Disney Genie+ and ILL$ Details & FAQ - Launches 10/19 at WDW, Paid "FastPass" at WDW and Disneyland (date TBD)

[ChipnDale79]

Can I ask why? Just curious. I've stayed there twice over the last year and it was just as great as ever.

We've stayed a few times over the past couple of years, and we really liked it those times, even over some of the moderates.

Our room wasnt as clean as we were used to at Disney in the past, and i get it, Covid.
We asked for clean sheets one night as one of our kids had spilled a drink on the the bed after we got back from the park, we got them the next day in a pile just placed on our bed.
Smoking, i cant remember which building we stayed in this time, but the math path from the main building to our building they placed a smoking area right in the middle of it. Every time we walked that way, we had to walk through a cloud of smoke.
Transportation. Gondola went down for lighting, which i 100% get, but the confusion from the cast members on buses was an issue. I went to the front desk after we had been waiting on a bus for 20 minutes and was unsure if buses were actually running because they still had a sign up saying buses werent running because we would have to use the gondola. The front desk said buses were running. Another bus driver that stopped for EPCOT told me i need to go tell the front desk, when i told him i did, he said that i needed to do it again. Finally i told him that I didnt work at disney and they need to figure it out. Which they did.

finally price. its the most we paid at Pop ever, I just for whatever reason didnt think about the hotel rate when i booked and just paid attention to the package price, so thats my fault. My wife said, you realize we paid $250 a night to stay here, right? I honestly couldnt believe it, Pop is fun, but the level of hotel and the service we got this time, i was pretty mad at myself for paying that much.

We stayed at a hampton the night before we checked into disney after driving from NC, the room was literally half the price, bigger, and a lot cleaner.

If Hampton can keep their rooms clean during Covid, so can Disney.

I'll also note that we loved the Gondola system, but there are changes that can be made. We were leaving EPCOT one night and walked back to the international gateway to leave and we noticed the sign saying it was down. A cast member asked us where we were staying, i told them Pop, and she told us that only the line from epcot was down so we could walk to CBR from EPCOT if we wanted to catch the gondola there. You can't walk to CBR from EPCOT.

With all the tech they have, i wish they would send push notifications out letting you know that the Gondola is down.

 

[Moliphino]

But wasn't that the same with FP+? We had several times where the ADR and what was available for FP in advance didn't work. So, we had to skip. I get this is different but I think some people faced those choices with FP+ as well.

With FP+ you had 60 days to move things around and make it work.

 

[chefski]

With FP+ you had 60 days to move things around and make it work.

Have to agree ADR at 180 days the FP+ at 60 was easy to plan the start of every day and then maximise from then onward.

 

[Marionnette]

I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but from a business perspective the best solution to control overcrowding IS to charge more and take away perks. If you lower the crowds you can reduce (or level) your operating budget ... charge more and reduce perks and you also increase profits ... it's a win/win for Disney. A lot of folks need to come to terms that for short term corporate targets, guest satisfaction isn't very important unless it results in an insane mass exodus. And I don't see that happening ... just a shift in demographic to higher yield / higher paying guests who perceive a better experience due to lower crowds (think of the recent Halloween and upcoming X-mas Bash).

I'm not trying to break people's hearts ... and I'm still planning a WDW trip for next year ... but Chapek will do what he has to to keep the stock up and I don't think that will let guest satisfaction get in the way of maximizing guest yield ... otherwise small things like DME would still be around. People just really need realize this will probably be current Disney reality at least for the foreseeable future

Profit goes beyond the gate revenue. Guests who don't visit, don't book hotel rooms. They don't eat in restaurants and they don't buy merchandise. You can have fewer guests by raising gate prices until the masses are out-priced but then who will fill your restaurant seats and hotel beds? There's a reason why Disney doesn't do more to alleviate crowding. It's because crowded parks = more $$$ coming in elsewhere.

 

[igrsod]

Agreed. We could afford to pay for Genie +, for the individually priced rides. Heck, we could afford to pay for VIP tours. The point is, we won’t. The value is not there. Pricing Space Mountain individually—a 46 year old coaster—is absurd. I was committed to buying APs every other year for our family of five. We got good value out of them. FP+, coupled with the Aps and long dvc trips, allowed us to ride everything without a wait. Now in addition to their exorbitant AP rates, they want me to fork over more every time I enter a park, times five! Not going to happen. I’ll see what I do going forward—if we sell dvc or just alter our trips significantly. But Disney Genie will not get one penny out of our family. I suspect my spending will actually drop dramatically.

