom?

[roses2]

We're going to Disney Orlando for May half term and are planning one day at Magic Kingdom (older kids not into characters etc).

We're happy to meander, be flexible with rides based on queue time, prefer to take in the ambience but don't want to be criss crossing the park all day glued to my phone running to the next ride.

We have a touringplans plan where I put in the rides and based on this one day is do-able.

Do we need Genie +?? Will it make a difference on an "average" crowd day? It will be Memorial Day week end and the kids don't particularly like queueing but as I said above happy to skip the rides which have long queues.

If you are only doing one day, I think I probably would buy Genie plus. It's frustrating when you think that was included pre-Covid! However, you don't want to get to the end of the day and not have done things you wanted to do. Hope you have a great time

I went in May before and although schools aren't on summer holidays there seemed to be tons of groups of kids there. It was way busier than September when I've been. I'd get Genie plus. It's very different to the old fast pass. You can plan your time better and stack them. You go on your phone in the queue - not when you're walking around etc. even with genie plus you'll have plenty of time queueing. You can also order food on the app so it's well worth it and can cut down on queueing time. I'd say Tron are going to be doing special queuing as well- like a virtual queue or a lightning lane so read up on that.

Me and partner got it a few times.

We had it for snimsk kingdom, it made for a nice cuhilled day for the cost of a cocktail each.

Was good for magic kingdom as many rides there use it.

Hollywood studios we just rope dropped to knock out stuff over a few days.

Was good on our 4 parks in A day day.we stacked things up for later on.

Epcot not needed.

Overall I prefer having it and enjoying breaks between rides than queuing tons if I can avoid it. (After having been 6 times anyway)

I don't think I can stress enough how absolutely heaving Memorial Day weekend will be. Is that the only day you can visit? We once did Seaworld on the Saturday, got there 30mins after opening and were in the overflow carpark across the road. Busiest I've seen it and I've been going since 1989.
You will definitely need Genie plus for that date, and I would expect it to sell out very quickly.

Oh my! I didnt realise Memorial Day was so busy based on the crowd calendars. I've put my plan into both touringplans and thrilldata and both say the agenda I have is manageable. We'll be there 10 days so I will keep an eye on genie + price and go on a day where the price is low which I think translates to low crowds. I don't mind paying for it, it's a small cost. I was just worried that it detracts from the ambience and I'd be exhausted running from ride to ride.

just bare in mind some rides have virtual queues, like tron and guardians and also you can pay extra for indiviual lightening lanes for some rides as well as not every ride will be on the Genie +

Have a watch of the various Genie+ videos on YouTube. I find Ear Scouts and Mammoth Club the best. They’re really good at showing how to use Genie+ in each park and also how to do the parks without it.

These are a good starting point:

You may think Genie detracts from the ambience and you are always on the phone, but why do you think people use it? The alternative is standing in endless lines that don’t move. Touring plans are fine but absolutely not foolproof.
even with Genie you will not be running as you only get one pick every 2 hours. It’s plenty of time to do standby rides in between, it’s just with Genie you make sure the big rides are planned and scheduled.
Someone has to be the organiser; in our family it’s me and that’s fine, I don’t mind spending some time on the phone to make sure the whole family makes the most of an expensive trip. So I’d definitely recommend it (and avoid Memorial Day if you can, yikes)

@roses2 Hollywood studios is better for older children, I seem to remember that yours are a similar age to mine - from au pair posts.

Hi yes that's right they are 8 and 11. Into thrill rides and hate people dressed up in character costumes!

I've booked Universal tickets. Will book the Disney tickets over Easter as I hear there's a sale on 3 day tickets coming. At the moment the crowd prediction is quite low for Memorial Day (level 4). I might even wing it and just buy Genie once I get to the park and scope out the crowds.

Ok, so we’ve just got back from our trip and despite it being Spring Break (and on one day we were there they actually closed MK to park hoppers because it had reached ticket capacity of 100,000, the first time it had happened since 2021), we did not buy Genie+ or ILL once and still rode everything we wanted.

We rope dropped every park at least twice meaning we got straight to the big rides and had minimal queues for the other rides. You might not want to rope drop the whole time (we rope dropped on 9 of our 11 park days) but certainly for the first 2 or 3 days you are going to be waking up really early, so you might as well take advantage of it and get to the parks first thing.

