Disneyland Tips and Tricks for the non Magic Key Holder (Part 2- Genie+)

This is part of a 4 part series. You can find the full series of posts here:

Part 1: Navigating the Parks

Part 2: Genie+

Part 3: Things I used a lot in the Parks

Part 4: Ways to save money at Disneyland

Now that we addressed park reservations, parking, and just general tips, we can get a little bit more specific into the Genie+ system. It's a little confusing, but Genie+ is Disney's new version of their old "max pass" which is was a digital way to use the traditional "fast pass"(now called "lightning lane"), their line that gave priority access. If your goal is to go on as many rides as possible, especially the roller coaster type rides, and you're going on a higher crowd day, it's probably in your best interest to get one. They are $30-$35 per person per day. You can add it to your ticket at point of purchase, often at a slight discount, but if you don't, you need to wait until you are scanned into the parks to add it (you can't decide to add it at home later that day and before your trip). If you get a 3 day pass, you can only add the Genie+ service to all 3 days if you want to buy at the point of purchase of your passes. Because of this, we decided not to add it when we bought our tickets, and waited until we were at the parks and could add day by day, as we didn't feel we needed the service all 3 days.

Genie+ allows you to book lightning lanes (priority access lines), one ride at a time, on the Disneyland app on your phone. It gives you a specific return time (you don't get to choose) and you (and whoever you booked in your party, each person has to pay) scan in with your app and get to enjoy a much shorter and faster line. As soon as you scan into the ride, you can book another lightning lane pass. Genie+ gives you access to all lightning lanes, except (as of 1/2024) Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (Disneyland) and Radiator Springs Racers (California Adventures), which only have individual lightning lanes (ILL). If you want to have access to those individual lighting lanes, you need to pay an additional fee, per person, which seem to range from $16-$26 for the one ride. I wasn't about to pay that, but if you feel your time is worth more than that, and you're there for a very limited time, it's an option.

Depending on when you book your lightning lanes and the times available, you can hold multiple lightning lane passes at once! Also, don't forget to get in the virtual queue for World of Color at 12:00 pm!

Here are the Genie+ rules:

1. As stated above, you choose 1 ride at at time, and can choose your next ride as soon as you scan into the lightning lane that you currently hold.

2. You can book as early as 1 hour before park opening without being scanned into the parks if you purchased Genie+ with your ticket (I cannot confirm this, since I didn't buy it with my ticket, but I did read it in my research). If you buy Genie+ on the day of, once you're scanned into the parks, you can book right away, even if the park has not officially opened yet (i.e. you can book a lightning lane at 7:32 am even if the park opens at 8). This gives you a head start, and once you ride, you can book again, or if your return time isn't until 10:00, you can book 2 hours later at 9:32.

3. If your return time is not until a lot later (this often happens starting in the afternoon, because the lightning lane return times get booked up, and may even run out, so you may be waiting hours for your next ride that you really want to go to), you can book another lightning lane 2 hours after you booked your last one, regardless if you've scanned into your ride or not. In doing this, you may hold multiple lightning lane passes at once. You can also modify your selection (if you changed your mind about a ride) without restarting your 2 hour clock. Definitely set your phone alarm for the next time you're allowed to book so you can restart the clock ASAP. The Disneyland app will also push notifications to your phone if you allow it.

4. If for some reason, your Lightning Lane pass gets canceled (i.e. ride breaks down for the day, closes early), your pass will change to a multi-experience pass that you can use for other rides! Some may have limitations though, so read through it, but often times you can go on other more preferred rides. This is what happened with our Monster's Inc Lightning Lane- so we ended up going on Goofy's Sky School again which the kids loved.

5. Certain rides have lightning lane times that tend to run out faster than others. These include Indiana Jones, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway (Disneyland) and Toy Story Midway Mania (California Adventures). If you want to go on these rides I suggest you book them earlier than later.

6. Grace periods for lightning lanes are: you can scan in 5 minutes before your time, and 15 minutes after your time, so you really have an hour and 20 minute window. If you miss your time you can try to talk to a cast member, but the device will not scan you in.

I found it most efficient to go immediately to the rides that only had ILL (Rise of the Resistance, Radiator Spring Racers) since lines tend to be shortest in the morning if you are rope dropping, while trying to book a lightning lane for a ride starting at around 9 am (if it was an 8 am opening). That way I could complete the first ride without paying for the ILL, and then my first lightning lane was available immediately after. After scanning in, I'd book the next one. In the morning, there's a good chance you can go from one ride to another on lightning lanes but that significantly decreases as the day goes on. I didn't find this an issue though, as there are lots of rides that don't have lightning lanes so we would wait in the regular standby lines for those as we waited for our times, or if there were 2 big ticket rides next to each other (i.e. Webslingers and Guardians of the Galaxy), we would get a lightning lane for one, and wait in standby line for the other so we weren't running all over the park (we did have 4 kids with us after all).

The system seems a bit overwhelming to use, but it's actually pretty self explanatory once you see everything in the app. I'd recommend that you search on youtube to see what the interface actually looks like, if you want to be ready to go once you're in the parks- I did and it was really helpful to know what to expect!

I hope this helps give a good overview. I was pretty confused before doing my research and didn't find all this information all in one place, so hopefully it helps you have a smoother and more efficient time at Disneyland/California Adventures!

If you want to see a complete list of what we did those 3 days, check out my post here!