ParkMagic Podcast: Insider Tips To Plan Your Disneyland Adventure

Genie Plus at Disneyland for Dummies: A Guide to Lightning Lanes for Normal People

• Robyn from ParkMagic

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If Genie Plus and Lightning Lanes seems overwhelming, it isn't just you!   In this episode I break down the essentials you need to know about Genie Plus and Lightning Lanes to make sure you:

  1. Know if you really need Genie Plus
  2. How to use the program
  3. Strategies you can use without a lot of knowledge or research into the parks

Right now, our tools are just for Disneyland, but we hope to expand to other parks soon. Disney changes policies, prices, and shows often. Be sure to visit our website at Parkmagic.com or Disneyland's Website for more information.

Park Magic is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or Disney Enterprises, Inc. Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Mickey Mouse are all registered trademarks of Disney Enterprises, Inc. Any use of third-party names or trademarks is for identification purposes only and does not imply, nor is it intended to imply, any affiliation with, endorsement from, or business relationship with any third party, including with Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Park Magic Podcast, your place for insider tips for your next Disneyland adventure. Whether you're a first-timer or first-time-in-a-while visitor, we're here to unwrap the secrets to creating and simplifying your dream Disneyland vacation.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to this episode of the Park Magic Podcast, and today we're going to be talking about something that is an amazing tool for your trip. It is a little costly, but it can definitely make or break your trip, especially if you love thrill rides. Today we're going to be breaking down Genie Plus for Disneyland for normal people.

Speaker 2:

I have my friend Erin here, and Erin is one of my friends that is not a Disney fan and I know normally I bring guests on that have a lot of expertise in going to Disneyland. The reason that I have somebody who's specifically not a Disney fan on today is because she's never used Genie Plus. I don't even know if she's ever even used a FastPass way back and before she doesn't go to Disneyland maybe once or twice. And I'm having her on today to make sure that when I'm explaining this I don't accidentally use Disney vernacular or acronyms. So a lot of Disney adults will say DCA, we just expect that. You know that we mean California Adventure. So she's going to help make sure that I don't skip over anything like that. And then she's going to ask questions that maybe somebody who's a non-Disney adult might ask where maybe you know, if you don't go to Disney all the time, you might not know why this is important. And then she's also going to make sure that it's really clear when you can skip Genie Plus and the basics of how it works. So she might stop me and repeat and ask a question.

Speaker 2:

Being on the show today is because the whole point of this podcast in general is to make sure that people who don't normally come to Disneyland all the time can still have the magic and benefits as if they were coming with a Disneyland expert.

Speaker 2:

There are some things in this episode that I'm going to repeat a couple times, because Genie Plus is way more complicated than it needs to be, and so there's a couple things that I'm going to repeat just because they're important and that might help kind of solidify things in your mind.

Speaker 2:

The other thing I want to say before I introduce Erin, is that there are things about Genie Plus that you know, if you are somebody who digs into things really deeply and you want to master it, or if you go to Disneyland all the time, that, yes, there are strategies that might yield you a slightly better result, but they require a lot of knowledge about the parks. They require a lot of knowledge about how the program works, and the goal today is to make sure that you can use GeniePlus, that you get a great benefit out of the money that you would spend on it, without feeling like you need to study for three or four hours on it, without feeling like you need to study for three or four hours. So, erin, thank you so much for coming on to make sure I don't slide into some of those Disneyland adults things where sometimes we forget what people who don't normally come to the parks might not already know.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no problem, my pleasure. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 2:

Let me start out by what GeniePlus is. A long time ago there used to be a thing called Fast Passes and they basically allow you to wait outside the line, so you basically are making a reservation. So GeniePlus is the new version of what used to be called access. At Disneyland you get access to PhotoPass photographers, so they have people in front of the castles that will take pictures of you. There are some like fun, like photo filter lenses for your camera and some like audio history things that are available.

