A recent update to Disney Genie+ just made it much more difficult to use the line-skipping service for guests looking to park hop. This also makes “stacking” with Disney Genie+ more difficult as well. Let’s dive in.

Disney Genie+ Change for Park Hopping

Ok, here’s what has changed. Guests who are using Disney Genie+ for park hopping are not able to make a Lightning Lane selection for a return window that is before 2pm. You might be thinking, “well yeah, you can’t park hop until 2pm, of course you can’t make a Lightning Lane for before you can park hop”, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Since Disney Genie+ debuted you have never been able to make a Lightning Lane for a return time before you can park hop. In the past, if you tried to make a Lightning Lane return time for before you were eligible to park hop, Disney Genie+ would give you a return time for when you were able to hop. Let’s take a look at our example below.

We started our day at EPCOT today to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. After riding, we wanted to see what was available at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and saw that Expedition Everest was available for a nearly immediate return. We went to book Expedition Everest, expecting to be presented with a 2pm return time or thereabouts, but instead, we were met with a prompt that stopped us from making a reservation. This new feature no longer presents guests with a viable return time based on park hopping rules, but instead presents a wall, telling us to “select a new time that is included in your Park Hopper option”. Here’s a look at the process:

What makes this frustrating is that there is currently no way to “select a new time” within the Disney Genie+ service because guests are simply given the next available time and not given the ability to choose a return window of their liking.

Furthermore, this complicates “stacking”, which is an advanced Genie+ technique whereby guests choose popular attractions with return windows in the future and utilize the 120-minute rule to “stack” attractions for an afternoon visit with multiple Lightning Lanes lined up. If the attraction that you wanted to stack has a return window before 2pm, you will have to wait until the return time passes 2pm. If the return window is after 2pm or if you are stacking at your starting park, you can stack like normal.

What do you think of the recent Disney Genie+ change to park hopping? Let us know in the comments below or on social media!

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