The Evolution of Disney’s FastPass

FastPass and MaxPass

Some people may remember the Disney MaxPass and FastPasses. FastPasses were free tickets that you could find all over the park at tiny ticket dispensers. These tickets would have you making a little trip across the park to find the ones you were looking for. Eventually, a few years after the creation of MaxPass, those did not suffice. Disney created the online version of FastPasses which was the MaxPass. You would have to pay fifteen dollars a day for MaxPass. MaxPass had a cooldown for every hour. Say I were to get a MaxPass FastPass for Indiana Jones at 10:15. I could hold onto that or use it, but if I held onto it I wouldn’t be able to schedule another FastPass. If I did use it, I would then have to wait until the next hour to get another one.

Lightning Lane

Lighting Lane is essentially the same thing as those mentioned above, but now you have to pay five more dollars for each individual each day. Unlike the MaxPass, Genie Plus has a tier system, some rides you can only get once or twice a day and some you have to pay for individually. By that I mean that for Disneyland’s most popular rides, Rise of the Resistance, Radiator Springs Racers, and Web Slingers, instead of paying twenty dollars for each individual for the whole day, you would actually have to pay that much to experience the ride one time.

Genie and Genie Plus

So what is the difference between Disney Genie and Genie Plus? Genie is, to put it in simple terms, just a day planner where you can put your predicted start time and end time. It will give you a plan on the rides that you will go on and places that you will eat at between your planned start and end. 

Genie Plus still comes with this day planner feature, but as the name implies, comes with more features. It includes a Disney PhotoPass that lets you take as many photos as you would like with the professional photographers that are around at popular picture places. It also includes something familiar, the Lightning Lane.

Thoughts

I personally am not happy with the new system of Lighting Lane, especially as a hardcore Disney fanatic. I do not think that Walt Disney would agree with this new system, where money is the top priority. I think that Walt would have wanted it to be a place where families can enjoy their time together without having to pay an additional fee for singular rides. I think that the boarding system with Rise of the Resistance and Web Slingers and MaxPass was the way to go.

Photo Credit: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/genie/