Insane price...

Disneyland's new Genie+ paid fast pass system is not going over well with fans

Julie Tremaine

If there’s one thing you can count on at Disneyland, it’s that whenever a change happens at the park, a certain section of fans will have strong feelings about it. Sometimes those changes are objectively for the better, like to make rides more inclusive or remove ties to problematic movies in Disney’s vault. And sometimes those changes fundamentally alter the park experience in ways that many people find hard to justify.

Right now, a large segment of Disney fans are having a difficult time understanding the company’s choice to implement Genie+, a new, paid system that replaces the previously free FastPass+ system at Walt Disney World, and both the free physical Fast Pass tickets and the MaxPass at Disneyland. 

“Disney making fast pass a paid system is making me really sad but i guess that’s life,” tweeted @realvibekill. 

“Absolutely gutted that Walt Disney World are doing away with fast passes and started a pay to play Genie+,” @spainwithlauren tweeted. “Disney holidays are already expensive enough without squeezing even more out of people.”

Under this new system, Walt Disney World guests can pay $15 per day and Disneyland guests can pay $20 per day for access to a “Lightning Lane,” replacing what used to be a Fast Pass line. Those fees add up: for a family of four, it would cost $80. However, that flat fee only includes some of the park rides and attractions. Many of the more in-demand rides, like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, will have an additional, as-yet-undisclosed per ride fee. 

This new system comes in a year when Disney CEO Bob Chapek has laid out what he calls a “more aggressive” financial strategy that also includes the first-ever paid ride upgrade, a toy that enhances rider score on Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure in Disney California Adventure’s new Avengers Campus. 

A YouTube video from the Disney Parks channel released on August 18 explaining this new Genie service has fewer than 900 likes and more than 11,000 dislikes as of August 27. “Just ruined a favorite character buy using Genie — should have been honest and called it $ Scrooge McDuck Service $,” Steve Davis commented on the video. 

“You’re right, I’ve never had a friend like this!” Jonathan Davies said, referring to “Friend Like Me,” Genie’s famous song from “Aladdin.” “That’s because I’ve never had a friend who constantly asks me for money, those are the people I stay away from.”

Rather than joking, though, some of the comments reflected a concern about the rising costs of a Disney trip and the way that, with fewer and fewer things included in the price tag, the experience is becoming out of reach for many families. “My wife and I have gone to Disney every single year since we’ve been married,” Matt Davis commented. “As a lower middle class family that has to travel from Illinois, we can’t afford it anymore. This is the final straw.” 

Previously, guests to Walt Disney World with hotel reservations and tickets in hand could book Fast Passes 90 days in advance, choosing advance times for three rides per day. “Booking our FastPasses was always the most exciting part of vacation planning,” Davis continued. “We can’t afford to use this service. Disney has rejected the lower and middle class families that allowed them to operate all these years. Disney World is only for the wealthy now, and that’s all they care about.”

While Disney is targeting a more affluent customer — or at least one who will spend more — that customer isn’t actually Disney’s core demographic. Business Insider conducted a poll earlier this year asking readers whether they intended to take a Disney vacation this year. The result: People with income less than $75,000 are the most likely to visit the Mouse, while people with income over $150,000 are the least likely to visit. “Those who said they earn between $50,000 and $74,999 per year were seemingly the most eager to visit Disney,” Amanda Krause wrote. “Those who said they earn between $25,000 to $49,999 per year were the second largest group to say they'd consider visiting a Disney park this year.”

However, some critics have said that pre-booking those passes made the standard queue wait times significantly longer. “That policy allowed every guest to wait physically and virtually in up to four lines at once, blowing up wait times across the resort,” Robert Niles wrote for the OC Register. “With advance reservations available, guests who did not prebook their Fastpasses the moment they were eligible, weeks in advance, found top attractions impossible to get.”

Unlike the previous Walt Disney World system, Genie+ can only be purchased at midnight the day of a guest’s park visit. Disneyland users who previously used the MaxPass system, which also cost $20 per day per person to be able to choose Fast Pass return times, will find this Genie+ system largely the same, with the added feature of paying per ride for premium attractions. The previous existence of MaxPass is probably at the core of why Disney is charging more at its California park than its Florida ones. 

Many of the negative reactions to the elimination of Fast Passes are from people noting the increasingly scaled-back perks of staying at on-property hotels for Disney vacations. At Walt Disney World, the free Magical Express airport transportation and almost all of the free Extra Magic Hours for hotel guests have been eliminated. 

“No fast pass, no dining plan and no magical express. @Disney execs are out of touch with its consumers,” Twitter user @costall said. 

“I bet Disney World starts offering free Disney Genie+ promotions for on-property stays like they do with the free dining plan some times of the year,” Leslie Harvey, @tripswithtykes, tweeted. “On-property benefits are just too low right now.”

Additional charges and fewer perks don’t seem to be affecting Disney attendance, though. “We see strong demand for our parks continuing,” Bob Chapek said in the Walt Disney Company’s third-quarter earnings call on Aug. 12. “In fact, our park reservations now are above our Q3 attendance levels. And as you just saw with our earnings announcement, our Q3 attendance levels were pretty darn good.” In that call, the company reported more than a $3 billion increase in revenue for that quarter year-over-year.

Earlier this summer, Disneyland Paris rolled out a fee-based Fast Pass system called “Premier Access,” which has similar features to Genie+. Under this new system, guests can purchase entry to accelerated queues individually, per ride. The cost is dependent on the popularity of the ride and how busy the park is that day, between 8 euros and 15 euros ($9-$18) per ride.

Disneyland Paris did not respond to a request for comment about guest reception to Premier Access or how those accelerated lanes are impacting wait times in the standard queues. 

There are positives to the situation, though. If you want to shell out the money to pay for it, you can theoretically ride any ride in the park as many times as you want in a day. The system will likely alleviate one of the biggest complaints at Disneyland — that people who came to the park specifically for Rise of the Resistance weren’t able to get a spot in the virtual queue and therefore couldn’t ride their only “can’t miss” ride in the park. With single day adult tickets at Disneyland costing up to $154, that’s an expensive disappointment. Spending $20 (or whatever the fee will be) for Lightning Lane access is a better financial proposition than paying another $154 on a different park day, only to be faced with the same slim chances of landing in the virtual queue. 

“I think this shift towards Disney Genie+ and a la cart options was the right choice for the parks going forward,” Carlye Wisel wrote for SyFy Wire, noting that Fast Passes lengthened other wait times. “By limiting the number of guests who receive expedited entry, the standby lines can, hypothetically, move more quickly, particularly when in-app software is nudging you towards locations that currently have shorter lines.”

“The FastPass system was broken, without a doubt,” Wisel added. “Will this tiered approach fix it? For that, we’ll have to wait until it starts later this fall.”