Speaker 2:

But the big thing that people are buying when they buy Genie Plus is they're buying a bundle of lightning lanes, and a lightning lane is basically there's the regular standby lane, so Disney calls the regular line a standby line and then they call this paid line a lightning lane, and a lightning lane is basically a shorter and faster moving line. So if you have the standby line and the lightning lane, when they are letting people into the ride they might let 10 or 20 people in the lightning lane through for every one person that they let in the standby lane. Even if they have the same number of people in line, the lightning lane is going to go faster. So in general with a lightning lane you're going to wait anywhere from 5 to 15, 20 minutes on average. Sometimes it will go longer, sometimes it might be 30 minutes or so, but on average 5 or 15 minutes. So the way that I kind of like to explain this is if you were going to go get your nails done, you could either walk into the nail salon and you could sit and they would tell you how long you could wait. You might get right in, but you might have to wait 30 minutes because there might not be a spot available. Or, but you might have to wait 30 minutes because there might not be a spot available. Or you can call ahead and make a reservation and then you might still have to wait a little bit, but you're not going to have to wait the same amount of time. That makes sense, right? Yeah, that's perfectly clear, okay, so the thing about Lightning Lanes is they're only available on select rides. At Disney World almost all of the rides have Lightning L lanes. At Disneyland it's primarily thrill rides, so things like roller coasters, some rides like Haunted Mansion, small World, things along those lines. But because some of these attractions are, so they've been around so long, there isn't physically a place for that lightning lane to happen, so it's only on select rides. So you have to think about what rides are the ones that you want to ride, and it's only on select rides. So you have to think about what rides are the ones that you want to ride, and it's mostly thrill rides.

Speaker 2:

When you purchase Nanny Plus, you can, with any lightning lane you can ride one time, so one ride per attraction. So while you have access to lightning lanes for the day, you can only ride Space Mountain one time. Now there is an exception we're going to talk about at the very end, but in general you can only make a reservation for that ride one time and you're going to schedule a reservation window. So when you go in the app, when you get to the park, one attraction at a time, you're going to schedule a return time. So you'll say I want to ride Space Mountain and they'll say, great, the next available spot is from 10.05 to 11.05. That make sense, yep, okay.

Speaker 2:

So the thing about Genie Plus is, if you don't know how to do it and you aren't kind of watching some of the things that we're going to be talking about, you might not get as much of a value out of it. So sometimes I'll see people post where they purchased Genie Plus and they were only able to book maybe two to five rides and in fact Disney kind of says that's what you should expect about two to five attractions. But if you really know how the system works, you can get a lot more. In fact, most days I've used Genie Plus, I can get anywhere from 15 to sometimes even more than 20 in a day. Knowing how the system works really gives people a huge advantage, which isn't fair right, because it feels like the people that go to Disneyland all the time they don't need to ride 20 attractions in a day. The person that saved up their you know, for three years to go to this trip should be able to have access to that. So what I want to do today is help get you as many lightning lanes as possible in a day without feeling like you have to study or have quizzes to understand. But I did make a quiz to make sure that you have understand. I'm going to include that in the show notes, but basically that's going to be what I'm going to walk you through today. Thank you, okay. So how GeniePlus helps you is like so let's take Space Mountain, for example. Space Mountain or Indiana Jones might have an average line length of like 75 to maybe even an hour and a half wait each day. It might take three or four days to get what you could do in one or two days and it will save you hours in line, which gives you a chance to experience more things each day. So it can really really help and especially if you're somebody who likes to go on those rides and doesn't like standing in line, it can really make your trip a lot more fun, because GeniePlus is a paid service.

Speaker 2:

First I want to talk about how you buy GeniePlus, because there's two ways you can buy it. You can purchase GeniePlus with your ticket and if you purchase it with your ticket, you have to buy it for the entire trip. So if you're doing a three-day ticket, you can't buy it for just one or two days. You have to buy it for all three days. But you're locked in at the lowest price available. So right now that's $30 per day. So let's say you did a three-day ticket for four people. That would be $90 times four. So that would be $360 for four people. When you purchase your ticket it will say two-day park hopper with GeniePlus. If it says with GeniePlus, that means you purchased it with your ticket. If you didn't purchase with your ticket or you're not sure, if you want to use Genie Plus, then you can purchase it once you get to the park, and this is different than Disney World. At Disney World you can purchase it at like 7 in the morning. At Disneyland you have to wait until you've actually scanned your ticket and you walk through the turnstiles and you're inside one of the parks. Then you can purchase Genie Plus.

