After a nice Christmas gift from Walt Disney World executives, in which Lightning Lane options were improved, the parks have reverted back to the old plan. While disappointing (it saved guests money), it isn’t a surprise. Although the parks continue to seem fairly busy right now, there will be a large drop-off in the next few days (outside of the mid-January holiday weekend); the changes to Lightning Lane were reportedly to help with crowd-flow, not a totally altruistic gift to guests.
There is one change from the past, and that is that Expedition Everest is being removed from the options due to its multi-month ride-system refurbishment. The changes at Everest are intended to allow the attraction to have proper systems in place for the five operating trains the ride uses.
To review, the Lightning Lane pay-to-skip options are:
Magic Kingdom
Space Mountain
Seven Dwarves Mine Train
Epcot
Frozen Ever After
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
Hollywood Studios
Slinky Dog
Rise of the Resistance
Animal Kingdom
Flight of Passage
Just as before, guests can purchase Genie+ for $15 per person to have access to FastPass line-skips (now called Lightning Lanes). These do not include the above attractions, but do feature most other rides with significant to moderate queue times. Genie+ holders can have one line-skip at a time, except in some long-hold situations. As a heads-up, one of our writers here at That Park Place has previously assessed Genie+ may not be worth the money. Another staff member at the site went to Disney World over the holidays and came to the same conclusion. After using Genie+ one day, they and their family chose not to use it the rest of their stay because it didn’t gain them very much.
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