If you’re planning a trip to Disneyland soon, you’ll want to make sure you’re up to date on the latest features and tools. One of those features is the Disneyland Genie+ service, which offers a variety of benefits to park-goers, including access to over 20 popular attractions across both Disneyland and California Adventure. With our Disneyland Genie+ tips and tricks, you can maximize your experience and make sure you don’t miss out on any of the fun. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at Disneyland Genie+ rides and other critical aspects to optimize your visit and create unforgettable memories.
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What is Disneyland Genie Plus?
To put it simply, Disneyland Genie+ is a service that allows guests to skip the regular standby line (and possibly long lines) in favor of an expedited queue known as the Lightning Lane. By taking advantage of the Lightning Lane, guests spend less time in line, allowing them to make better use of their time in the parks.
Genie Plus is available for use in both Disney California Adventure as well as the Disneyland park, but not all rides offer the Lightning Lane. Remember, space is limited in the California theme parks, so Disney has reserved Genie+ and the Lightning Lane for the rides that stack up some of the longer standby wait times.
Disneyland Genie+ Rides with Lightning Lane include:
Disneyland Genie+ Lightning Lane Entrance
Attractions include*:
- Autopia
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
- Haunted Mansion
- Indiana JonesTM Adventure
- “it’s a small world”
- Matterhorn Bobsleds
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
- Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin
- Space Mountain
- Splash Mountain
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue
Disney Genie+ Lightning Lane Entrances
Attractions include*:
- Goofy’s Sky School
- Grizzly River Run
- Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!
- Incredicoaster
- Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!
- Soarin’ Over California
- Toy Story Midway Mania!
- WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure
In addition to the attractions listed above, Disneyland also offers Genie+ service for the following attractions through an individual Lightning Lane purchase (more on this in a bit):
Individual Purchase for Lightning Lane Entrance
Attractions include*:
Disney California Adventure Park
Individual Purchase for Lightning Lane Entrance
Attractions include*:
How Does Disneyland Genie Plus Work?
Disneyland Genie+ allows guests to prebook a timeslot to visit an attraction through the Lightning Lane. Simply open the Disneyland app, access your tip board, and scroll through the list of attractions.
Under each attraction you will see the wait for the current standby line. This is how long you will stand in line before riding if you enter the regular queue.
For Disneyland Genie+ rides, you will see a second entry. This one lists a time. This is the earliest that you may enter the Lightning Lane if you were to book a Disneyland Genie+ reservation for this experience.
For example, looking at the screen shot above, we see that Star Tours – The Adventure Continues has a standby wait of 15 minutes, and that the earliest I could enter the Lightning Lane if I booked a Disneyland Genie+ reservation would be 1:00.
If I book the Genie+ reservation, I could enter the Lightning Lane anytime between 1:00 and 2:00 pm. That’s right, you have a full hour to redeem your Lightning Lane selection.
How Do I Access the Lightning Lane?
Since the Lightning Lane is reserved for those guests who book a time slot through Genie+, you’d be right to assume that entry must be restricted in some way. To enter the Lightning Lane, you will need to scan your park pass using your mobile device, plastic ticket card or MagicBand Plus. We’ve found that utilizing the MagicBand is the quickest and easiest way to use Disneyland Genie+.
How Often Can I Book a Disneyland Genie+ Ride?
You may begin making Disneyland Genie+ ride reservations as soon as you enter the parks. This means that guests who utilize early theme park entry could book their first Disneyland Genie+ ride of the day a half hour earlier than guests who stay offsite.
Once your first reservation is made, you must wait 2 hours before booking a new Disneyland Genie+ reservation. Alternatively, you may also book another Genie+ ride after your return window has been activated – in other words, after you enter the Lightning Lane.
Let’s see how this works with a quick example. On my last trip, I booked a Genie+ reservation for Haunted Mansion. My return time began at 1:00 pm. Since we scanned into the Lightning Lane exactly at 1:00—as soon as the return window became active—we were able to make our next Disneyland Genie+ booking right at 1:00.