Speaker 2:

The nice thing is you can decide depending on how busy that day is or what you want to accomplish. You can purchase GeniePlus for just that one day. I, when I go, I usually will only purchase GeniePlus for maybe one or two of the three days that we're there Because you know, usually by that time we've written everything that we really want to write on and so it can. You can save you money there If you're going on days that are really busy. So think about any day where everybody is out of school, like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Then the price for GeniePlus will vary. So it could be anywhere from about $40 is the highest I've ever seen it, but it wouldn't be out of the question for that to raise over time, so you might be paying more per day if you wait until the park to purchase it, but it does give you some flexibility to see if you need it each day. Does that make sense? Yeah, any questions there? No, not yet.

Speaker 2:

We talked about how Genie Plus is like a bundle of lightning. There are two attractions at Disneyland one in Disneyland and one in California Adventure that are so popular they're not even included in the bundle. For those you can only buy them by themselves and they're kind of expensive. They can be anywhere from $15 to $40 for just that one ride and that's Rise of the Resistance in Galaxy's Edge, just a Star Wars ride, and Radiator Springs Racers, which is in Cars Land with. They're both amazing rides, they're both super fun and they both always have really long waits. So the average wait time for those is usually at least an hour and a half. I've seen both of them get up to three or four hours. That's rare now, because they've both been out for a while and they both break down a lot. That's rare now because they've both been out for a while and they both break down a lot. So if that, if one of those rides, is something that you really want to do. You really want to try to target doing that before, maybe like one or two in the afternoon. So with those rides you can buy those individually by themselves. All other lightning lanes that are available you cannot buy individually. You have to buy the bundle or none at all. So there's the individual Lightning Lanes, the Witcher 2 rides, rises of the Resistance and Radiator Springs, racers. Those are bought individually, where you buy the Lightning Lane by itself. All the rest of the Lightning Lanes are sold as a bundle but are not available individually.

Speaker 2:

Now we're going to get into like do you actually need Genie Plus? So I built a quiz that will tell you. So it goes through a couple of things. So if you go into the show notes, I have a link in there. That's like do you need Genie Plus quiz. And what we did is we looked at a couple of things so how many days that you're in the park. So if you're in the park only one day, you might you know if you really have a lot of rides you want to do. Waiting in an hour, two hour ride for maybe three or four rides would significantly make it. So you would not be able to ride as many rides at all. We also looked at like when are you going to visit? So like there's sometimes we know are going to be really, really busy. So Christmas, thanksgiving, spring break, summer is busier but not as busy as those other ones. And so we look at kind of what we anticipate these, the time you're going to be visiting, how busy it is.

Speaker 2:

The other thing we need to think about is if you are traveling with somebody that's under, especially under, 40 inches. If you are the only adult, then you're not going to be able to ride a lot of those rides. So Disneyland has a rule where kids have to be seven years old to ride a ride by themselves and they have to be 14 years old to take somebody on a ride that's under the age of seven. So let's say you're a single parent and you are bringing your six-year-old and your two-year-old. If your two-year-old is not tall enough or doesn't want to ride some of those roller coasters, if you have a six-year-old, they would not be able to ride those rides by themselves. So you wouldn't be able to have access to all of those thrill rides where they don't meet the height restrictions. So but if you're going with two adults. Then you can use Genie Plus and there's a special program called the Rider Switch program. It's also sometimes people call it the child swap program where basically, let's say, it's me, my husband, my 13 year old and a two year old, then I can wait with my two year old and my husband and my teenager can ride. Then, once they get off, then there's a special pass that you get when you check in for this program. Then I could ride with my teenager while my husband watched the two-year-old.

