When Disney announced that the Genie+ service would be launching at Disneyland today, the Perfecting the Magic team was a little shook. We knew Genie+ was coming to Disneyland as we’ve been covering it closely, but we didn’t expect it to launch this week!
We excitedly headed to Disneyland to test Genie+ on its first day, and we’re sad to report that it left us wishing Disney had spent more time soft-opening Genie+ internally before releasing it to park guests and charging $20 for the service.
Out of the Lamp: Our Experience with Genie+ at Disneyland
We arrived at Disneyland just after 7 am, which granted us access to the parks at 7:45 am. We spent our morning rope dropping attractions as wait times were incredibly short. It didn’t make sense to book Genie+ attractions at this time. We enjoyed our morning immensely.
However, by the time we were ready to put Genie+ to use around 9 am, the system was down, and we couldn’t book Lightning Lanes. While we were able to use the base Genie app features like wait times, mobile ordering, and suggested itineraries, the paid features of Genie+ were non-functional. We hoped that PhotoPass (included with the Genie+ service) would still be an option, but were disappointed to find that it didn’t work either.
Frustratingly, the Genie+ app took hours to display a message stating that Genie+ features were down, which confused many park goers, who waited until noon to see a display message informing them of the system-wide outages.
Genie+ Remedies and Refunds
After what seemed like far too long, Disney attempted to make things right in response to the Genie+ system failure. We personally received two Lightning Lane passes for any experience in the park, including Individual Paid Attractions like Rise of the Resistance, and were happy to learn that Disney opened Lightning Lanes for Genie+ purchasers later in the day without return-time restrictions.
Disney provided Genie+ refunds via gift card if you were willing to stand in a painstakingly long line for over an hour, and the process was needlessly time-consuming. We hope that Disney looks into automatic refund processing in response to technical issues in the future, as the response was slow and tedious.
A Second Wish: Trying Genie+ Again
The interest in and demand for Genie+ at Disneyland is evident, and we expect it will be successful long-term. However, we cannot adequately review the user experience after one (rather unfortunate) day.
Genie+ may have gotten off to a rough start, but with some technical upgrades and automatic response planning, Genie+ could thrive at Disneyland. We’re keeping a close watch and will provide a full review when Genie+ functions as intended.
Share Your Thoughts
Have you experienced Genie+? Share your thoughts in the comments and
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