As you are not staying on site you won’t get the option of early entry (30 mins extra before the park opens to everyone else), but you can still enter the park at this time and either check out the shops or position yourself for what is known as “second rope drop”. This is how it works:

Assuming park opening is 8am, the Disney resort guests will be allowed to enter Fantasyland (where the most popular rides are 7 Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan’s Flight) and Tomorrowland (Space Mountain and Tron, though you need a virtual queue or individual lightning lane for this) for a 7.30 start. HOWEVER, they actually start letting everyone into the park just after 7am - the early entry guests go through an additional check point near the castle while the non-resort guests are held on Main Street and around the castle. Here you can position yourself near the entrance to Adventureland which will allow you to get access to rides like Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean, or Big Thunder Mountain in Frontierland, as soon as they open at 8am.

If you are only doing 1 day you need to do your research, plans out which rides are must do for you and then work on the basis of doing those that have the longest average wait times as early as possible, as the wait times will only keep going up through the day.

I can also give you our virtual queue strategy if you want - it never failed us, and we got to ride Tron 3 times (well DH and DS did, me and DD weren’t up for it!) and Guardians (in Epcot) 4 times during our stay!

I would definitely get genie and I'd check for a tron booking group. Research in advance. We did DMK with just genie and didn't get to go on everything in May 22; Peter Pan was the missed ride, annoying.

We paid for 7 Dwarfs Mine Train. It's a really good ride. Don't know if you can now pay for Tron (was not built when I went).

We can't rope drop due to disabled family members who need to get their booked mobility scooters. We discovered DAS after that and managed every ride at DHS on memorial day weekend using disabled access or genie. Bloody mental how busy it was. I'd strongly recommend going on any other day.

MK was horrible in the morning. The queues are so long. It really chills out towards the evening and the fireworks are amazing. It's the one park I'd prefer not to go back as the rides are shit (I would personally plan to go late and do tron and the riverboat only and see the fireworks). Splash Space and Thunder mountains are all overrated. I know the theming is cool but personally prefer all the other parks. Sorry just IMO.

I would say 8yo and 11yo may still enjoy character dining. Mine were same ages when we went. My 11yo was very put off DMK by lack of decent rides (I tried to explain it wasn't about action). They loved the character dining in DAK. The one where the characters are all dressed for safari. You could book lunch or dinner (££££ I know) for character dining in DMK. It is still fun.

Please may I have your virtual queue strategy? Interested to know how to get the opportunity to go on as many rides as possible without buying Genie plus! Thank you

Sorry, I asked the wrong poster!! Please may I have your virtual queue strategy? Thanks

@Snowdropsarelovely here you go, it’s very simple. I’ll give timings for the 7am VQ though the same applies for the 1pm queue which is easier to get as you have to be in the park to join:

0655-ish - go into the MDE app, select Virtual Queue, make sure you are on the right ride (it often defaults to Tron) and select your party (the people who want to ride)

If you are staying on property at this point I would recommend getting off the Disney WiFi and using mobile data as loads of other guests will be trying to use the WiFi.

0658 - go back into the app and be ready on the VQ page with the “Refresh” button at the bottom.

0659 - start hitting that refresh button like your life depends on it! Just keep on pressing it until it changes to “Join Queue” and grab it fast!

The reason you need to be refreshing at 0659 is because phone clocks can be as much as 10 seconds out and those 10 seconds are everything when trying to get a VQ.

If there are 2 of you you can both be in the app logged in under the same account at the same time so that also gives you double the chance of getting the VQ. We did it this way a few times with DH on mobile data and me on the WiFi but most of the time the mobile data got it first!

You also get another chance at 6pm if staying at a deluxe Disney hotel and it's an extra magic hours nights at magic or Epcot.

You probably still need to wait an hour in the queue once you are called.
luckily I did Tron in Shanghai with 15 min wait. Only 45 seconds! Very short (luckily as I hated it)

Got back a week ago. Went on Memorial Day to Magic Kingdom. It was so quiet we arrived 11am and managed to do everything we wanted to do plus more without Genie - it was such a great day! Almost all rides were walk on with no queue.

We used the Queue Times crowd calendar to pick the quietest day to visit the week we were there and it ended up being 12% capacity.

One day at Magic Kingdom was more than enough for us. The kids enjoyed Universal a lot more, we spent 3 days there.