Speaker 2:

We have to think about you know how many people, what kind of rides you're going. Are you going to be able to ride the rides that have a height restriction? I don't know if that makes sense at all. Okay, yeah. And then there's some rides that save you a lot of time, and then there's some rides that save you, like, almost no time. So sometimes, like there's, there's a couple of rides where the lines are usually not that long. So with the exception of Christmas, small world doesn't usually have a very long line. So while there is a lightning lane for that, there are times where you might end up waiting the same exact amount of time as if you had not used the lightning lane at all.

Speaker 2:

So we look at what rides you want to ride. So some of the rides that save you the most time, like, for example, disneyland, would be like Space Mountain, indiana Jones, big Thunder Mountain. So we look at how popular we know some of these rides are and how long the lines are, to kind of anticipate that to you, and then we kind of say, like it is avoiding lines that most important to you. Just do you just want to see the food or do you want to see shows? And we kind of calculate a score, kind of like what Harry Potter house are to tell you whether or not you need lightning wings or whether or not you think it would benefit to you.

Speaker 2:

But in general you'll get the most out of Genie Plus if you're planning on arriving early to the park. So if you're planning on not getting to Disneyland until like after 11 or noon each day, then Genie Plus might be more difficult for you. You won't be able to get as many passes. And then if you are going to go during a really quiet time of year where maybe the lines won't be as long there's not very many times like that anymore. But and then the other thing is, you know, do you want to ride the rides that Genie Plus has like feelings for? And are the people in your group tall enough to ride the rides that youie Plus has Lightning Lanes for? And are the people in your group tall enough to ride the rides that you'll get the best bang for your buck?

Speaker 2:

If that makes sense, yeah, so the way that we get the most Lightning Lanes is trying to get to the park as soon as the park opens and making sure that every time you're eligible to book a new ride, you book that ride as soon as possible, even if that means, like, booking them from your hotel room. Like, let's say, I'm a big fan of the Disney nap. If you go to take that Disney nap, then even while you're at your hotel, continuing to book your next lightning lanes to make sure that you are able to book as many as possible. And then what we're going to do is we're going to book the rides with the longest waits and the ones that book the farthest out first. So remember how I said, small World doesn't normally have a long line. If the park opens at eight o'clock, you get into the park right at eight o'clock and you book your first lightning lane and you'll see, space Mountain and Small World will both have a return time of like 9.05 or 9.10 or 9.30. They'll both be the same but the closer you get to the middle or the afternoon of the day. So if we were to say at like one o'clock and you were to look, small world might have a return time of 1.45, or Space Mountain might have the closest return time might be 11.45 that night, which is really late, right, and you might not want to stay in the park that late. So what we want to do is we want to book the rides that end up, kind of like booking out the farthest. We want to book them early so you don't feel like you're having to be stuck at the park. But also sometimes they run out. So sometimes you know once they hit all the lightning lanes there's a finite amount per day, so sometimes you can catch one that cancels. But if you want, if, like you know that space mountain is a ride you really want to ride, we want to book those first so you don't end up missing out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, with genie plus, remember it's a shorter, faster moving line. It's only available on select rides, mostly thrill rides. You get one ride per attraction, you'll get a one hour reserve time. That's what you're going to kind of. Reserve is a one hour reservation window and you can write any time within that one hour window. In fact, they give you like a five minute grace time before and about 10 or 15 minutes afterwards, but you can only schedule one ride at a time and then you have to wait till your next eligibility and then you want to book that ride as soon as you're eligible. One thing to remember is because we talked about that, space Mountain might not be available till much later. The order that you book the rides in, so you might book Space Mountain first, the order that you book the rides in, so you might book Space Mountain first and then Indiana Jones second, or vice versa. But you actually might end up riding them in a very different order because of when you get that reservation window.

