The app-based Lightning Lane service, which was introduced as Genie+ at Disney's American theme parks in late 2021 and revised in July 2024, evokes dread in casual visitors to the self-billed Happiest Place on Earth.
People who choose to vacation at a Disney park already struggle to navigate high costs and crowds. Lightning Lane Multi Pass, which purports to help guests plan the best times to enjoy attractions, adds yet another layer of complexity to deciphering the Disney system.
We've gone on record to call Lightning Lane a scam because it pushes vacationers to hand over money for something that used to be free. The need for Lightning Lane is flimsy at best. The only reason guests feel the need to buy access to this special line is because so many other people buy it—if fewer people did that, the free Standby line would move more briskly.
The price of that Lightning Lane benefit changes depending on how busy the parks are projected to be. At Florida's Walt Disney World, Lightning Lane Multi Pass rates can now be as much as $25 to $39 a day. At California's Disneyland resort, it's up to $30 per day. That price is per person and per day, whether you're a child or an adult.
For single-day visits, Lightning Lane slots become available via the Disney theme park app at 7am 3 three days ahead, so if you're a spontaneous person who doesn't buy your theme park tickets that far ahead, you will find a limited selection of ride times by the day of your visit. If you've got a reservation at a Disney resort hotel, you can book Lightning Lane slots starting 7 days ahead of the first day of your stay. (Warning: You have to be inside the United States or Canada to make Lightning Lane reservations.)
We've already covered the much-maligned rollout of the Genie system and the challenges of its non-intuitive design. We also must warn you that frequently, Lightning Lane queue entrances get severely backed up and you'll wonder why you bothered to spend the money for the fast lane.
Now we'll boil down Lightning Lane's pay-per-day version, Lightning Lane Multi Pass, to 10 essential rules for using the app successfully. Follow these and you'll get through a day using Lightning Lane.
1. Always make your next reservation for as soon as possible.
Once you make a Lightning Lane Multi Pass reservation, you're blocked from adding more until you use one of them. So to maximize your purchase, you should try to use reservations as early as possible so you can make new ones as frequently as possible. Granted, that means you're going to be consulting your smartphone constantly, but that's the hidden price of Lightning Lane: It changes how you experience the parks.
Given a choice between, for example, a 1pm time slot and a 3pm time slot, go for the 1pm if you're equally excited about both rides. Using the earlier time will clear the way to make more plans sooner.
The longer you wait to redeem your next reservation slots, the more you're prevented from getting your usage rolling. But remember: You can only use Lightning Lane on a given ride once a day.
2. Start first thing in the morning.
The biggest mistake you can make with Lightning Lane is to start thinking about it only when you arrive at the park. By then, other Disney fans have already got a jump on you by 3 or 7 days.
Lightning Lane works best for people who plan to start programming it before arrival. If you plan on starting once you have arrived in the park, you will get much less out of your money. In fact, you may find that future slots for the most popular rides are no longer available, or they are so far into the afternoon that if you take one, you'll have no choice but to wait until you can make a new booking. You get the most out of Lightning Lane when you can use your ride reservations faster, without waiting hours for them to roll around.
In 2022, Walt Disney World's managers quietly added this caveat to the fine print describing the service: "On average, guests can enter 2 or 3 attractions or experiences per day using the Lightning Lane entrance."
That means Disney itself has calculated that by using the paid Lightning Lane system, the typical guest will only be able to use, at most, three Lightning Lanes by for their money.
Ultimately, Lightning Lane is a system that takes more than it gives back, and Disney warns you about that in the fine print.
3. Schedule the popular rides first.
When you check available times for rides, you'll notice that the biggest blockbusters start filling slots quickly. In the Tip Board section of Genie on the app, current wait times ("Standby Line") are listed alongside the next available Lightning Lane times. If a ride has a very long wait time, it's a safe bet that the ride's daily Lightning Lane time slots are hot and scarce, so use those Standby times to gauge whether you should snag a reservation while you still can.
It's crucial to know which few big rides are excluded from Lightning Lane Multi Pass and require a separate paid Lightning Lane Single Pass reservation instead. Each Disney park has one or two attractions that have a Lightning Lane that Multi Pass can't get you. Those attractions require a separate Single Pass payment that can be as high as $25 per person per ride (yes, that's in addition to what you paid to access Lightning Lane), and each person can only book two such rides a day.
