Answers to when you can make a second Genie Lightning Lane selection at Walt Disney World theme parks

Oct 19, 2021 in "Disney Genie"

First Lightning Lane guests at Magic Kingdom October 19 2021
Posted: Tuesday October 19, 2021 11:16am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

One of the most frequently asked questions in the run-up to the launch of Disney Genie has been when exactly can you make subsequent Lightning Lane selections using Disney Genie+.

Now that Disney Genie+ is live we can answer the question after testing in the park today.

Before we get onto secondary selections, your first Disney Genie+ Lighting Lane selection can be made at 7am, regardless of whether you are staying at Walt Disney World Resort hotel or offsite.

That is the easy part, but things can then get a little complicated when it comes to second selections. Suppose your first Lightning Lane selection is further out than 2 hours from park opening, for example, 2pm. In that case, you can make a second Lightning Lane selection 120 minutes following the official park opening time.

Example. At 7am, you book a Lightning Lane selection for Haunted Mansion at 2pm in Magic Kingdom. The park opens at 9am, so you are then eligible to make another Lightning Lane selection for a ride time from 11am. This means at 11am you will have two Genie+ Lightning Lane reservations.

Thankfully the above scenario is one of the more complicated, and typical usage of Genie+ Lightning Lane is more straightforward.

In most cases, you are eligible for another Genie+ Lightning Lane selection as soon as you tap into the Lightning Lane entrance at the chosen attraction. If you do not tap into the attraction, you are eligible for another Lightning Lane selection at the end of the arrival window for the current selection or 2 hours after your prior election was made.

In short, assuming the park opens at 9am, your latest booking times will be:

7am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm, 9pm.

Using the above booking times, and assuming that your first reservation is for later in the day, it may be possible to stack three or more Genie+ Lightning Lane reservations at one time.

Most Lighting Lane selections have a 1-hour ride window and accept admission a couple of minutes ahead of the start time during a grace period.

View our Disney Genie, Genie+, and Lightning Lane FAQ for Walt Disney World for more answers.

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allgiggles23 hours ago

No worries. I should have waited to respond to your post so that I had more time to think about how to say what I wanted to say (I was getting ready to run out the door to a meeting that I knew would be stressful and would last a few hours. Not a good time to respond to a post on a message board. :D). And my vent wasn't (or at least shouldn't have appeared to be) directed at you personally. I just get frustrated when people (again, not directed at you personally -- broad generalization) are constantly saying something along the lines of "Go to Universal. It's so much better. They have a better "skip-the-line" feature/option and better hotels, food, whatever." (Major paraphrase there) There are many of us who have no desire to go to Universal. It's not so much that we (general "we", not just my family) feel that Disney is far superior and no other park can compare. It's that Universal doesn't appeal to us for various reasons. For me personally (as I mentioned in a previous post), I can't really do thrill rides and roller coasters anymore, and while I know Universal has more than just those things, looking at their website, I don't think there are enough other things there to make it worth the price of admission for me (I'm also not a Harry Potter fan so that's not a draw for me either). No big deal -- there are a lot of other amusement parks I won't go to anymore due to there not being enough things there for me to do. So to me, there really isn't a comparison between the two parks and their corresponding skip-the-line programs since Universal isn't an option for me. The "go to Universal instead" comments have gotten to be a common comment from people who do not like G+ (and it's ok not to like it. I understand and agree with many of the comments, but I still managed to have great success with it. I just wish it wasn't so expensive. I felt the previous $15/day was a fair price, but free was better.). To me, it's like saying, "The seafood at this restaurant is fabulous, it's so much better than the steak at that restaurant. And the seafood entrees are less expensive and a much nicer presentation and atmosphere than that restaurant. You need to have the seafood at this restaurant!" Well, if someone doesn't like seafood, there's no desire or point in going to that seafood restaurant no matter how inexpensive it is or how lovely the food presentation is. I'm glad there are plenty of options when it comes to amusement/theme parks and we can all do what best suits our family financially and logistically. I don't begrudge people going to Universal. I'm sure if I was 20 years younger and still able to do all the coasters and thrill rides, I'd be headed there as well and taking advantage of their skip-the-line options. :)

DisneyDreamer081 day ago

Checked at 8:02 for the heck of it and Multiple & DHS are sold out for the day. DHS opens at 9am.

