Jan 14, 202310 min read

Has Disney Lost its Magic?

Spoiler alert: The answer is "no", despite what critics say. This is our experience with the much maligned changes to Disney Theme Parks that were rolled out by former CEO Bob Chapek.

Count us among those jumping for joy that Bob Iger is back and Bob Chapek is out. Chapek had a bad reputation among Cast Members, seeming to have lost sight of that fact that it is the Cast Members that bring the Disney magic to life. That said, not ALL of the changes he rolled out were terrible.

Below is our personal experience on our recent visit to Walt Disney World with Chapek's changes, and an honest review of whether they ruined the magic. Helping to inform this was a trip the prior year to Disneyland before some of the changes took place, so we've seen both sides of the coin, and this is what we think.

Park Reservations

One of the least loved changes, among guests, is the Disney Park Pass Reservation system, which restricts available reservations among guests for each park and requires guests, even those who hold a valid ticket, to reserve their starting park for the day and enter their starting park before hopping (and only hopping after 2 pm).

In our experience, there are problems with the system, which we will detail below, but really, this was the least of our worries. The most confusing aspect of the system is likely figuring out what tier your ticket is in, and then remembering to make the reservation. Annual pass holders complain that theirs are the most restricted for availability, and that's true, but on the other hand, given they have an annual pass, they have the most choices of days they can go to each park. The least restricted reservations are for those staying at a Disney resort and with length of stay tickets. Again, this makes sense because guests who've gone out of their way to come to a destination for a short amount of time need to be able to take advantage of the destination during that short amount of time. So, equal access to reservations? No. But equitable access? Yes.

Those we hear having the biggest problems with the Park Pass Reservation system are those who wait until the last minute to plan a holiday vacation, or those who make changes to add someone during a holiday vacation. Because we plan ahead, this wasn't us. And we prefer planning ahead and getting our reservation to being turned away at the gate when the park reaches capacity.

The system also allows Disney to plan staffing based on capacity of the park ahead of time, rather than react to unknown attendance real time. We found Walt Disney World to be well-staffed every day of our stay. We don't know if this is a direct result of the Park Pass Reservation system yet, but we do know it's possible now for Disney to plan ahead, and we're in favor of that.

The biggest problem, in our opinion, was park hopping, but we can't figure out an equitable way to handle that. We didn't love having to wait until 2 pm, or having to enter our reserved park first before we could hop. We would be in favor of a change that allowed hopping after 1pm, similar to Disneyland California, and allowed you to enter a park for which you did not make a park pass reservation REGARDLESS of whether you entered your reserved park first when you hop (after 1 pm). We think the impact of allowing this to capacity would be small, but the impact to travel time for guests would be huge since Walt Disney World is so spread out.

No More Magical Express

Guests now have the option to either pay for a Mears Connect service to the parks which operates very similarly to Magical Express with the exception that you must pick up your luggage first, or get a Lyft or Uber. We considered using Mears Connect to get the experience with the colorful bus and the video and whatnot, but in the end we found Lyft to be less expensive, faster, and in general more convenient.

My typical experience with Magical Express looked like this:

Arrive at airport, walk directly to Magical Express and get in line
Wait 10 minutes to 2 hours in line for my shuttle.
Full bus, noisy but excited ride to my resort via several other resorts.
Arrive at my resort 2pm-3pm ish. Go to parks, have fun.
Tire out from long travel day, return to resort 7pm-9pm ish. Luggage not there yet.
Wait up. Luggage arrives 10 pm- 12 am ish.

I never understood how luggage could possibly take so long or where it was while I waited for it.

Compare that to my recent experience using Lyft:

Arrive at airport, make way to baggage claim, wait 20-30 min to pick up luggage.
Use app to summon Lyft. Walk out the doors right by baggage claim. Lyft arrives within 5 minutes.
Private and quiet DIRECT ride to my resort.
Arrive at resort around noon. - 1 pm.
Oh, look, I already have my luggage. Check it with Bell Services while I wait for my room. Do whatever I want.
When I'm ready for my bags, Bell Services brings them within minutes.