Speaker 2:

When you purchase Genie Plus this is my recommendation when you get into the park, as soon as you scan into the park and you walk through the turnstiles, you're going to book your first Lightning Lane and you're going to book your first lightning lane and then you're going to book as soon as eligible. So with lightning lanes. This is where it gets a little complicated. You book your first one and then you're eligible to book your next lightning lane after you ride that first ride or after two hours, whichever happens first. If you were to book a ride that is more than two hours away, your reservation hour is more than two hours away. You don't have to wait until that reservation window to book your next lightning lane. You'd be able to book after two hours. It can be a little complicated and overwhelming for people to try to figure out when this is, so I'm going to say don't worry about that as much, just know that it's two hours or when you book your, or when you scan in and ride your for your your lightning lane, whichever comes first. But the best way to do this is to, just as you book, it will tell you when you're eligible to book your next attraction and then every time you use a light, you use your ticket to scan in at a lightning lane attraction. Then what you're going to do is you're just going to check the app to see when you're eligible to book. What you might even want to do is have somebody else kind of help. You manage this by setting alarms to kind of remind you to book if it's going to be more than two hours away.

Speaker 2:

The reason we want to make sure we get we're always booking is we want to make sure that we're getting through, especially those rides and getting those rides scheduled that are that do sell out, because they can go. It might there might not be availability later, and there we have a list that we update weekly. So if you go to parkmagiccom forward slash LL, so parkmagiccom forward slash LL, we have a list of what order to book those lightning links in. So you don't have to do the research Now. You can, if you want to, you can look at the Disney app and try to determine that on your own, but you could just go down the list. We actually even have a link that on your phone. It will take you directly into the Disney app for you to be able to book that Lightning Lane.

Speaker 2:

The reason we update it weekly is sometimes things change seasonally. So, for example, small World doesn't have a very long line most of the year but when they have their Christmas decorations up the lines can be over an hour. So we will change the order depending on what we're seeing in the data as far as what rides are booking out the furthest out, if that makes sense. So, remembering that some Genie Plus Lightning Leans are going to save you more time than others, we want to prioritize those ones that have a longer than average wait time, because they can end up being much later in the evening or completely sell out, going down the order on our website, skipping any rides that you don't want to do. And in that list, if you click on the ride name, it will take you to a page that tells you more about that ride and even has a ride through video, so you can see if you've got somebody that's nervous about that ride, to kind of give you an idea of whether it's something that you and your family are up to.

Speaker 2:

And then we're going to book as soon as you're eligible, used to be before you know. Last year people would say don't book your lightning lane when you first get into the park because it's a waste, because you know if you ride, use a lightning lane at 9am, the lines are really short for all the rides. So you should be not using lightning lanes then, but taking advantage of the short lines in general that are in the park the first couple hours it opens. So you need a change to GeniePlus and now you can reschedule your lightning lane to later in the day. So what I'm going to recommend is that you book your lightning lane as soon as you enter the park and then also buy. If you want to buy one of those individual lightning lanes, you're going to buy that also at the beginning of the day, so you can make sure if that ride goes down you're still able to ride it later in the day. If something happens and you're not able to ride those specific rides, they will refund. If you go to the show notes, we'll also have some instructions on how to book a Lightning Lean and how to purchase Genie Plus. That are in the show notes so you know how to do that. Specifically, if a ride says it's currently not available to purchase, to book a Lightning Lean, it might mean that it has sold out for the day, but sometimes it also just means that the ride is down. So check back and it can be worth it to refresh the page, even if it's sold out.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes people might cancel a lightning lane and then there might be more availability so you can check back. People kind of call this playing like the Disney slot machine, where you're kind of refreshing and refreshing, hoping that you get a jackpot. But it does work sometimes. So all right. So I want to summarize kind of exactly again what we're going to do when you go into the park with this kind of Park Magic Genie Plus method. So remember, with Genie Plus you're eligible to book when you scan into the park and then you can book your next lightning lane when you go to check in to ride that first ride or after two hours. But we're not going to worry about that, we're just going to check the app and see when it says I'm next able to book and if it's more than two hours away, then we're going to set an alarm and if it's not, then we're going to recheck that app as soon as we scan in to see if we're eligible.

