Changes to Lightning Lanes
You need to know about the recent changes to how lightning lanes work or you might find yourself in standby!
Effective July 24th, there are changes to Lightning Lanes and Individual Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World Resort. Let's start with the terminology, and then we'll get into the details.
My Disney Experience- An app used to do all sorts of Walt Disney World related things.
Genie - A vacation planning portion of the My Disney Experience app that offers recommendations.
Genie+ - A portion of the Genie app that you must pay for in advance, which allows you access to book lightning lanes. This, and the Lightning Lanes you could book through it, are now being replaced with Lightning Lane Multi Pass. You will book access to Lightning Lane Multi Pass through the My Disney Experience app.
Lightning Lane - If you purchase Genie+, you can reserve a time to return to a ride and skip the standby line and instead wait in a faster "lightning lane". In the past, you could hold many of these at once, but could only book them one at a time and had to take the first available time slot (no choosing your own return time). After either redeeming a lightning lane or after 120 minutes pass from the time of your last lightning lane booking (called the 120-minute rule), you could get another lightning lane. This led to the ability to stack lightning lanes for the evening if you desired.
This is now...
Lightning Lane Multi Pass - Basically the new name for what used to be called Lightning Lanes. Still bookable only if you have Genie+, and you can still hold multiple at a time. There are other major changes that we'll go into later in this article.
Individual Lightning Lanes - For the most popular experiences, usually one or two rides per park, the ability to skip the standby line would have to be purchased individually for this ride. In other words, it was not included in Genie+ and you could purchase the lightning lane with our without access to Genie+. Once purchased, it works the same as a lightning lane by letting you skip the standby line in favor of a faster lightning lane, but when purchasing, you can also choose your return time from all remaining return times for the day.
This is now...
Lightning Lane Single Pass - Basically this is the new name for Individual Lightning Lanes. You can still book this outside of Genie+ and you can still only hold one per unique ride per day. There are some other changes as well.
So, now we have the new terms. It is now Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass.
AI-generated illustration of a line like you might encounter at Walt Disney World.
But wait! There's more...
There are some major changes with how these work.
Let's start with what didn't change.
You still pay. If you want to use Lightning Lane Multi Pass, you pay indirectly by purchasing access to the service for the day. If you want to use Lightning Lane Single Pass, you pay directly for that ride.
The Lightning Lane Multi Pass still includes all the rides that were covered by regular Lightning Lane. And chances are if it was previously an Individual Lightning Lane ride, it's now a Lightning Lane Single Pass ride.
For most rides, you can still ride standby. The only time a standby line may not be available is if the ride is newer and the only ways to ride are either virtual queue or Lightning Lane Single Pass.
The price for Lightning Lane Multi Pass access is not changing. In other words, it should be similar to the price of purchasing Genie+.
You can still get another Lightning Lane, depending on availability, when you redeem a Lightning Lane.
You can modify a Lightning Lane, subject to availability.
You still can't book the same Lightning Lane (Single or Multi) twice for the same day.
Now, let's talk about what did change. And there are some biggies.
Genie+ is going away, to be replaced with Lightning Lane Multi Pass which both describes the access, and the actual thing you schedule. Not confusing at all.
You can now purchase access to, and book, up to three Lightning Lane Multi Pass rides in advance of your vacation.
For non resort guests, it is 3 days in advance of each day.
For resort guests, it is 7 days in advance of their stay, for the length of their stay up to 14 days.
When booking your Lightning Lane Multi Pass rides in advance, you may now choose your arrival window.
In the same timeframe, in advance, you can now purchase Lightning Lane Single Passes. While you can't purchase two for the same ride in a day, you can purchase up to two Single Passes per day for two different rides, one at a time.
If you have a park hopper ticket, the first three Lightning Lane Multi Passes you book still need to be in the same theme park, but after redeeming one the day of your visit, you can book more in either the park you are in or another park. In other words...
When booking in advance, they must all be in the same theme park.
When redeeming and booking another, if you have Park Hopper, you can choose any park.
Once you redeem a Lightning Lane Multi Pass, you can book another. Note, you only have to redeem ONE to book another, not all of your initial three like FastPass Plus used to be.
The 120-minute rule is going away. In other words, nobody will theoretically be able to stack more than 3 rides at a time, but on the other hand, if using the system to its full advantage, everyone using it also starts the day with three stacked rides rather than one at a time.
The Lightning Lane Multi Pass rides are tiered. You can only book one tier 1 ride at a time. You can book multiple tier 2 rides at a time. This is similar to how the old FastPass Plus system worked. (More on tiers below)
Remy plaza in the morning. Remy will be a tier 1 ride.
Lightning Lane Multi Pass Ride Tiers (as of date of publish)
With the exception of Animal Kingdom theme park, Multi Pass rides are categorized by tier. That means when booking in advance, you can only book a Lightning Lane for ONE tier 1 ride at a time. We're sure Disney does this to distribute crowds amongst popular rides.