Likewise, if I made the Haunted Mansion Genie+ reservation at 10:00 am, I could have booked another Genie+ at noon, even though I hadn’t yet used my 1:00 pm reservation and the return window was not yet active. This is due to the so-called “2-hour rule” which allows guests to book another Genie+ reservation 2 hours after making the last one.
Is Disneyland Genie Plus Free?
One question guests often ask is whether there is a cost to use Genie+. Unfortunately, there is. The cost for Genie+ begins at $25 per person per day plus taxes but can go higher if the parks are expecting large crowds.
During our last visit to Disneyland, we included the cost of Genie+ in the purchase price of our tickets, for $25 a day. This is one Disneyland Genie+ tip we highly recommend looking into. You’ll be given the cost of purchasing Genie+ during the ticket buying process, making it easier to budget for your trip.
What’s This Individual Lightning Lane Purchase You Mentioned?
Some Disneyland Genie+ rides are not included in the regular list of attractions covered by the service. Three rides currently offer entrance to the Lightning Lane through a separate Genie+ purchase.
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
- Radiator Springs Racers
These 3 attractions are some of the most popular at the parks right now. To make things fairer for all guests, Disney has not included these rides in the standard purchase of Disneyland Genie+. However, you may still access a Lightning Lane for these rides, by making an individual purchase, a Lightning Lane add on if you will.
The cost to make an individual Lightning Lane purchase can vary greatly by ride, date, and crowd conditions. To find out how much an Individual Lightning Lane purchase will cost, you can once again use the Disneyland app.
Navigate to your tip board and look up the ride in question. Beneath the current wait time, you will see a box that says “Individual Lightning Lane” as demonstrated in the photo above. Within the box, you will find the current purchase price for the Individual Lightning Lane pass on the current day.
Is Disneyland Genie Plus Worth It?
Disneyland Genie+ is definitely worth it if you have the budget to support the purchase and you strongly want to avoid lines. For guests who only plan to spend a few days in the park, Genie+ can help you experience more in the short time that you have. However, if you have at least 3 or 4 days on your Disneyland ticket, Genie+ isn’t a must do at either Disneyland park, since there are strategies for getting around long lines for longer vacations.
How to Use Disneyland Genie Plus: Tips and Strategies
We recently put Genie+ to the test at both California Adventure and Disneyland. Spreading our trip out over multiple days gave us a lot of time to see how lines grow and contract throughout the day and determine when the service is most valuable.
Based on that extended experience, we’ve developed a number of Disneyland Genie+ tips and strategies to help you make the most of this feature. After all, if you’re going to pay for it, you might as well optimize its usage.
Our Disneyland Genie+ tips apply to both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, unless noted.
Disneyland Genie+ tip #1: Take advantage of early entry.
If you noted the list of attractions above, you likely noticed that a number of popular rides are not eligible for Genie+. This includes several Fantasyland rides that can grow long wait times throughout the day.
That’s why we recommend that Disneyland resort guests take advantage of early entry. Early theme park entry at both Disneyland and Disney World allows Disney hotel guests into the park a half an hour ahead of regular opening.
We found that comparatively few people took advantage of this feature, particularly at Disney California Adventure, making it possible to jump right on at least two headliner attractions before regular crowds were in the park.
For example, we arrived at California Adventure at 7:15 am. The regular park hours started at 8:00 am.
By 8:32, we were in the park and walking through the queue to WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure. By 8:55, we had ridden both WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure and Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: Breakout and were on our way to Radiator Springs Racers well ahead of the crowds.
Taking this approach made it possible to knock out 3 of the most popular rides with little to no wait, and without purchasing an Individual Lightning Lane pass to Radiator Springs.
At Disneyland, we were able to ride all of the top attractions in Fantasyland, with the exception of Peter Pan’s Flight, before the park opened. Since these rides are not Lightning Lane enabled, this approach made it possible to experience popular attractions with no wait and reserve Genie+ for later in the day, when wait times started to get long.