Speaker 2:

You can ride one attraction per day Again, we have an exception that we're going to talk about and then you have that one hour reservation. You have to come in during that one hour reservation. You come before or after. They most likely will not let you use the Lightning Link for that attraction and you can reschedule without changing when you're eligible to book your next Lightning Lane. So as you enter the park, you're going to purchase Genie Plus if you haven't already and your individual Lightning Lanes and you're going to book your first Lightning Lane, starting at the top of the list at that parkmagiccom forward slash LL, skipping any ones that you don't want to do. And then, as you book each lightning lane, you're going to set an alarm for when you're eligible and you're going to just check the app to see when you're eligible.

Speaker 2:

When you go to an attraction you use your lightning lane, there'll be a special lightning lane sign and under that sign there'll be cast members and there'll be little stations where you either scan your magic band or you scan your ticket and that's how they know that you are allowed to be in that line. So anytime you, after you scan your ticket or you use your magic band. You're just going to go into the app and check and see if you're eligible to book. If not, make sure that you have an alarm set for when you are eligible next. So as soon as you're eligible, you can book your next ride.

Speaker 2:

If you can book that next attraction while you're in line, that's even a bonus. There are some rides, like Haunted Mansion and so on, that are in these massive crazy buildings and so you might not have cell service. Just book as soon as you get off the ride and you're going to kind of just keep repeating that, working down the list, and even continue to do that, even if you leave the park for a nap and then while you're waiting between your Genie Plus lines that's when you're going to ride the other attractions, take advantage of the shows, the parades, eat snacks there's so many snacks and you're just going to kind of rinse and repeat. Does that make sense? Yeah, any questions there?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I did have a question Is the list that you're proposing and then I know you all switch according to you know, kind of seasonal things, is that do you take into consideration, like where it's located in the park, like you know, like if it's space I don't know Again, I spent years since I've been but like if one is one on one side of the park and one is on the other side of the park, do you ever say, hey, this would the where it's located would impact the order.

Speaker 2:

We don't consider where it is compared to your other ones. And the reason for that is is because, let's say, you're getting ready to book a lightning lane and you're in Tomorrowland. If you go to book Space Mountain, right, then it might say that you need to come back at 4 pm, and that changes dramatically depending on how busy the day is. So what you're going to do is you're going to start working your way down. And so let's say you book Indiana Jones and it says, all right, come back at 11. And you're standing in Tomorrowland. You might say, all right, well, we're in Tomorrowland. Let's you know, buzz Lightyear and Astro Orbit, these two rides right here, have a short wait time. We're going to do these two and then we'll head over to Indiana Jones and then we'll get a snack.

Speaker 2:

As you check in, you scan your ticket to Indiana Jones. You know, as you're kind of walking, or right after you scan in line or right after you get after Indiana Jones, you're going to book your next one. And so let's say it says all right, three o'clock, you're going to do Big Thunder. You're like, oh shoot, well, that's a little further away. You know that's later. And we're right, I can see it from here. It's too bad, that's all right. What we'll do is we're going to go do the Davy Crockett canoes and we're going to ride the train and do other things in the area. Shows that are in the area, shows that are in the area.

Speaker 2:

Plan your travel around the parks, around your Genie Plus. It was a lot simpler back in the day when you would say, okay, are we going left or right? And you would just kind of like work your way around the park. Genie Plus makes that more complicated because it has you crisscross and there are people who hate crisscrossing. And if you really hate crisscrossing and you're okay, missing kind of like those top three ones that are on the list, it's okay to to rearrange things based off of where things are in the park, but it it's a little bit more difficult if you don't know the park well okay, good.

Speaker 3:

And then my other question was what? I mean? That's just a crazy hypothetical situation, but let's say, let's say you, can you like you book your space mountain lightning pass, but then you get there and there's like hardly any line and you know you want to write it again later. Is there a way to like cancel your lightning pass and then just use the regular standby line?

Speaker 2:

Yes, you can cancel the lightning lane, okay. Okay, so you can cancel the Lightning Lane as long as the reservation time has not ended. You can also move it to later. Now I'm a Space Mountain super fan, right? So I think one day I rode it like 13 times on one day.

