Disney World Has CHANGED Genie+ — And We Love It

If you are headed to Disney World soon, you’ve probably heard of Disney Genie+.

Lightning Lane signs

Genie+ is a paid service that allows you to book Lightning Lanes — windows when you can skip the line to ride certain attractions. Now, we’re seeing a small change to Disney Genie+ that could make a big difference in your Disney Parks day!

One of the more complex parts of using Genie+ is the “120-minute rule.” Here’s how it works: Let’s say you book a Lightning Lane for a ride at 9 a.m., and your return window for that ride is at 3 p.m. Even though your return window is a long way off, you can’t book another Lightning Lane for 120 minutes, or until 11 a.m. in our example.

Disney World Lightning Lanes

Here’s where it gets a bit confusing: The rule is 120 minutes or until you have used the Lightning Lane you booked. So, if at 9 a.m., you booked a 9:45 a.m. Lightning Lane, you would immediately be able to book your next Lightning Lane once you scanned in at the 9:45 a.m. attraction. Got it?

©Disney

OK, here comes the Disney Genie+ CHANGE we discovered and tested for you! At 7:08 a.m., we booked a Lightning Lane for Test Track at 6:15 p.m. Because the park doesn’t open until 9 a.m., our next window to book a Lightning Lane was set for 11 a.m. (120 minutes after the park opened).

We can’t book another Lightning Lane until 11 a.m., so let’s modify the one we have.

But then, at 9:39 a.m., we changed our minds about that 6:15 p.m. Test Track. We decided to book a Lightning Lane for Soarin’ Around the World at 1:15 p.m. We didn’t want to wait until 11 a.m. and possibly lose the chance to ride Soarin’ earlier in the day. When this happens to you, there are TWO options — you can CANCEL your Test Track Lightning Lane, freeing you up to book another reservation, or you can MODIFY your experience. When we chose to modify our experience, the app offered us the choice to select a new time for Test Track, or select a new experience.

MODIFY is the key!

We are here to tell you to MODIFY, and here’s why: Now, when you modify, your 2-hour window to wait to book another Lightning Lane remains the same. If you cancel, it updates. We know that’s confusing. Let’s go back to our test yesterday. We chose to book the Soarin’ Lightning Lane — here’s the screen we got, explaining that we were replacing our Test Track Lightning Lane with the Soarin’s one:

Here’s where we are confirming our Lightning Lane change.

At 9:43 a.m., our reservation went through, and our next window to book a reservation still started at 11 a.m. (2 hours after we booked that Test Track Lightning Lane, remember?)

NEW Lightning Lane, confirmed

If we had CANCELED that reservation and then booked Soarin’, our window to book a new reservation would have updated to 11:43 a.m. BUT, we chose to MODIFY our plan and select the Soarin’ Lightining Lane instead of the later Test Track one. Our window to book a new reservation remained the same — 11 a.m. So, we got the same Lightning Lane reservation, but we saved ourselves from having to wait an additional 44 minutes to book the next one.

See? Still 11 a.m.

We confirmed with EPCOT cast members and guest services that this change recently became live, and it is working correctly. So, try to modify your experience when you can — you may be able to book a few more Lightning Lanes during our day by saving that time!

Whew. We know that planning a Disney World trip is A LOT. And this Genie+ thing can be so confusing – which is why we bring you posts like this so often But we’ve also put together a complete guide in ebook format that gives you all of the info you need, all in one place! Use code WDW2023 for 25% off our DFB Guide to Dining at Walt Disney World. 

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Do you think this is a good change to Disney Genie+? Tell us in the comments!

The post Disney World Has CHANGED Genie+ — And We Love It first appeared on the disney food blog.