How to Get the Disneyland Lightning Lane Time You Want Almost Every Time

Lightning Lane Multi Pass at Disneyland is the name of the service (previously called Genie+ before it was changed from FastPass) guests can purchase to skip the lines. Purchasing Lightning Lane Multi Pass gives you access to the shorter Lightning Lane for select attractions.

Lightning Lane Multi Pass works by allowing guests to select return times for the attractions they want to experience. However, throughout the day the return times for rides will become more limited and you may not always be able to get a time that works for your day.

This is where our trick comes in! Let's go through my hack on “refreshing” the app, sometimes called stacking at Walt Disney World, to get the best times for your Lightning Lane reservations.

What Is Lightning Lane Multi Pass?

Lightning Lane Multi Pass is a paid system at Disneyland that allows guests to skip the typical standby line for around 20 attractions at both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park. You pay to access the shorter Lightning Lane for these selection attractions.

Lightning Lane Multi Pass starts at $25 per person but varies depending on the date. Most often, I see the price hover right at $30 per person. Pricing for this varies depending on the date so you may pay a higher price for Lightning Lane Multi Pass on busier days of the year that often coordinate with peak travel times such as October during the Halloween season, the Holiday season, three day weekends, Spring break, etc. This is just further reason to consider adding Lightning Lane Multi Pass to your discount Disneyland tickets.

You can only use Lightning Lane once per ride, you can't repeat rides using the service so if you want to ride something again you need to use the standby line. You can book a new reservation every two hours or once you've redeemed one. If you book a reservation that's more than two hours out in advance you will be able to book a new one at the two hour mark.

Lightning Lane Uses Return Times

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You can't just stroll up to each ride and access the Lightning Lane though! You have to book Lightning Lane return times which are one hour timed windows throughout the day that allow you to access the line. You can only book the time that is showing as currently available. The rides cycle through return times throughout the day depending on how popular they are.

The most popular rides will often get booked up the quickest which will push the return time to experience the Lightning Lane later and later in the day. This can be quite inconvenient especially if it's 2PM in the afternoon and the earliest return times for the rides you want are showing up as 8PM or later.

This is where my trick comes in to get the time you want!

How to Get Best Lightning Lane Times

The biggest mistake you can make with Lightning Lane is to give up when you notice a ride has run out of Lightning Lane times or does not have a time that fits your day!

New times will become available throughout the day on the Disneyland app for all the attractions that Lightning Lane is used for.

Where do these extra ride reservations come from? One theory is that once a guest cancels or modifies a Lightning Lane reservation, the one they previously held is released back into the pool of reservations. Another theory is that Disneyland releases additional Lightning Lane reservations throughout the day based on their own data and reasoning.

Modify Your Lightning Lane Time

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So how do you take advantage of these re-released Lightning Lane times? The best method is to modify your existing Lightning Lane time! In the image above, you can see how we pulled up the Disneyland app, clicked on modify, and it brought me to this screen.

Simply drag down the screen to refresh the page and watch for a better time! This works best if you are modifying an existing Lightning Lane reservation because it will show the attraction you want at the top of the screen and makes it easier to grab those better times that pop up. But make sure you grab that new time quick because others will be doing the same thing. Fast fingers win the race in this situation!

And when I mean refresh, don't just do it once, sometimes you have to sit and consistently do it for a few minutes. But if you commit to it, you WILL find a better time. I had a 100% success rate on our last visit to Disneyland as long as I devoted at least five full minutes (often if we were in line for another attraction) by refreshing nonstop.

It is tedious but if you are always playing around with modifying your Lightning Lanes, you can end up with an earlier time or better times in general, which makes use of the service even more helpful. So don't give up, keep refreshing refreshing refreshing! This is my best hack for using Lightning Lane Multi Pass at Disneyland and it is such a simple, easy thing to do.

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