Speaker 2:

So if it was me and somebody would say, well, that would never happen. It does actually happen because if, let's say, space Mountain goes down, everybody, if it's been down for a long time, people might have gotten out of line. So there are occasions where the line will for even a very popular attraction might suddenly be short during the middle of the day. So you get there and you see that you know, post a time is like 10 minutes. Well, I don't want to waste a really good lightning lane on this. So you could do two things. You could either reschedule your lightning lane to later in the day things. You could either reschedule your lightning lane to later in the day or you could get in the rig as long as you had enough time on, like your window. You could get in the regular line, ride the ride and then come back and then use your lightning lane again. For most normal people they don't want to ride roller coaster back to back like that. So probably rescheduling, it's only people like me that are like super coaster fans that would probably do the other option.

Speaker 2:

So sometimes you know we talked about there was an exception where you maybe you might be able to ride a ride more than once, and that's it if a ride goes down during your window. So let's say you're going to ride Indiana Jones and your window is from 1 0, 5 to 2 0, 5. And then the ride is down from 12 55 to 1 30. So you would get on your app, disney app, it will send you an alert saying a change has been made to your lightning beam and your Indiana Jones lightning. It will kind of look like it disappeared. But now you'll have this weird one with like a bunch of Mickey balloons and it'll say multi-pass experience. And it might seem like this is bad news but it's actually great news. So if that happens you have two choices you can use now. Use that multi-experience pass to ride that ride that you originally booked, anytime in the day, once that ride comes back online, so you have a lot of freedom to kind of change your schedule right. Or you can rebook a new Lightning Lane for Indiana Jones and you can use that Lightning Lane on something else. And the really cool thing is that if you click in that pass it will tell you what rides you can use it on. So let's say, buzz Lightyear goes down. It doesn't give you access to ride something that's really popular like Space Mountain or Indiana Jones. It will kind of keep you kind of in the same tier of rides.

Speaker 2:

But there are some rides that don't normally have a lightning lean that you can use that multi-experience pass on. So, for example, let's say your kid loves Finding Nemo and it's a hot summer day and you want to do the Finding Nemo shows but it's been a 30, 40 minute wait all day and that line is in the sun, it is hot. So you're like man, I really want to do that ride. And then your Indiana Jones goes down and you click and it says one of the rides that are eligible are the Finding Nemo subs. So you can go to the Finding Nemo subs, which does not normally have a lightning lane, and they'll be like are you sure you want to use this here? Yes, I want to use this here. And so you would basically wait, um, in kind of like the like, kind of like the handicap accessible line, um for that ride, and so you would get to kind of bypass the line for that attraction, even though it doesn't normally have a light. And we'll put a video in, uh, on the show notes on how to use those multi-experience passes as well.

Speaker 2:

So I just kind of want to finish off, because there's so one of the things that makes Lightning Leagues confusing is, you know, disney has Disney World and Disneyland and they have Genie Plus in both parks but they work completely differently. I mean, a lot of the fundamentals are the same but there's some really really big differences that completely change the strategy. So if you're following a lot of like Walt Disney World Disney influencers on how to use Genie Plus, they'll say you want to try to focus on what they call stacking, and that means like trying to arrange it so kind of like what you said, with like not having to crisscross around the park, like what you said with like they're not having to crisscross around the park. So at Disney World it's kind of a badge of honor to have, you know, like Space Mountain and a bunch of other rides are all right next to each other and have all the lightning lanes so you can go one after another, boom, boom, boom, boom. That doesn't really happen at Disney World as often and if it is, it's on a really busy day and the reason is is in Florida you can book your first lightning lane before you even get to the park. So some of those lightning lanes will have really late return times before the park even opens. With Disneyland, since everybody can not nobody can book their first lightning lane until they get to the parks, it doesn't really you don't have to worry about things selling out the first hour. It just it doesn't happen, even on the busiest days, as long as you have teeny plans.

