ORLANDO, Fla. — Mike Bard and his family spent part of their visit to the Magic Kingdom Tuesday idly standing in Frontierland refreshing his phone, trying to connect to the Genie+ service they paid for to no avail.
“The fact that we had to pay an extra $60-something for this service — I expect it to work,” he said.
Disney World’s new planning service Genie left its metaphorical lamp and launched in the resort’s app in mid-October to a mixed reception as guests praised its concept, but scrutinized its price points and accessibility.
While the base service is complimentary, its paid tier Genie+ allows guests to pay $15 per person per day for access to over 40 rides across Disney’s four parks. Guests can also pay extra to skip the line for the resort’s most in-demand attractions.
Parkgoers have criticized Disney for the line-skipping service, called Lightning Lane, because it charges a premium for ride reservations that used to be free through the now-defunct FastPass+.
Visiting from Petaluma, Calif., Bard and his wife, Eileen, paid a “steep” nearly $110 for Lightning Lane access for themselves and their two kids. Genie+ cost them around $65 after tax, and four seats on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train cost an extra $42, he said.
It “remains to be seen” if the cost was worth it for their trip, Eileen Bard said.
“We’re used to the $20 [MaxPass access] per ticket [at Disneyland] that comes with the photo, it comes with the FastPass lane and all that,” she said. “So that was worth it just for the photos, and to be able to [use the] mobile pass. This feels like a similar service, but they’re going to charge you more for it.”
“You get less for more money,” Mike Bard added. “So as the consumer, it’s not exactly great.”
Genie+ adds significant expense to a Disney trip. A family of four, like the Bards, could spend $60 more before tax at the parks per day, or $240 total for a four-day, four-park trip, and still have to pay more for faster access to popular rides like Rise of the Resistance or Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.
Genie+ follows a larger trend of local theme parks charging for faster access to entertainment. Comparable skip-the-line services to Genie+ cost $139.99 at Universal Tuesday afternoon for the Express Pass, which gives visitors the chance to skip the line once per ride at specific attractions. SeaWorld’s Quick Queue cost $14.99 for unlimited line-skipping privileges at six of its most popular rides.
The price for individual access to Lightning Lane attractions varies by attraction and day. At the Magic Kingdom Tuesday, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train cost $10 per person and Space Mountain cost $7.
Epcot visitors who couldn’t snag a virtual boarding pass to Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure at 7 a.m. or 1 p.m. could spend $9 per person for access to the ride Tuesday, and a place on Animal Kingdom’s Expedition Everest would cost them $7 each or time in the standby line.
Some visitors, like Tyra Anderson, said Genie+’s pricing seemed reasonable to them. Visiting the Magic Kingdom for the first time from Hermanville, Miss. with her family, 32-year-old Anderson had not purchased Genie+ Tuesday morning but said she was considering it to make their visit easier.
“It will definitely help take some of the edge off of the huge experience that is Disney World,” she said. “... We’ve seen the lines, so we know that it can get a bit hectic.”
She called the app “well put-together” and “very user-friendly,” but other Disney visitors felt differently.
Many at the parks Tuesday said Genie was difficult to navigate at first and reported having connection problems.
“It wasn’t super intuitive off the bat, but I kind of got the hang of it after a little bit,” said Daniel Mulinix, 28. “It wasn’t too bad. Going forward I think [it] would be easy.”
Some said they gave up on using the service after encountering technical issues.
Jocelyn Stockton, from Seattle, said she was frustrated Genie+ kept bumping the reserved times for her family of four to experience their booked attractions.
“I can’t plan my day if I don’t know the [reservation] time,” she said. “... It’s just confusing.”
At Hollywood Studios, some guests without Lightning Lane access reported waiting over three hours for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance after the ride went down in the afternoon. Some visitors using Lightning Lane said they still waited almost an hour.
Mulinix and his wife, Ariel, both of Bloomington, Indiana, got off the ride at 3:30 p.m. after entering the line at 2 p.m., when their Lightning Lane group was initially called.
Ariel Mulinix, 26, said she did not regret paying $15 each for the opportunity to bypass the line even though she had ridden the ride before. Her only concern about the Lightning Lane process came after an employee told the couple they were not guaranteed a refund if the ride stayed closed through the afternoon.
“It’s definitely worth it,” she said.
A Disney World spokesman who declined to be identified said Wednesday visitors would automatically receive a refund for individual Lightning Lane selections if a ride does not reopen for the rest of the day after a closure. If the ride reopens but a visitor is unable to ride due to individual circumstances, they would have to contact guest relations for a refund.
Samantha and Jay Markiewicz said they had a Lightning Lane reservation to board the ride at 11:50 a.m. when it stopped working, and they rejoined the line later in the afternoon only for the ride to shut down again. The couple, visiting from Detroit, waited another 45 minutes until they were finally able to ride for their first time.
“It was better than (waiting standby for) three hours,” Samantha Markiewicz, 28, said. “It was a little frustrating still, but at the end of the day, we just wanted to get on it. That was the most important thing.”
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