I feel the same way. I don't want to spend a dime on this. I feel like with a good plan, we can do what we want to do. We go every year with our DVC, so if we skip something this time, we will get it next time. Only two of our family have ridden ROR, and we've been a few times since it opened. We just always take each vacation as "we do what we do and don't worry about what we don't.... we will do it on a future trip". No one in our group is going to want to get up at 7am to get a jump on Genie+ and run to the parks for the entire day to feel like you've gotten the "value" out of your $15 upsell. We will just wait in line and enjoy our time together. I'm not going to spend extra for a busier, stressful, less enjoyable vacation.
Whenever I don't like something a company has done, I speak with my $. I won't be giving Disney my $ here... in fact I (and from what I see on these boards... many others), will be for the first time considering going to Universal for parts of our Disney trips. So in fact Disney will be getting less of my $.

 

[luv2cheer92]

We've stayed a few times over the past couple of years, and we really liked it those times, even over some of the moderates.

Our room wasnt as clean as we were used to at Disney in the past, and i get it, Covid.
We asked for clean sheets one night as one of our kids had spilled a drink on the the bed after we got back from the park, we got them the next day in a pile just placed on our bed.
Smoking, i cant remember which building we stayed in this time, but the math path from the main building to our building they placed a smoking area right in the middle of it. Every time we walked that way, we had to walk through a cloud of smoke.
Transportation. Gondola went down for lighting, which i 100% get, but the confusion from the cast members on buses was an issue. I went to the front desk after we had been waiting on a bus for 20 minutes and was unsure if buses were actually running because they still had a sign up saying buses werent running because we would have to use the gondola. The front desk said buses were running. Another bus driver that stopped for EPCOT told me i need to go tell the front desk, when i told him i did, he said that i needed to do it again. Finally i told him that I didnt work at disney and they need to figure it out. Which they did.

finally price. its the most we paid at Pop ever, I just for whatever reason didnt think about the hotel rate when i booked and just paid attention to the package price, so thats my fault. My wife said, you realize we paid $250 a night to stay here, right? I honestly couldnt believe it, Pop is fun, but the level of hotel and the service we got this time, i was pretty mad at myself for paying that much.

We stayed at a hampton the night before we checked into disney after driving from NC, the room was literally half the price, bigger, and a lot cleaner.

If Hampton can keep their rooms clean during Covid, so can Disney.

I'll also note that we loved the Gondola system, but there are changes that can be made. We were leaving EPCOT one night and walked back to the international gateway to leave and we noticed the sign saying it was down. A cast member asked us where we were staying, i told them Pop, and she told us that only the line from epcot was down so we could walk to CBR from EPCOT if we wanted to catch the gondola there. You can't walk to CBR from EPCOT.

With all the tech they have, i wish they would send push notifications out letting you know that the Gondola is down.

Dang, a whole lot of bad luck. Sorry to hear that. I didn't experience any of those things in August or Feb, but I also didn't pay anywhere near that much. About 110 and 160 a night each trip (or any of my multiple Pop trips over the years).
I definitely agree about a notification when the gondola goes down! Somehow I've yet to have that happen, but I have no doubt it will at some point. And can definitely see that being frustrating.

 

[cakebaker]

I think the price point is too low and this won’t really decrease wait times unless they really hold back stand by and let the lightening guests through.

I have no doubt it will operate much like FP did and they will allow a big percenage of loading to the LP line.

While I think $15 is a minimal amount, there seem to be an awful lot of people balking at the idea of $15. Only time will tell if they're going to follow the normal pattern of complaining, swearing they'll never use it and then when at the parks, but it anyway. Personally, I would've preferred a higher price point with easier access, more like Universal did. But the answer for Disney, if the LP lines don't move with the same speed as FP will be to slow down standby more and allow LP lines to move faster. They're not going to have people paying for their new system only to find out they're in long lines anyway. It will be standby that suffers.

 

[Matthew Caito]

I would imagine the majority of people are going to buy it. Especially those who only once or twice a lifetime.

I do not think Disney Genie was created for the once-in-a-lifetime family. Josh D'Amara is even quoted as saying it's designed for the Disney superfan. Which I imagine are every year to multiple times a year people. All its doing is making us super fans more upset. From Insidethemagic.net "As D’Amaro said, the Disney Genie will provide a suite of products that will make the experience better and is operating in the best interest of Disney’s “super fans”.

 

[cakebaker]

Our room wasnt as clean as we were used to at Disney in the past, and i get it, Covid.
We asked for clean sheets one night as one of our kids had spilled a drink on the the bed after we got back from the park, we got them the next day in a pile just placed on our bed.

