New Restrictions on the Lightning Lane Policy for Guest Recovery
Are you planning to use Genie+ for an upcoming trip? You will want to check out the changes to Disney's policy.
Ride Woes
Disney attractions have bad days sometimes. If guests are lucky, the interruptions are short lived, and issues are resolved quickly. Unfortunately, that just isn't always reality.
Today (December 12th) was no exception. Splash Mountain had a rough day. You can read about it here.
Currently, if an attraction goes down, and you happen to be in the standby line, you can either wait in line for it to come back, or you can move on. However, Disney is not currently offering guest recovery to those in the standby line when this happens. You can read more about that protocol here.
When Rides Go down for Genie+ Users
You might be wondering what happens if you have paid for Genie+? What is a guest to do if an attraction goes down during your Lightning Lane return time window?
Typically, if a Disney attraction is down and the Lightning Lane time cannot be redeemed, guests are not totally out of luck. The attraction then becomes a multi-experience pass.
This means that guests can wait and see if the attraction is up and running later and use the multi-experience pass at that time. Alternatively, guests can use the multi-experience pass for a different attraction.
A New Guest Recovery Policy
At this time, Disney is tightening up the restrictions on which rides can be redeemed through the use of a multi-experience pass in the Magic Kingdom. Naturally, rides with paid individual Lightning Lanes are not eligible, unless of course a guest originally held a reservation for one of those rides in the first place.
But now a new ride is being added to the list of exclusions. The Jungle Cruise joined those ranks.
Guests can no longer select the Jungle Cruise with a Multi-Experience pass.
Now a multi-experience pass in the Magic Kingdom excludes four attractions. They are: Peter Pan, The Jungle Cruise, Space Mountain, and Seven Dwarves Mine Train.
The only exception to this is if your original Lightning Lane Return time was for one of those attractions. In that case, if can be used for the scheduled attraction or one of the multi-experience options, assuming the attraction is up and running prior to the park's closure.
What do you think about the new policy? How do you feel about the Exclusion of Jungle cruise? Share your thoughts with us on our Facebook Page or in the comments below.
I agree with adding Jungle Cruise to this list. We had a LL for Jungle Cruise and had to wait 20-25 minutes in the LL line, the longest of any LL line we did that one and only day we tried G+. I had heard that that line gets bad because people would use their anytime LL’s for that attraction.
I am always amazed at the long waits for the Jungle Cruise. Sometimes it is the highest wait time in the park.
Passholder for 10 years. Did not renew in Oct. Bought a Universal pass this year instead. Kids are getting a bit older and it just starts adding up. Many of my friends who have passes are planning on dropping them as well and doing SeaWorld and/or Universal.
Amen to all the above
I never liked Fastpass feeling it was unfair and now Genie seems even worse. What is wrong with just having standby lanes only. It used to work just fine. Every Genie, Lightning Lane or whatever they call it now reservation just makes each standby persons wait that much longer. What's wrong with just meandering the parks and if a line seems too long go to another attraction. Only so many people can attend an attraction on any given day anyway so how does Genie help but at the expense of the standby lines. Vacations should not be spent on your smartphone trying to plan your day's itinerary. It is too complicated!
18 years ago I met young lady by chance a Epcot. We got married 29 days later. We were annual passholders for the next 7 years until our daughter started school. We still go once a year to have dinner at Disney for our anniversary. Unfortunately, due to many changes Disney has made over the past decade with policies, areas, characters, and more. We decided 8 years not to visit any of the parks because we all feel the magic that made Disney is sadly gone.
I love that you met in Disney!
Just came back... Less Christmas, Less magic, more money. More breakdowns no courtesy trams and genie plus isnt worth it. Maybe for two but not six.Too hard to navigate. Universal was a much easier day. I think after this year disney may be in for an unfortunate surprise. So tron will open and no one can get on it for 5 years. Think i will pass next year.
C'mon Mickey... Step up and let us choose times like fastpass and maybe have two lightning Lanes at a time.... Time to help the guests out!!!
I agree with Pete. We love to Disney and go between both resorts in Florida and Ca and Disney Cruise. This upcoming visit at WDW is getting ridiculous. I paid more to be on property to try and save some time, I paid for genie plus , then when I thought it was over till I got there I learned that genie does not even cover the populate rides. Those cost MORE.
Or you can wait in line for hours . This will be our last visit to the resorts for a while . Charging more for every little thing to your loyal guests is not the answer.
Disney just keeps making changes trying to continually maximize their profits in every situation. This has just got to stop or Disney Corp will die and be unrecoverable within the next 10 years. They will drive off all of their fans and they will not have enough to create a new generation of fans to generate new consumers. They've already done this to their Star Wars and Marvel properties and their original works as well. Now they're destroying their parks and resorts business almost as fast as they can manage without just bulldozing everything under.