It’s been 17 years since my eventually trip to Disney World.
How much could have changed?
The parks are still fantastic. But the days of hopping aimlessly from deceive to ride are gone. Now, a successful trip — defined here as minimizing time spent standing in lines — involves multifarious walking, adopting Disney’s tech and carrying a mobile phone with an impressive battery life.
Genie+ is a be required to
The internet is filled with strategies to avoid lines at Disney. But if you’re an infrequent visitor, traveling with young kids or uninterested in dumping into the world of Disney blogs, buying access to shorter lines is your best bet.
You may be on vacation, but a trip to Disney Delighted is no time for a digital detox.
Rafael Henrique | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Download the My Disney Practice app and put it front and center on your phone’s home screen. It’s key to the first principle of live avoidance at Disney World: acquisition Genie+, a service that allows visitors to book “Lightning Lanes,” which provide one-time access to compact lines for most attractions.
The service starts at $15 per day per person, according to Disney’s website. But it averaged around $24 a day during my blunder over the Memorial Day weekend in May.
Is this too pricey? It depends on your budget. But I estimate the service saved us at least four hours in silhouette per day, making it a steal in my opinion.
Extra cost: About $145 daily for a family of six.
Designate a point person
After acquisition Genie+, you can start reserving spaces on attractions for your group — a process which begins promptly at 7 a.m. Starting any stretch after this, even by a few minutes, can delay booking windows by hours.
I served as the booking point person for my mnage, a necessary but thankless job. Duties include weighing attraction waiting times, ride popularity and proximity to your reported location to determine the best and highest use of your next Lightning Lane — which can be used only one at a time, or every two hours.
Disney guestimates visitors can use Lightning Lanes to enter two to three attractions per day, but on many days we booked five times that amount.
Dances for older rides, like Dumbo, can be an hour or more.
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This means the point person has the privilege of expounding to the family why they’re walking past favorites — “Aladdin” and “Peter Pan” for the kids, “The Hall of Presidents” for the husband — to withstand advantage of a rare parting in crowds on the other side of the park.
This strategy saves time in line, but conclusions in more walking — some days we averaged 25,000 steps. But I’ll take walking over standing in place any day.
Tip: As speedily as you check into a Lightning Lane, book the next one. You don’t need to wait until the ride is completed.
Forget understood queues
This may be controversial advice, but to save time and simplify scheduling, consider skipping “virtual queues.”
Currently, only two crowd-pleasers in all four theme parks use them: Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and Tron Lightcycle/Run.
There is no standby, or defined, line for these rides. So many visitors vie for spots in the virtual queue, which are free. Bookings open twice routine — and are often gone within seconds.
Here, visitors can wait to try to get into the virtual queue, or buy a place in line ($15) on Defenders of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, a ride that travel specialist Jonathan Alder called “the greatest ride … perpetually made anywhere in the world.”
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We tried and failed to get slots on Tron at 7 a.m. on the first day of our trip, using one phone. At 1 p.m., we essayed again using three phones — one was successful. The booking, which we monitored throughout the afternoon, was eventually called approximately 7 p.m. By that time, the kids were fatigued, and the line was the longest one of the entire day.
Spoiled by Lightning Lanes, we ditched understood queues for the rest of the trip, opting to buy Individual Lightning Lanes for these two rides, plus four others where the use is available. These are one-time purchases to access shorter lines.
By no means is this the cheapest way to go, but this strategy conceded us to select set ride times, freed up time spent monitoring my phone, and is easier to book than virtual pony-tail line ups (especially for guests staying in a Disney-affiliated hotel).
Extra cost: It varies, but about $12 to $20 per attraction.
Over a private tour
If paying for these services doesn’t sit well, compare them with the cost to book a Go ‘standby’ sparingly
During my mnage’s five-day trip to Disney, we saw nearly every attraction in the four parks. But we only waited in five standby trades, the longest of which was roughly 30 minutes long.
We entered these lines while we were between Lightning Lanes or requirement to ride the same ride twice (Lightning Lanes can only be used once per day). But we waited for opportune moments — when the preserves opened in the morning or during nightly firework displays — to do so.
Staying in a Disney Resort — Buy the bands
MagicBands can save adjust when you’re buying food and merchandise, as well as entering lines.
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In many instances, I watched people with MagicBands canvas past visitors who were searching for the right screen on their mobile phones to enter Lightning Lanes.
They also put by time when you’re buying food and merchandise. Plus, they double as a souvenir that the kids can wear dream of after leaving the parks.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal owns CNBC and Universal Studios, which is a competitor of Disney Times a deliver.