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Today is the day! Disney has finally debuted Disney Genie, which means Disney Genie+ and Lightning Lane are available for use for Guests, so long as they pay the daily and per-person fee.
If you didn’t know, Walt Disney World Resort has been missing FastPass+ since the Parks reopened during the pandemic. Then, Disney decided to turn their previously free system into a paid one. Disney Genie+ will be a paid system that will charge Disney World Guests $15.00 per person per day to utilize the Lighting Lane queue, which will be the old FastPass+ queue. Guests will be able to pick one return time at a time for select attractions and skip the lines when their turn arrives.
There will be two attractions at each Park that will have their own separate cost to ride. One big fear many have had is that Lightning Lane would cause the other attraction queues to grow quite long since the priority will once again go to the faster lane, but it seems that is not that case.
When looking at the new Disney Genie update on our My Disney Experience app, it seems not the case when looking at Magic Kingdom’s wait times.
Space Mountain has an additional charge to ride, but the line is only 25 minutes long, and Splash Mountain is only 5 minutes. You could actually get on Splash Mountain by waiting in the queue faster than your Lightning Lane return time.
Pirates of the Caribbean is only a 10-minute wait, which is excellent news and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is the longest in the Park at 60 minutes, which is typical for the attraction.
As you can see below, there are plenty of 15 minute or fewer wait which would allow Guests to ride the attractions before their return time would let them come back.
Related: Guests Get Stuck On Haunted Mansion, Sees Ride With Lights On
Haunted Mansion, which seemed to have a crazy long line before the Park officially opened, has a modest 15-minute wait.
Even Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a short, 10-minute wait!
Wait times will likely go up during the day, but it is excellent to know that the addition of Lightning Lane has not caused standby queues to grow into massive waits, as we have seen in the past with FastPass+. Of course, things can change, and we will need to wait and see how busy the Lightning Lane queue becomes as more Guests begin to purchase it.
What do you think of Lightning Lane? Let us know in the comments below!