See Our First Day Experience With Disney World’s NEW Lightning Lane System!
Today is the first day of the new Lightning Lane system in Disney World! This is replacing the current Genie+ system which allows you to skip some of the lines in the parks for a price.
Lightning Lane
The new system will still cost money, but the way it works is similar to how the previous FastPass+ system worked. You can make selections in advance!
We know, it’s a little confusing, but we’ve got it all broken down for you right here. And today, we’re putting it to the test — Come along with us as we test out this new Lightning Lane system!
Our Experience with the NEW Lightning Lane System
Who’s ready to re-learn how to skip the lines in Disney World?! We know, it doesn’t sound super exciting, but we have some good news — this new Lightning Lane system is VERY similar to how the old FastPass+ system used to work.
So, if you remember that and preferred that version of skipping lines in the parks, this is going to be easy peasy!
Photo: Disney
You’re able to purchase your Lightning Lane passes starting at 7AM. Since today was the first day of the system being in place, we bought ours at 7AM this morning. But, moving forward, Disney World hotel guests can purchase and plan their passed 7 days in advance, and all other guests can do this 3 days in advance.
We got the Magic Kingdom Multi Pass for $29! This allowed us to book multiple attractions at Magic Kingdom throughout the day.
Photo: Disney
You can initially book 3 attractions with the Multi Pass — 1 from the Tier 1 list of attractions and 2 from the Tier 2 list. You can also book all 3 from the Tier 2 list if you want (take a look at the full lists right here).
After you scan into your first Lightning Lane of the day, then you are able to hold more than one Tier 1 attraction — you can hold as many as you want if it works out.
This new system also allows you to by Single Pass Lightning Lanes for individual attractions that are more popular and not included in the Multi Pass (see the full list of these attractions right here). You can only purchase two of these per day.
Photo: Disney
When we initially went to book our first 3 Lightning Lanes, we had some issues checking out. We had everything selected that we wanted and then weren’t allowed to check out and lost them!
It was clear that many people were all trying to make selections at the same time and either the system was having a hard time handling the traffic or Lightning Lanes were just being snatched up quickly!
Since it was the first day of this new system, we’ll give it some grace and see how things go over the next few weeks.
We were able to get through checkout with our selections a few minutes later. What we booked initially were some Lightning Lanes for Pirates of the Caribbean, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Haunted Mansion. We also got a Single Pass Lightning Lane for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
Photo: Disney
You are given 5 minutes to make your selections and if that time runs out, then you lose your selections.
Photo: Disney
Once we had everything booked, it was then very easy to go in and modify the time slots for the attractions or even change the attractions we had selected.
If you select the Lightning Lane that you want to modify, at the very top it will allow you to select a new time for that attraction. If you want to pick a new attraction, you can scroll through and refresh to see what else is available.
Photo: Disney
The app will hold your selections in your cart and also allow you to view the remainder of your day to see if what you’ve selected works well with the rest of your schedule. There is no limit to how many times you can modify these, it just depends on what’s available!
The Single Pass is also easy to modify as long as their are selections available. You can even change it to another ride and just pay the difference in price!
Once we tapped into our first ride of the day (we modified it to be Big Thunder Mountain Railroad), we were then able to book another Lightning Lane while still retaining the other two we already had booked!
Photo: Disney
This is basically how the rest of our day is going. We scan into a ride and book another so that we always have 3 Lightning Lanes reserved.
Just like the previous FastPass+ and Genie+, availability will vary. We noticed the more popular attractions running out of Lightning Lanes first, both for the Multi Pass and Single Pass. But, we did keep refreshing and sometimes a new time slot would pop up, so don’t give up hope!
Around 3:30PM, we saw that popular rides like Soarin’, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, Tower of Terror, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Dinosaur, and Expedition Everest were still showing availability.
However, the availability fluctuated almost every time we refreshed! We’ll have to see moving forward how many popular rides are consistently available later in the day.
Lightning Lane
We found that in order to maximize the amount of attractions we could do, we continuously were modifying and refreshing to grab new time slots. Also note that this new system only allows you to use Lightning Lane once on each attraction that you book.
After that, the standby line is your only option if you want to ride again.
Note that if you plan on park hopping later in the day, your initial selections do have to all be in the same park. For example, if we were hopping to somewhere after Magic Kingdom today, we would still have to first book Lightning Lanes in Magic Kingdom and scan into at least ONE of the attractions we had selected in order to book another one in a different park.
Lightning Lane
Overall, we do think this new system is a lot better than Genie+ was! It’s simpler to use and gives you more flexibility. It’s also great that you can actually select from a bunch of different time slots instead of just taking the time Genie+ decided to give you.
There’s a lot more you can control with the new Lightning Lane system! AND you can book things in advance, so that’s great. There’s also no 2-hour cool-down time like there was with Genie+!
Winnie the Pooh Lightning Lane
However, it is important to know that with the new Lightning Lane system, you might need to be a bit more strategic when planning. If you book your first 3 attractions for later in the day, you won’t be able to book any more until you scan into that first one.
So, it might be more beneficial to just take the rides you want with the earliest possible time slots so you can scan in early and keep booking! With Genie+, you could book something for later in the day, but then after 2 hours of booking, you could book something else. That is not the case here.
Photo: Disney
We’ll be coming out with our full guide to this new Lightning Lane system soon, so stay tuned for more Disney World news and updates!
