Jeremy is here to help you understand the new changes to Genie+ as it simply becomes Lightning Lane.
From Disney Parks Blog:
On July 24, Walt Disney World will introduce new, simpler names to provide more clarity for everyone. Disney Genie+ service will become Lightning Lane Multi Pass, while individual Lightning Lane will now be known as Lightning Lane Single Pass.
We will also be updating Lightning Lane passes to help you:
- Make Lightning Lane plans before you’re here, for added confidence.
- Choose your experiences and times prior to purchasing, so you know what you’re getting.
- Book Lightning Lane passes for multiple vacation days, all in a single day.
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First, gather your group's wish list for attractions and experiences. Make sure you've downloaded the My Disney Experience app and connect everyone in your travel group on your family and friends list. You can purchase Lightning Lane Passes beginning at 7am three days prior to your first park day. And if you're staying at a Disney Resort Hotel and other select hotels, even better! You can purchase Lightning Lane Passes seven days prior to your resort reservation check-in day. When you're ready to make your purchase, open the My Disney Experience app. Select the date and park. Whether you're purchasing a Lightning Lane multi-pass, single-pass, or both, you can make your group's initial selections for each day and one go. Get to the Magic Faster with a Lightning Lane Pass. Hello and welcome to a special edition episode of the Main Street Magic Podcast. I am your solo host today, Jeremy Stein. And I just wanted to put out a quick short episode to give everybody some updates on exactly what is happening to Jeannie Plus at Walt Disney World and Disney Land beginning on July 24th. I will mostly talk about Walt Disney World, of course. And Jeannie Plus service is now becoming Lightning Lane multi-passes. And the individual Lightning Lanes will now be known as Lightning Lane Single Pass. So if it wasn't confusing before, it will be now. So let's go through a couple of details and again, this will start with visits beginning on July 24th. You will now be able to make Lightning Lane plans before you head on your vacation. So you'll get to choose your experience and times prior to purchasing so you know exactly what you're getting. You can book Lightning Lane Passes for multiple vacation days all in a single day. So some of those major changes, not only the opportunity to book your rides or attractions prior to your visit, you will also be able to do that in one fell swoop. So you will be able to book your Lightning Lane multi-pass and your Lightning Lane Single Pass all at the exact same time, which is really nice. Another great feature with this new system is that you'll be able to see what is available as far as what attractions you can book under the Lightning Lane multi-pass, what times and blocks are available for the Lightning Lane Single Pass before you ever hit that buy button. So that part's really cool. One little thing to note before we dive into this a bit more is that virtual queues will not change at all. So Tron, Cosmic Rewind, those will remain at 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the day of. Of course, those now becoming Lightning Lane Single Pass as well. You can also purchase those in advance. So let's get into the details a little bit as broken down by Disney. So your Lightning Lane multi-pass, your Lightning Lane Single Pass. Lightning Lane multi-pass is what Gini Plus was when you purchase Gini Plus and then you made your individual Lightning Lane selections. That's now Lightning Lane multi-pass. Your individual Lightning Lane, which would include each of those rides at each of the four parks such as Tron, such as Cosmic Rewind, Rise of the Resistance and Flight of Passage will now be called your Lightning Lane Single Pass. Planning ahead, you will now be able to book these in advance up to seven days prior to your arrival for your entire stay up to 14 days. That is if you are a Disney Resort hotel guest and other select hotels, they will be eligible for that. If you are staying off property, you're not part of those Disney hotels or the select hotels, then you can do this three days in advance. One thing we don't know is, will these be blocked in a manner where if you are seven days out because you're staying on property, you can go ahead and book what you want. If all of those are booked up for that arrival day, by the time, for example, somebody who's three days out from that same arrival, because they're off property, will they all be gone? We don't know, will they say a certain percentage is left for seven days out a certain percentage for three days out, maybe another percentage for day off. Day of purchases for both what is now Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass will be available if they're available, so based on availability, they can sell out prior. So you're really probably going to want to get ahead of the game at first, especially when this first launches, and get your stuff booked ahead of time because otherwise it could be gone on the day that you're there and the day that you wake up to go ahead and do everything. All right, so planning ahead for your visit, you can choose up to three multi pass experiences at that time. Once you've enjoyed your first multi pass on that day, you can then make an additional selection. Of course that subject to availability, if that rider attraction is still available to actually book on your day up, but you will be able to hold those three multi pass experiences at a time. So seven days out or three days out, you book your three multi pass experiences. Those are tiered will talk about that here in a second. And you go to the park that day, you ride your first one, you still are holding on to two more, you can go ahead and book that fourth overall one, giving you three at a time so the days of 120 minutes, the two hours between booking, or, you know, having to ride that one attraction under the current situation is gone. You also be able to enjoy photo perks you get your digital downloads for select attraction photos, and you still get your Disney photo