The following are the CURRENT Tier 1 rides in the parks other than Animal Kingdom. This list is subject to change, so always check your My Disney Experience app or the Disney website for updates.
Magic Kingdom Tier 1 rides:
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Jungle Cruise
Peter Pan's Flight
Space Mountain
Tiana's Bayou Adventure
EPCOT Tier 1 rides:
Frozen Ever After
Remy's Ratatouille Adventure
Soarin'
(Test Track is conspicuously missing from any list but that's likely because it's down for renovation. We expect when it comes back it will join the Tier 1 list)
Hollywood Studios Tier 1 rides:
Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway
Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run
Rock N Roller Coaster
Slinky Dog Dash
The following are the tier 1 rides we're worried about, in terms of either losing their availability to offsite guests or other guests the day of their visit, or in terms of getting a lousy return time:
Slinky Dog Dash. It was not uncommon for return times for this ride to be serving you times in the evening, even at 7 AM the day of when all ride availability was made available under the previous system. In other words, if this is your tier 1, make sure your tier 2s are earlier in the day so you're always redeeming.
Tiana's Bayou Adventure. I expect this to be even more madness than Slinky Dog. How is this not a Lightning Lane Single Pass or Virtual Queue situation? It's the newest ride. Everyone wants to see it.
Possibly Remy. It's not as bad as the others in terms of return times served, but given EPCOT only has three functional tier 1 rides at this time, we think this is the one people are going to pick.
Our strategy with each of these three is to book them. Book them early, ideally, and redeem them early in the day. If that can't happen, then make sure you've got two other earlier morning return times in your tier 2 rides so there is a chance (however slim it might be) to find another tier 1 ride with remaining availability the day of. We think the following will have availability at least until noon, but we could be wrong since this system is totally new: Soarin' (is currently available well into the evening on most days), Rock N Roller Coaster (currently available until 5pm ish most days), Big Thunder Mountain and Jungle Cruise (with Jungle Cruise, we can only hope the current odd spurt of popularity wears out, and with Big Thunder, usually it had availability until about 1 pm most days).
The ideal is to rope drop one tier 1 and grab your Lightning Lane for the other. Rope dropping is particularly easy at EPCOT where depending on where you enter, either Soarin' or Remy is close by. Also slightly easy at Hollywood Studios where Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway or Rock N Roller Coaster is close to the entrance. It's much more difficult at the Magic Kingdom.
What's a rope drop? This refers to literally the moment Cast Members drop the rope separating you from parts of the park. They will drop the rope at the park opening (or early opening) time. To "rope drop" means you are waiting at the rope for it to drop so you can be one of the first to ride the ride before a line forms. To do this, you must arrive and enter the park BEFORE it officially opens.
Our Initial Reaction
This is the editorial part, so the following is opinion. I will preface this all by saying I was never a fan of FastPass Plus. I did not appreciate the way it killed spontaneity (I know. Spontaneity? What spontaneity at Walt Disney World??) I do not appreciate picking what attractions I feel like riding before the day of (or the night before). Perhaps it's because I've been to Disney many times by now and can take or leave anything depending on my mood.... I'm not on a crusade to conquer all the rides anymore.
A 7 day window is better than a 60 day window, so I'll give Disney that as far as time in advance to book rides. But it still requires me to have selected the park I want to start in. Which I think is Disney's game. After all, they got rid of park pass reservations. They need to know where we'll be with some other means so they can staff appropriately, and I think this is part of the new means. So, fine. But I'm still totally entering EPCOT to cut through from the skyliner to the monorail if I want to in the morning, and Disney won't even see me coming BWAHAHAAAA.
The other piece of this that's an improvement on FastPass Plus of yesteryear is that we no longer have to redeem all three of our currently held lightning lanes to get another. Part of me fears getting a lousy return time on something like Slinky Dog where it's not uncommon to see an 8 PM return time at 7 AM the day of, but if I can hold three, that means just one of them needs to be early enough to keep me redeeming throughout the day.
Which brings me to missing the 120-moinute rule. Disney had always had a way of putting into place systems that are confusing to the average guest, but can be exploited if you can figure them out. The 120-minute rule of the past that allowed you to book another Lightning Lane after 120 minutes passed from a previous booking (if it wasn't redeemed), allowed me to stack up to 5 or 6 lightning lanes in an evening (depending on how long a day we were talking about). Now I know I can only ever hold three at a time. And part of me fears that the good return times will be gone by well before the evening now that people can book ahead.
Like we did with Genie+ and the first iteration of Lightning Lanes, we'll let you know how this goes. We're heading back in a couple months and look forward to exploiting.... I mean USING... this system.
What do you think of the new Lightning Lane systems? Is it an improvement? Is it a downgrade? Or maybe a little bit of both? Come tell us over in the comments on our Facebook page. Did you know you can also like and follow us there to see when new articles drop each week? Until next time...
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