This was pretty much our experience at FW cabins only we got no clean sheets, no emptying of trash ( even though we were told on the 4th day we were scheduled for it) and when we finally did get towels, they were thrown on the kitchen table as though they had just opened the door and tossed them in.

We paid near $500 a night and it was ridiculous to put up with dirty floors, no trash service and thowing basic neccesities in the room for us to deal with.

 

[HopperFan]

I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but from a business perspective the best solution to control overcrowding IS to charge more and take away perks. If you lower the crowds you can reduce (or level) your operating budget ... charge more and reduce perks and you also increase profits ... it's a win/win for Disney. A lot of folks need to come to terms that for short term corporate targets, guest satisfaction isn't very important unless it results in an insane mass exodus. And I don't see that happening ... just a shift in demographic to higher yield / higher paying guests who perceive a better experience due to lower crowds (think of the recent Halloween and upcoming X-mas Bash).

I'm not trying to break people's hearts ... and I'm still planning a WDW trip for next year ... but Chapek will do what he has to to keep the stock up and I don't think that will let guest satisfaction get in the way of maximizing guest yield ... otherwise small things like DME would still be around. People just really need realize this will probably be current Disney reality at least for the foreseeable future

It was explained to me years ago by an insider that TICKETS aka "gate" covers the cost of operating the parks. That must be covered and reducing operating budget is really only possible with less Cast Members working. The parks running is fairly fixed. Remember, much of the parks runs non-stop 24/7. It just isn't a normal operating business model.

Where Disney makes it's money in the parks is sales; dining, snacks, shopping, upsells etc. If people pay too much more for their ticket, they will spend less. If less people are in the park, sales are lower. The most profitable option is to let in as many people as they can before it backfires on them. I don't see them ever reducing capacity deliberately no matter what they say their reasoning for ticket prices is, they will push the envelope on ticket prices as far as they can until they see it reduce the sales in the parks.

Perhaps the reason Genie+ is lower than expected is that they want as many people as possible buy it WITHOUT giving up on other spending. If it's too high than people will see it as more important than those spirit jerseys or dining with Pooh. They want guests to do both, buy both. They will always have to maintain tickets sales while finding every way to keep in park spending as high as possible. They are never going to work towards a lower attendance than capacity. They build what they build to increase capacity and demands.

 

[Moliphino]

I do not think Disney Genie was created for the once-in-a-lifetime family. Josh D'Amara is even quoted as saying it's designed for the Disney superfan. Which I imagine are every year to multiple times a year people. All its doing is making us super fans more upset. From Insidethemagic.net "As D’Amaro said, the Disney Genie will provide a suite of products that will make the experience better and is operating in the best interest of Disney’s “super fans”.

 

[HuskieJohn]

It was explained to me years ago by an insider that TICKETS aka "gate" covers the cost of operating the parks. That must be covered and reducing operating budget is really only possible with less Cast Members working. The parks running is fairly fixed. Remember, much of the parks runs non-stop 24/7. It just isn't a normal operating business model.

Where Disney makes it's money in the parks is sales; dining, snacks, shopping, upsells etc. If people pay too much more for their ticket, they will spend less. If less people are in the park, sales are lower. The most profitable option is to let in as many people as they can before it backfires on them. I don't see them ever reducing capacity deliberately no matter what they say their reasoning for ticket prices is, they will push the envelope on ticket prices as far as they can until they see it reduce the sales in the parks.

Perhaps the reason Genie+ is lower than expected is that they want as many people as possible buy it WITHOUT giving up on other spending. If it's too high than people will see it as more important than those spirit jerseys or dining with Pooh. They want guests to do both, buy both. They will always have to maintain tickets sales while finding every way to keep in park spending as high as possible. They are never going to work towards a lower attendance than capacity. They build what they build to increase capacity and demands.

100% correct but by doing this WDW will actually make more money.

The profit % on G+ and LL is going to be near 100% where as dining with Pooh involves more CMs, variable of food prices & upkeep of the restaurant.

I still think the demand for G+ and LL is going to be HUGE and they are in for a rough few months of no G+ selections available and LL sold out all by lunch...until they raise their prices.

 

[middlechild]

A long time ago, more than a decade, a questionnaire at the exit started this. The big question, there were many, was how many headliner rides made a good trip? The answer, in aggregate, was three. Then the Fast Pass lane came into the picture, and limited free passes appeared. At the same time, the max attendance limit was raised. Standby lines grew, and not only because there was now one lane for them. But as long as people got three good rides, they didn't care. With these extended standby lines, most got more than three experiences. What I am wondering is for those that do not buy into Genie+, or those who don't have MDE, or those who don't have smart phones period, how do they get the three rides? Has Disney totally moved away from this demographic and now target the twentysomethings with no kids and self-centered view of everything, and lots of disposable income? (I think old age is reached when it dawns that you are no longer the target demographic, for anything)

 

[elmwyn]

Disney doesn't want fewer crowds...they want fewer people entering their parks who don't make a "minimum spend" (like an AP) - if they get the minimum spend, they'll stuff those parks like a turkey on Thanksgiving...