pass lenses, these are all things that were available in genie plus. Now if we talk about lightning lane single pass, you can save time by purchasing up to two single passes per day, that is subject to availability. In both of these if we go back your initial purchase for your multi pass those initial three will have to be at the same park. After you have ridden one ride you can then move around if you have park hopper and you're eligible to other parks. So we don't have a pricing structure yet on what's going to change but it looks like the single park or multi park may be gone. Lightning lane goes of course those two single day passes could book at multiple parks. So again let's just talk real quick about when you can purchase these passes. If you are a Disney resort, hotel guests, other select hotels that are included under that Disney umbrella seven days in advance of the stay, all other can purchase three days in advance. You are not required to purchase in advance, but you're subject to the availability on that day whether anything will be available. So three things you need to make sure you do, and this is nothing new, but let's just reiterate this to go ahead and purchase these type of lightning lane passes. First download the latest version of my Disney experience app, that's going to be extremely important is downloading downloading the latest version, because they are going to update the app. Connect everyone in your travel group on your family and friends within that app in the my Disney experience app. Go ahead and get your group's wish list for your attractions for your experiences. And then you can actually save the top picks in my Disney experience utilizing the my day feature so you know exactly what you want to book. Now remember everybody in your party must have valid theme park admission. Park reservations may also be required, depending on the type of admission the day of your visit. So those will still stand true pricing is going to change it's going to vary by date it's going to vary by park. I am a traction so again we're not completely sure if this is going to be a multi park a single park thing, but you're going to go ahead and go in and see what the price is ahead of time. And I still think what's great is that you get to actually see it before you press that purchase button. So you know the way it works right now is you would go in, you would want to purchase genie plus you pay for it. You have no idea what you're getting to book until that seven am would hit. And then you can go ahead and just hope for the best so that's great. One thing to know, and this is only three and seven days out if for some reason you cancel your vacation. This is non refundable. I'm sure that depending on the situation you can contact Disney see about having it refunded but they are stating that there are no refunds on this. If you change your plans change your mind you can modify your lightning lane selections in the my Disney experience app so you'll be able to go to your selected park or date in advance up until the moment you redeem your first lightning lane. You can change the selected experience and or arrival window in advance. Of course, all of this is subject to availability. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the lightning lane experiences which will fall under the multi pass, because much like when we go back this is this is basically fast pass plus paid. This is probably what they should have done from day one, genie plus has been around for I think less than three years now I believe October would be the three year anniversary. We knew these changes were coming that there was going to be the ability to book in advance but they've pretty much gone back to fast pass plus, so they should have just done this from beginning but anyway, let's talk about the tears. When you can book those three multi pass experiences and arrival windows ahead of time. So it does sound like you will be able to pick your arrival window it's not just going to place you and whatever is next. You can only choose one experience from the top tier at Magic Kingdom that includes Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Jungle Cruise, Peter Pan's flight, Space Mountain, and Tiana's by you adventure, everything else that would fall under the current genie plus is going to be in that next tier. And you can go ahead and pick at least two of those experiences. If you don't want one of the top tier experiences you can pick all three from that group of course single pass attractions not available with the multi pass will include seven doors mind train and Tron light cycle run. Let's move over to Epcot. One experience from the group which includes frozen ever after Remy's Ratatouille adventure, sort around the world, everything else falls into that additional group where you can pick, you know, two or three whatever you want. And then of course single pass attractions will still be guardians of the galaxy cosmic rewind moving over to Hollywood studios you can choose up to one experience from the group that includes Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run. Rock and roller coaster starring Aerosmith when it reopens on July 27 and Slinky Dog Dash, everything else falls into that other tier, and then finally an animal kingdom. There are no tears, which is pretty awesome so of course Avatar's flight of passage is going to fall into that lightning lane single pass. So there are no tears at animal kingdom, you can pick all three of any of the additional attractions and rides that are there. Only have a huge shout out to Scott Gustin at Scott Gustin GU STIN on Twitter, who put out who had questions, had a lot of great answers so I've combed through those so a lot of this information is coming from his Twitter feed. So as always Scott Gustin is such a great reliable trusted source by us here at Main Street Magic, make sure you definitely follow him on Twitter. One thing that is really important to note is that when these changes take effect on July 24 at Walt Disney World character meet and greets are no longer listed as lightning lane experiences. Of course those can change so what it's looking like right now is that those will be standby only as