DCBaker1 day ago

Disney's Hollywood Studios and the Multiple Parks option for Genie+ are no longer available for new purchase today.

surfsupdon1 day ago

I am truly happy your trip was great. I apologize that my post illicited strong emotions from you as I never intended to offend. I love a Disney vacation as much as the next- my post implied that as far as line skipping goes, Universal does it better. And I still runDisney on the regular. I still visit Disney fairly regularly, but I am there solely to run their races and visit Parks with a gifted free ticket. As such, I purchase Genie+ and, for my tastes, it is always so annoying. But I am still a huge proponent of Resort stays, dining, recreation, water parks, and runDisney. All the stuff outside of the Genie+ bubble. Thank you for your response :-)

allgiggles1 day ago

I used to LOVE roller coasters (and some thrill rides)!!! We would go to a few different amusement parks every year just to ride the roller coasters. But as I've gotten older, my body doesn't tolerate them very well. I can do something like 7DMT, but Slinky Dog Dash was a once and done for me and thankfully I rode it just before we were leaving the park because I didn't feel well for the next hour or so. I finally gave up on BTMRR and Space Mtn. on our trip in 2022. And I haven't ridden any coasters at other parks in probably 10 years. It kills me not to be able to ride them anymore but it's not worth feeling sick for a few hours just to ride one particular ride. And motion sickness meds either don't work for me (the non-drowsy ones) or make me too drowsy to enjoy anything else. I also tried the pressure point wrist bands. No luck.

Jrb19791 day ago

You not into thrills and coasters?

allgiggles1 day ago

We have no desire to do a trip to Universal so your little analogy is wasted on us. Four of our five kids have been there for a day or two and said that was more than enough for them and they have no desire to go back (and one of them regrets cutting 2 days off of their Disney trip to go there). I've never had any desire to step foot in those parks and my kids experiences just confirmed what I already knew: it's not a park I'm interested in going to. So we'll continue to spend our money buying G+/ILL at Disney to skip the lines. I can use Disney Math (and believe me, I'm very aware that it's Disney Math...I'm good with numbers) to justify whatever I want to -- it's my money to spend how I wish. I don't need anyone's permission to spend my money or *not* spend my money. And you can go ahead and continue to use your Universal math to justify your choices. We all get to decide how to spend our money. Oh, and I wasn't on my phone all day using Genie+. I'd schedule something; set an alarm on my phone for 5 minutes before our next schedule time; put the phone away. I'd use my phone for maybe 5-7 minutes every few hours. I didn't walk around constantly looking at my phone -- it spent the vast majority of the day in my pocket. We just scheduled our next ride and went off to do standby lines until our next LL came up. We aren't the type of people who have to constantly be trying to get something "better" so we weren't constantly trying to modify our existing reservations. Our plan worked great and we got on everything we wanted to and more and had nice long breaks every afternoon. People *not* using G+ use their phones more than I did with G+.

Disney Glimpses1 day ago

For me it's paying obscene amounts of money and getting less than what we used to get for free. It'd be one thing to charge and then at least be on par with FP+.

wedenterprises1 day ago

It's not even the cost for me, it's the complicated stress of it all...plus the 7am stuff, the virtual queue "race"...everything. Explaining the system to a newbie brings about laughter within the first few seconds.

JohnD1 day ago

I definitely wouldn't ask that of anyone. It occurred during my trip because circumstances kept us up past midnight after our HS day. As we were already awake we purchased G+ for Epcot after midnight and before we went to sleep. I would still recommend waking up at 6:30, do the pre- and at-7am routine then go back to sleep if that is what you want to do.

networkpro1 day ago

I think this tune is apropos in more ways than one : B.o.B – Bend Over

Purduevian1 day ago

No Reason to wait if you are already awake or have someone not on the trip, but asking guests to stay up to 12:01am and then be back on their phones at 6:59am to make the first LL every day of their trip would be a little insane.

JohnD1 day ago

"Night before" still means after midnight. Two weeks ago after a long day at HS, we didn't get to sleep until after midnight. Before we went to sleep and since it was already after midnight, we used the opportunity to purchase G+ in HS for "today."

arich351 day ago

I have clients down there and I have been buying it for them the night before just to be safe, no reason to wait and forget and get screwed