Speaker 2:

The other strategy people talk about is quickest return. So people are like I really want to get as many lightning leans as possible. Then the other strategy is to say kind of doing the opposite of what I'm recommending and that's saying what has got the closest return time, the ride that I can ride on right now, and we're going to use that, and that is a great way if you want to try to get on a lot of rides at once. However, what usually happens is unless you kind of started the ones that we're starting with and kind of work your way down. That will happen is you'll get to the point where you get to the end of the day and the three rides that are left, that have always had return times that are, you know, a couple of hours away, are the ones that have the longest lines, like Indiana Jones, space Mountain, soarin' Over California, toy Story, mania.

Speaker 2:

So the ones that have that we give you like the best decrease in your overall wait time are the ones that you're going to end up missing out on, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

So you know, if you're like I don't really care, like I don't, I'm not a coaster, I'm just riding whatever I can ride, I just want to ride a bunch of rides, I don't care what rides they are, then quickest returns totally valid strategy. It just, you know, sometimes it catches people off guard and they feel really bummed out because then now they have to wait in line for Space Mountain and it's a long line. So I know this was kind of a line you're probably like why did I have you on? It's? Just that it's, it's really complicated, like it seems like it should just be able to, like you should just be able to book and ride. So I wanted to make sure that it made sense. I mean, do you think like you like knowing now, you feel like you could figure out things as you go and have a good idea of why it's important how the program works?

Speaker 3:

yeah, I mean, yes, I mean it was interesting. You kind of had me. I was almost thrown off at the beginning because you said something like it used to be called or something about it used to have fast passes, and I was like they don't have those anymore because that's my era, that's the last time I went to Disney was when, I think, we had like a flip phone, cell phone. But that's what I remember, because I remember I had to take it away from my daughter, um, but then, but you know, racing over there and getting the fast pass and then going and doing something in that particular area and then going back for the fast pass time, you know.

Speaker 2:

So this is like a whole, it's like leveled up so it is yeah, and yeah, so it's because it's kind of the same system, except now you're doing it on the app, um, but because we're doing it, it it's gotten, you know, and I think it like started out with a simple idea, but then, you know, they just keep adding layers of complexity on it, which is fine for people who go all the time, but it becomes really overwhelming for people who are like I just want to go on vacation yeah, I can definitely see why it would get complicated, and especially if you're trying to plan this out with you know, kids and being able to get the most.

Speaker 3:

I mean you're already paying for the ticket entry but then being able to get the most out of your stay but most out of your, you know, your Genie Plus, if you're getting it. I think this is really helpful and if it wasn't?

Speaker 2:

so expensive, it wouldn't be a big deal. But when you're paying 400 or something for this, you know, over a course of four days then you know it. You really want to make sure you're getting a good value on it. You know so. But it can definitely. It makes the day so much more fun and for me, even if I have to crisscross or across the park a little bit, I would rather, you know, the parks are small enough at Disneyland that I would rather go from one end of the park to another versus standing in an hour line. You know, because they're both standing, but you know one at least walking.

Speaker 2:

I get to watch people and characters and you know. And the other thing is you can eat snacks in line. You just can't take them on the ride. So sometimes if I have to be in a long standby line, what we'll do is we'll kind of like get some like sneakity snacks and we'll eat the sneakity snacks. And on our blog we even have like a couple of like games you can play like in line. But in general, like, I kind of like to avoid those lines as much as possible all right.

Speaker 2:

Well, this has been another episode of the park magic podcast. We hope that you have a great time. If you have questions that were not answered about chini plus, I would love to hear them, because it is my mission to help make it so that people can have these wonderful vacations, just like us disney adults do. So feel free to email us or reach out to us. Go visit our website at parkmagiccom.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Park Magic Podcast. For more tips and planning tools designed to help simplify your Disneyland adventure, visit parkmagiccom. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to hear more tips, be sure to subscribe to the Park Magic Podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback helps us spread the magic even further. Leaving a review could also help you. Each month, we will be selecting one reviewer to win a one-hour planning session with Robin. Winners will be announced at the end of the first episode of every month. Thanks for tuning in and remember that we are here to help you have a less stressful and more magical trip to Disneyland.