Yeah, I think people read certain comments in a much more charitable way than intended. Oh they don't want to 'pack' the parks? They care about our wait times! ... And I think it was far more about not aggressively courting the discount and value seekers like they did before. Provide less on the APs, fewer Free Dining promotions etc. I generally travel when I can get Canadian ticket AND room discounts. Pretty sure those days are over (until they get desperate.)

If they really wanted to make an effort to drop attendance the first thing they would do is change pricing structure on the ticket packages. (But that fills their hotels, so they won't.)

 

[ChipnDale79]

This was pretty much our experience at FW cabins only we got no clean sheets, no emptying of trash ( even though we were told on the 4th day we were scheduled for it) and when we finally did get towels, they were thrown on the kitchen table as though they had just opened the door and tossed them in.

We paid near $500 a night and it was ridiculous to put up with dirty floors, no trash service and thowing basic neccesities in the room for us to deal with.

It's the little things that go a long ways. Its hard to blame this all on Covid, because even before Covid, they were cutting back on some mousekeeping services.

Look, if Disney were struggling (pre pandemic), i get it, but all of these costs cutting measures were done to pad profit. To me it looked tacky.

 

[ChipnDale79]

Dang, a whole lot of bad luck. Sorry to hear that. I didn't experience any of those things in August or Feb, but I also didn't pay anywhere near that much. About 110 and 160 a night each trip (or any of my multiple Pop trips over the years).
I definitely agree about a notification when the gondola goes down! Somehow I've yet to have that happen, but I have no doubt it will at some point. And can definitely see that being frustrating.

Those are the price points i remembered paying as well, so that was one of the reasons why i got upset.

 

[Sandisw]

Somewhat, but we always had our ADRs booked at 180, and when FPs were available at 60 days, I was able to get the FPs we wanted, and easily work around the ADRs

We had a lot of trouble…but then it may have had to do with the fact that we don’t do parks morning until night. We also didn’t plan meals that far out either.

It will be interesting to see how people make it work.

 

[BrianL]

Disney is out of there f**ken minds…this is a classic example of executives getting ahold of a product and squeezing every last penny out of it until their is nothing left.

And anyone who says they see value in this garbage can spare me the lecture.

reality is Disney isn’t offering some new unique experience. They are recycling the same 30 year old attractions that I’ve been on a million times. Nothing like putting lipstick on a pig. Nickel and diming everyone to death. It’s disgusting.

I’m a diehard Disney fan, visiting 6-7 times in the last 2-3 years; spending tens of thousands of dollars. I make well into the six figures, no kids, no mortgage, no bills. Im the quintessential Disney guest to spend money but enough is enough.

I’d have more respect for them if they came out and were honest. Something like…”hey guest experiences hinge heavily on park attendance. From here on out we are cutting attendance but to offset the loss we are raising prices.”

Atleast I’d get it…and probably be willing to pay for it. Disney has lost me here. This is pure and utter garbage.

The hilarious part is even with Disney + as an additional revenue stream there stock still struggles to surpass pre covid ATH’s.

good luck cheapek

While you have valid points, one thing you have incorrect is that Disney is out of their minds. The fact is, the demand is so high right now that people will pay for this system. People pay for similar services at other parks. People will show up in droves and pay 20 bucks to ride Rise of the Resistance. They could sell every boarding gorup every day at that price in seconds. That is our fault, not theirs. It definitely stinks for the consumer, but they are hardly out of their minds.

 

[Sandisw]

With FP+ you had 60 days to move things around and make it work.

Fair point. I can see those you did a lot of planning in advance being able to make it work this way.

 

[disneydreamer781]

Thank you. I've been reading through wondering this.

Do you, or anyone else know if it is something we can just purchase day of, from our app? This may be answered further into the thread - hopefully.

19. Do I have to purchase Genie+ for the entire length of my trip?
If purchased as part of a vacation package ahead of your visit, Genie+ is purchased for the entire length of the stay at $15 per ticket per day.
If not purchased ahead of time, Genie+ can be added on a day-by-day basis.

I'm assuming the highlighted text to mean that it can be added anytime before you use your ticket. Again, I'm just assuming and we all know what to ***-U-ME can mean. No offense but it's a quote from a movie and I just couldn't help myself.