Lyft wins hands down. I don't miss Magical Express. At all. I thought I would, but I don't. And Disney is saving tons of operating expense by cutting it. Win-win.

We Don't Talk About Genie

Actually, yes, we DO talk about Genie. One of the most alienating moves Chapek made was to make the previous free FastPass system a paid system by moving all that functionality to a paid service called Genie+. Genie+ costs anywhere from $15 to $29 per guest per day and allows the ability to book Lightning Lane experiences on a first come first serve basis throughout the day. (The Lightning Lane is the same as the former FastPass lane... it's basically a shorter line, IF there is a line at all).

To add insult to injury, each park has one ride that you can't even get a Lightning Lane for through Genie+, but that has what is called Individual Lightning Lane purchase available. The Individual Lightning Lane is a pay per ride skip-the-line system where the fee ranges anywhere from about $12 to $23 in our experience.

Suddenly, a formerly free service that only required some planning, FastPass, was now only accessible to those who pay more. Consider a family of 4, and you could be talking about $116 extra dollars per day to use Genie+, and again as much if anyone wants to skip the line on an Individual Lightning Lane ride. HOW is this FAIR?

We have a few things to say about this, and they have to do with what the competition is doing, and basic economic principles. Let's start with the competition. On my recent trip to Orlando in November, I was also able to go to Universal Studios. Ticket prices to enter the parks were roughly the same as Disney ticket prices. But prices to skip the lines were definitely not the same. Universal offers what is called an Express Pass. Even the most basic Express Pass that allows skip-the-line access to rides once per ride at one of the two parks starts at $89.99 per person, and can go up to (breathe, breathe) $349.99 per person. These are the truly eye-popping prices I encountered when I realized my husband would only have one day at Universal and I looked into how I could make sure he could ride everything he wanted. It was a weekend day, the day after veteran's day, and the park was crowded, but even the longest line we encountered (aside from Hagrid, which isn't available on Express Pass anyway, and has lines that aren't like anything else we saw) were about 40 minutes average, 70 minutes tops. Compare that to lines at Walt Disney World that can reach 60-90 minutes for a Lightning Lane eligible ride. Given this, Genie+ is a downright bargain.

But wait, there's more. Much like Universal's experience with Express Pass, now that the Lightning Lane is a paid service, the lines for it are shorter and the availability is more than FastPass was. This is where the basic economics of supply and demand come into play. There's a limited supply of skip-the-line access for each ride. Demand is high when it's a free service. Demand is lower when people have to pay.

Now, I realize I'm coming at this from the angle of someone who could afford to use this service. Disney in general is becoming less affordable. I was surprised to learn recently that roughly 18% of guests who visit Walt Disney World borrowed money so they could afford it.... and that's just heartbreaking. On the other hand, we keep saying we hate the crowds, and we hate park capacity being restricted with the park pass system. I'm becoming convinced that we simply can't have it all the ways we want it.

On my trip in 2018 before Genie+, Park Pass Reservations, and the pandemic in general, the crowds were so bad that I was miserable a lot of the time. On my recent trip, the crowds were only intolerable at EPCOT in World Showcase because of the Food & Wine Festival. And even then, Genie+ allowed me to do what I wanted to do.

We used Genie+ almost optimally, which I'll show you how to do in just a minute. Given that, we didn't miss anything we wanted to ride, and didn't wait in lines hardly ever (with the exception of Flight of Passage, which we rope-dropped and waited an hour that felt like 15 minutes for, and Splash Mountain, which we rode standby and waited about 20 minutes for). With a little planning, we were able to secure Lightning Lane times pretty much until we were done for the day, and were able to use many more Lightning Lanes in a day than we were able to under the FastPass Plus system, with the added flexibility that we didn't have to plan what rides we were going to ride and when 60 days ahead of our vacation. We could just do it the day of, ride by ride, as we felt like doing at the time.

