As with most things Disney in the last decade, they seem to be damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Pre-COVID people seem to forget that demand at Disney parks from 2015-2019 was simply unstoppable. Despite numerous ticket price increases and other cost adjustments, there seemed to be no end to the demand for both park attendance and on-site accommodations. "Slow" seasons virtually disappeared and Disney was blasted for the deteriorating guest experience in the face of increased costs and unbearable crowds during many times of the year.
I'm not sure exactly what Disney fans expect the company to do. We live in a demand/supply economy. What levers does Disney have other than creating new product segmentation and adjusting pricing to manage demand? The reality is that there seem to be plenty of people willing to spend increasing amounts of money on Disney experiences. Either they increase the costs to manage demand (either by decreasing it or evening it out throughout the year....or both) or they continue to spiral to an untenable guest experience.
I for one, don't think the Genie offering is all that bad.
For those willing to wait in traditional standby lines, the offering aims to better optimize your experience by looking at those things you want to do and making a suggested plan for the best way to do and see as much as possible (all for free).
For those that want to decrease wait times and are comfortable selecting certain attractions to attend and specify return times, $15/day gets you what was effectively the ORIGINAL Fastpass program (and is virtually identical to the Maxpass program in effect at
Disneyland for some time). There was NO END to the complaints about having to try to manage the crazy hoops necessary to schedule your Fastpasses 60-days ahead of time and the inflexibility. Now you can choose day-by-day and no need to plan so far in advance.
Finally, for those wanting to splurge on shorter waiting times for certain attractions, there is yet another paid upgrade option with individual Lighting Lane purchases. For all of these you can opt for just standby (or Boarding Group reservation) for FREE or try to get a time with
Genie+. To me this means there will only be an impact on the MOST in demand days....which to me is precisely what Disney needs to do right now.
Certainly COVID throws a very strange spanner into this whole approach....but I am betting the rapid demand return they saw as COVID restrictions were lifted made clear that if COVID continued to abate, demand would return more ferocious that the 2015-2019 period.
At the end of the day, I just don't know what people expect Disney to do. You can bet that if this does excessively decrease demand that they will make adjustments.