it stands now you will only be able to make one multi pass lightning lane reservation for the same ride in the same day. You want to ride expedition Everest twice within the same day using the multi pass you cannot you can only choose it once that's how things stand right now. Something interesting to note about those tears tears are only going to apply when you're pre booking so on the day of if you wake up and you're okay to book, you know, the multi pass because it's still available. It's not going to fall under that you know Magic Kingdom for example we can only pick one out of tier one. So you could go ahead and go back and pick all three rides out of that first tier, but again that will only happen on day of. Alright what about park hopping. Now you cannot book for multiple parks if you have a park hopper ticket when you are pre booking you can only pre book those three multi pass lightning lanes in one individual park. So as you use the first lightning lane on the day that you're there, your next selection can be in any park and at any tier that you want. Again as long as you're available to buy the multi level multi pass multi level lightning lane pat what are we going to call it I already forgot what it was lightning lane multi pass I think that's from fifth element. You're able to see the times ahead ahead of time so that seven days out that three days out you'll be able to see what's available before you ever purchase so I think that part is really nice because right now you're stuck you could buy genie plus nothing could be available that you wanted and you're just kind of out of luck. Now we had some questions about you know what happens if this change takes place during your trip so you're there from just a July 20 to July 28. You'll use genie plus the way that it stands up until July 23 beginning on July 24 you'll be able to book that day and then any additional days on your trip within that eligibility window. You're going to be able to go ahead and book using this new system. Very important to note because a lot of times people will travel in big groups or families but they don't always stay at the same place. Now if you all are staying on Disney property and one of the select Disney hotels, you're good to go nothing's really going to matter but if you have somebody staying on property and then you have somebody that is staying off property. Even if they're linked through my Disney experience. Only those guests that are on property can make that seven day pre booking selection. So you cannot have people on property people off property and book it seven days you could all book it three days out, but you'd have to split that up if you were staying on property and off property basically. Another thing to note is that it will hold your selections for a determined amount of time which we don't know yet before you check out. If you're familiar with the way it is now, you know, time is everything because you could look at going in and let's just say you're buying an individual lightning rain lane for cosmic rewind early in the morning before you hit the park. And you want to ride it somewhere between 10 and 11 a.m. you go in 10 and 11 a.m. is available by the time you click to actually book and pay. That slot has moved a guaranteed it's moved back. So you're not actually able to pick that 10 to 11 window. While you can still pick a window. A lot of times you're still stuck with how they push you back with genie plus in the standard lightning lanes. It's whatever's next. That's not going to apply to the way that it is now so if you go in you want to book cosmic rewind from 10 to 11. It's kind of like going and buying concert tickets online, you know, you select your seat and then you have that countdown that says like you got 15 minutes to hold your seat and hold your selection before we give it up. This is going to operate in that same way. So you have a little bit of time to take a deep breath and relax and as soon as you have locked in what you want, you're going to have some time to go ahead and check out without that changing, which is really, really cool. So I know that was a lot of information in a very short amount of time. All of this was just announced earlier today. So I did want to get some information out there because there is a lot of it. There's still a lot of unanswered questions. Again, if you really want in depth, go out to Twitter at Scott Gustin SCOTT G-U-S-T-I-N. He is answering a lot of additional questions, but I think this really covered the bulk of it. Of course, we'll learn more. We'll learn more about pricing. We are planning on going on July 27th for the opening of rock and roller coaster, the reopening, I should say. And so we will be utilizing this new system while we are there and we will be able to bring you some firsthand experience. So if you have additional questions, you can check out Scott Gustin's Twitter thread or go ahead and post them out in the Main Street Magic community on Facebook at Main ST Magic on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can ask questions and I will be more than happy to answer them. If I do not have an answer, I will certainly find it out for y'all. But thank you for tuning in. This was quick. This was brief, but I hope it covered all of the initial questions that we have with the new system, which now is just called lightning lane. So I think that was the most important thing. I probably left out at the beginning. Gini Plus is gone. There is no Gini Plus. Now, there still will be the free Gini service that helps you plan out your day, but this is now called lightning lane, and you will refer to these as multi pass and single pass. So in some ways that actually is a little bit clearer and a little bit easier to understand. But if you want to learn even more, of course, you can always go to our website, Main ST Magic.com. We have all the news posted there. Follow us on social. Of course, hit the subscribe button. You get brand new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, and then you get special editions like this. So again, if you have any questions, let me know. I will be happy to answer. Thank you all for listening, and we will definitely see you real soon.