I kept remarking, and will say again, that this most recent trip was my best experience with riding. My personal experience also doesn't allow for the argument that everything should be standby all the time and then all lines would be shorter. At Disneyland the previous year, we arrived during a time when the MaxPass was no longer available, but Genie+ was not yet rolled out, which meant everything was standby. We waited in so many lines! Even if lines in general evened out so that no one ride had a 5 minute wait while another had a 70 minute wait, all lines during the height of the day, even the least popular rides, were about 40 minutes long. I was not a fan of that. We found most days, we only rode before 10 am or after 8 pm because otherwise the lines were prohibitive. Yes, that's 10 hours of intolerable lines, if you're counting, and about 4-6 good riding hours.

Disneyland rope drop crowds when all rides were standby only

The following were our principles of good Genie+ use, without a focus on running ourselves ragged, and I found it worked quite well:

Be ready at exactly 7 am to grab your first Lightning Lane, and, if you are going to spring for an Individual Lightning Lane, that too.
Consider rope dropping Individual Lightning Lane rides rather than paying. We had perfect luck rope dropping Avatar: Flight of Passage, twice. On the other hand because of the way the rope drop line is held at the Magic Kingdom and that my mother was in an ECV and couldn't fight against crowds that would close around her, we could not rope drop Seven Dwarves Mine Train. Scope it out and see what you can rope drop.
If not rope dropping an Individual Lightning Lane ride, rope drop another popular ride before riding your first Lightning Lane reservation.
Remember you have a 60 minute window to use your Lightning Lane with a 5 minute early grace period and a 15 minute late grace period. If your Lightning Lane is at 10:45, for example, remember you can show up anywhere from 10:40 to 12:00. You do NOT have to wait for 10:45. You can be riding other things and just arrive in your window anytime.
Do a little research ahead of time on which Lightning Lanes book up fastest. Some do run out during the day. Some even run out in the first hour of the day. A good book like the Unofficial Guide breaks this down for you, or you can keep refreshing your app and keep an eye on return times to see how fast certain things are going. Return times are given out sequentially, so the later the return times, the faster that ride is running out of Lightning Lane availability.
Grab your next Lightning Lane as soon as you scan into the ride you were holding a Lightning Lane for. I liked to do this while waiting in the minimal queue.
Don't forget the 2-hour rule that if you haven't had a chance to use a Lightning Lane you are holding yet, you can get another Lightning Lane by waiting two hours from the time you booked the last one. This way, if your next chance to scan into a Lightning Lane ride is more than 2 hours from the time you book it, you can book another when two hours pass. We used the 2-hour rule to stack Lightning Lanes for evenings when we were park hopping.
Lightning Lane is wonderful with park hopping. We would typically secure an initial Lightning Lane and rope drop a ride, so we had two rides with minimal lines, and then were able to usually secure one or two more Lightning Lane rides in the morning before times started to get too late for the initial park. When that happens, fine, start looking at times for the second park you plan to go to and wait for them to get to a time window that works with your plans. Then, start stacking. Note the time you grab your first evening Lightning Lane. 2 hours from that, grab another, and so on. We could typically use another two or three Lightning Lanes in the evenings, probably more if we had the stamina to stay later.
Couple park hopping with a midday rest. This is good advice in general, but there's always a time midday when the Lightning Lanes suddenly start going too fast and you're looking at late afternoon times with nothing to ride in the hours between 12 and 3. For us, this was fine, as we'd be at our resort enjoying the pool bar during those hours, and stacking Lightning Lanes for the evening.

Back to the Question...

HAS Disney lost its magic? No. But we won't argue that they haven't become unaffordable for the average family, and that might be a problem. We believe the operational changes above ended up being positives, and also were not the reason Chapek was let go and Iger was brought back. One can point to economics and say despite these changes, Disney did more poorly than forecasted in the past two years, and this is true. We also had a pandemic in the last two years. Everyone did poorly economically, except for maybe Netflix, Shipt, and Amazon. The real problem with Chapek was in his ability to handle personal relations with Cast Members and to address divisive political issues tactfully and promptly.

This was our recent experience. What's been yours? Tell us over on our Facebook page, where you can follow us to see when new posts are available each week. Until next time...