Disneyland has had many different names for their skip the line service that allow guests to access a shorter and quicker line for popular attractions. This often causes a lot of confusion on what the current system and how the process works if you want to avoid waiting in long lines at Disneyland. Genie+ at Disneyland is one of the more recent names for this service.
In just the past five years we've seen the name of the service, plus the way it works, change twice. First it changed from the FastPass/MaxPass name before switching to Genie+ in 2021.
It took some time for guests to get adjusted to calling the service Genie+ and now there has been yet another change leading many to wonder what happened to Genie+ at Disneyland?
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Lightning Lane Multi Pass Replaces Genie+
In July 2024, Disneyland changed its Genie+ service to Lightning Lane Multi Pass. This change was also made at Walt Disney World. Now the skip the line service at both Disney resorts is called Lightning Lane Multi Pass.
While this change came with numerous other changes to the system at Walt Disney World, including the ability to prebook reservations for rides before guests arrive, nothing has changed at Disneyland aside from the name itself.
The name of Individual Lightning Lanes has also been changed at both resorts to Lightning Lane Single Pass. Lightning Lane Single Pass is only for a select few rides, just two at Disneyland, that offer paid access to the shorter line for just that one ride. These rides aren't included in the general Lightning Lane Multi Pass list.
Did Disneyland Get Rid of Genie?
While it is confusing, the Genie service is technically gone and replaced by Lightning Lane Multi Pass at Disneyland.
But nothing else about the service has changed, it works exactly how it did before. We haven't seen a price increase or any other modifications to the way the service works at Disneyland so far. Walt Disney World has seen large changes to their skip the line service which may cause some confusion for Disneyland visitors. But none of those changes apply to Disneyland, only the name has been changed from Genie+ to Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Individual Lightning Lane to Lightning Lane Single Pass.
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Why Did Disneyland Change Genie+?
It was a bit unclear at first why Disneyland changed the name of Genie+ to Lightning Lane Multi Pass especially since the service itself wasn't changing. We personally thought the name change brought unnecessary confusion to Disneyland.
My first thought is that Disneyland changed the name to mirror the change at Walt Disney World. Even if the service itself didn't change, at least the names would sync up across both coasts.
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So why change the name at all? Since Walt Disney World was making such sweeping changes to the service, I suppose it seemed logical to Disney to also change the name. But since both coasts always had similar names for their skip the line services, then Disneyland had to follow suit. This is already leading to a lot of confusion with guests wondering what happened to Genie at Disneyland.
Disney likely did the research to see that the term Lightning Lane was less confusing to guests vs. referring to the service as Genie+ then the lines themselves as Lightning Lanes. The two names really didn't coordinate much with each other. So while this is a confusing move at the moment, it may have been motivated to bring simplicity to the terminology.
The name Genie+ was also inspired by the app offering the Disney Genie service, which is a free plan your day feature still on the app, and the “plus” was added on to signify purchasing that additional skip the line access. Perhaps guests weren't using the free Genie feature enough for Genie+ name to stand out enough. In my experience, the free Genie planning service was definitely lackluster and often gives bad suggestions. Moving away from the name Genie entirely separates these two services.
This is going to take some time to adjust to but the most important detail to know is that Disneyland's service remains the same, it's just a name change at the end of the day.
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