Disneyland Genie+ tip #2: If you don’t have access to early entry, be at the parks at least a half hour before the gates open.
If you can’t take advantage of early theme park entry because you are staying at an offsite hotel or driving in from somewhere in the area, you can still utilize the morning to maximize Genie+. Simply be there 30-45 minutes before park opening. You’ll be let in with all of the guests attending early entry and allowed to line up at the entrance to each land.
By following this Disneyland Genie+ tip, you’ll be the first to hop on some of the rides where a Lightning Lane is not offered before the wait times get long.
Disneyland Genie+ tip #3: You don’t have to book your first Genie+ as soon as you enter the parks.
As frequent travelers to Disney World, we were surprised to find that we didn’t always need to book a Genie+ reservation the minute we entered the park. At Disney World, Genie+ bookings open at 7:00 am for Disney resort guests, and some rides will sell out of Lightning Lane bookings throughout the day. We always use this early morning time to reserve a Lightning Lane spot for those attractions that are likely to be gone later in the day.
However, this didn’t seem to be a problem at Disneyland or California Adventure. Since both parks open early in the morning and typically close later at night, there are more Genie+ bookings to go around, so sellouts were rare. However, if you’re visiting at a more crowded time period, you may find reservations going more quickly.
We recommend you ride as many attractions in the morning as you can before wait times get long, and then start using Genie+ for the rides with the longest queues. Remember, you can always see the current wait time for a ride in the Disneyland app as well as the return window to enter the Lightning Lane for a Disneyland Genie+ ride.
Once you see return windows for more than 90 minutes in the future, you should consider booking that attraction sooner, rather than later. For example, if you check the Disneyland app at 1:00 pm and see a return window for Space Mountain that begins at 2:30 or later, you can be assured that more people are beginning to book this ride. Make your own reservation soon to make sure Lightning Lane spots don’t sell out before you can reserve one.
Disneyland Genie+ tip #4: I’m a late riser. Should I still use Genie+?
In a way, Genie+ at Disneyland was made for late risers. During our recent extended trip, we noticed that the largest crowds began arriving around noon. Wait times on rides that had measured under 15-minute in the morning begin to rise to 30 minutes or even an hour as more guests entered the park.
If you’re arriving at the parks in the afternoon, Genie+ can help you save a lot of time in line.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Disneyland Genie+
If you still have questions about using Genie+ at Disneyland or California Adventure, we’ve answered some of the most common queries below. If you still can’t find the information you need, feel free to use the contact form in the right sidebar (below in mobile) to get in touch with us.
Does Disney Genie Plus include PhotoPass?
When you purchase Disneyland Genie+, you do get free digital downloads of any pictures taken by PhotoPass photographers in the park as well as ride photos. However, to make sure you have access to your ride photos, you will need to locate the monitor at the end of the ride and make note of the number associated with it. You’ll need to enter this later into the Disneyland app to claim your ride photo. We found it easiest to take a picture of the monitor displaying your ride photo and number.
To access any photos taken by PhotoPass photographers, make sure you have them scan your MagicBand or ticket in the mobile app.
Does Disneyland Genie+ work with park hopper?
You may use Disneyland Genie+ with a park hopper ticket. However, you cannot reserve a Genie+ ride for the park you are hopping to until you have physically “hopped” into that park.
Can Genie+ sell out?
Yes, Genie+ can sell out. To ensure that guests spend as little time in the Lightning Lane as possible, there are a limited number of Genie+ purchases available each day.
Can Disney Genie+ be added later, after I’ve entered the park?
You may purchase Disneyland Genie+ at any point during the day. However, there are a finite number of slots available, so it is possible that the service may sell out under peak crowd conditions.
Does Genie+ Include Lightning Lane?
Yes, Genie+ does provide access to the Lightning Lane. To clarify, Genie+ is the service offered at Disney parks that allows guests to book a ride window to enter the Lightning Lane.
