When Can I Make My First Lightning Lane Selection?
We've talked previously about how Lightning Lane and Individual Lightning Lane work, including how you can stack your lightning lanes by knowing what the earliest moment is you can make a new reservation. But there's one key missing ingredient: WHAT TIME CAN YOU START?
The answer, like so many things Disney Parks these days is: WELL, IT DEPENDS.
But we are here to break it down for you!
Walt Disney World
Lightning Lane Time
For any guest who has purchased Genie+, the first regular lightning lane selection can be made at 7:00 AM the day of. This is true regardless whether you are a resort guest or a day guest, and is also true regardless of your location. You do not have to be in the park, for example, to make your first 7:00 AM lightning lane selection.
If you have a 1 park per day ticket, you can only make selections for the park for which you have a park reservation. If you have a hopper, you can make selections for any park, but you need to be mindful of when your park hopping hours start. At Walt Disney World, they currently start at 2:00 PM and having a lightning lane will not get you into the park sooner than that (same thing with dining reservations) so that responsibility of timing things for your second park correctly lies squarely with you.
If you're noticing themes, good for you! You need to have a ticket, a park reservation, and Genie+ before ANY of this lightning lane business can happen, so be prepared.
Individual Lightning Lane Time
Individual lightning lane is the pay per ride service and you do not have to have Genie+ to take advantage of it. The list of rides that use Individual Lightning Lane includes the most popular rides and is a completely different list than those that use regular lightning lane.
If you are staying at a Walt Disney World Resort hotel, lucky you! You can book your first Individual Lightning Lane at 7:00 AM regardless of the time the park opens.
If you are staying offsite, you can book your first individual lightning lane only upon park opening. And no, the parks typically do not open before 7:00 AM. We assume "park opening" to also mean "standard park opening" as opposed to the half hour early entry resort guests also get, or if you happen to be admitted to a park for an early dining reservation, but the park isn't officially open yet. If we're wrong, correct us in the comments!
At Walt Disney World, you can purchase Genie+ for your entire trip ahead of time. Edit: This will no longer be true as of June 8, 2022, when all Genie+ purchases must be made the day of. If you only wish to use it some days, you can purchase it the day of. At Walt Disney World, "the day of" means when the clock strikes midnight and the new day officially begins. Again, it does not matter where you are to do this.
DisneyLand
Aside: We are ridiculously pleased with the symmetry of this and the above picture. Both are taking of the park's castle from the Tomorrowland bridge area. This one is Disneyland and the above is the Magic Kingdom.
Because DisneyLand has more local day-trippers, the rules here are different. Lightning lanes and individual lightning lanes can only be booked once you have scanned into the park. If you have a park hopper, and you scan into Disneyland but want to book a lightning lane over in Disney California Adventure, you can do that, and the app will automatically only show you times after 1:00 PM, which is park hopping start time at Disneyland.
There are some who claim that because of this, you always want to enter the park that opens first (if that's a thing that's even happening while you are there. When we were there in November, both parks always opened at the same time which even now appears to pretty typically be 8:00 AM). I could see a very slight advantage to this, but you are still going to be throttled back to only times after 1:00 PM for your second park.
Again, you need Genie+ to make lightning lane (regular) selections. You can purchase Genie+ ahead of time for the length of your trip, but if you want to purchase it only for select days, you must wait until the day of, and you can only purchase this after you have scanned into the park as well which means that if you want to take advantage of the very first lightning lane booking, you will need to do a very quick one-two punch of purchasing Genie+ and then your lightning lane. Oh, and did we mention everyone who just entered the entry plaza with you will likely be doing the same thing? Good luck getting cellular service.
Our Handy Dandy Grid
We hope this post clarifies some of your questions about Genie+, lightning lane, and individual lightning lane. What has your experience been getting the first lightning lane of your day? Tell us about it in the comments or over on our Facebook page where you can follow us to see when new articles are posted each week. Until next time...
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