The list of Lightning Lane Single Pass rides changes, but it's almost certain to include Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, Avatar Flight of Passage, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. For those, you must pay separately for Lightning Lane and it won't be granted by paying for Lightning Lane Multi Pass for the day.
So that you'll be certain, the Walt Disney World site lists attractions on Multi Pass on this page; the Disneyland site lists them here. But the lists change depending on projected crowds.
Particularly in Florida, Lightning Lane rides can sell out all their daily slots by late morning. Lightning Lane Multi Pass attractions (the ones included in the $15–and-up daily payment) typically take longer to fill fully, but the most popular ones can still book up by early afternoon in busy season. You'll know the ride is about to book up when the next available time pushes far into the future.
4. Favor reservations that come due soon.
The sooner you use a reservation, the sooner you can get another one. Die-hard Disney fans call this "stacking." Stacking rides one atop another, rather than waiting hours in between, gets you a lot more for your money. Lightning Lane works best when you swing from one time slot to another, like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine without stopping.
This tip will help you speed up your options: You can redeem a reservation starting 5 minutes before the posted time. You can also book a new Lightning Lane reservation as soon as you're fully checked in for your previous one. (Some rides have two check-in posts—for those, you'll need to clear both of them first. But technically you can book a new Lightning Lane appointment by the time you're boarding the ride vehicle of your previous Lightning Lane wait.)
5. Modify if you can.
Available times may shift slightly as people cancel their original choices, and sold-out time slots sometimes reappear briefly. If you don't see a time slot you like, keep refreshing the page (or leave the Tip Board and return to it) to shake up the options.
If you want to swap a reservation with one on a ride in different Disney park, you'll have to cancel your first reservation before changing parks in the app to book the other one. (And your park ticket will have to include the Park Hopper upgrade option.)
It's far better for you to modify a reservation instead of cancelling it and rebooking. That's because as long as you're simply modifying, you're still holding onto your first time slot in case something goes wrong with the new slot's availability.
When you lose a better ride time because you were too slow, don't give up. Keep refreshing, because another better time might still surface, and rides that were previously sold out of Lightning Lane may suddenly show availability. Refresh!
6. Don't waste a reservation on minor attractions.
You may select all your rides from the second tier of available attractions if you wish, but if maximizing your dollar is the goal, you won't. One reason Disney built Lightning Lane was to steer visitors to attractions that usually get less traffic, spreading crowds. So the options that the app shows you are full of filler. Lower-tier diversions such as Mickey's PhilharMagic and Spaceship Earth are perfectly pleasant and worth treasuring, but the average Standby wait time doesn't always justify the use of a precious Lightning Lane reservation.
In some parks, like EPCOT or Disney's Animal Kingdom, you might only be interested in one or two rides. If that's the case, it's probably not worth spending $25 per person or more to use Lightning Lane a couple of times.
If you want to know how the Walt Disney World attractions compare, buy the print or digital version of our guidebook—we appraise every last one.
7. Lightning Lane is not very useful if the park isn't crowded.
When wait times are low across the board, you won't save much time paying for Lightning Lane. In fact, having to fuss with it might even drag down your fun. The day before your visit begins, use the Disney World or Disneyland app to monitor wait times. If they're acceptable, you may be able to forego Lightning Lane entirely. (At Disneyland, the classic Fantasyland rides don't even offer Lightning Lane anyway—there's not enough space to configure the special lines.)
There are some rides, like Twilight Zone Tower of Terror/ Guardians of the Galaxy—Mission Breakout! and Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, that have queues that are arranged in a way that even Lightning Lane guests must wait 15 or 20 minutes after they're scanned in before they actually board a ride vehicle. If overall wait times are only 20–30 minutes, Lightning Lane may not save you much time for those rides.
Remember: Every single ride also has a regular line. If you don't buy Lightning Lane, you can always just wait in line. That's the "Standby Time" that's posted, and if it's not long, you'll be fine without Lightning Lane.
8. If you only want to ride the big rides, Lightning Lane may run out of steam.
If you only care about a handful of favorite attractions and you have no interest in riding the majority of the rides, then you can probably do without paying for Lightning Lane and just wait in line like a regular person. Disney has a lot of rides targeted at small children. If you don't have any kids in tow, were you really going to every last ride?
9. If the system lags, sign out of the app and back in again.
When Disney's systems glitch out, they don't usually tell you why. Sometimes, the app will stop working but act like it's still thinking. If the Disney tech stops working for any reason, it might be a simple time-out. Sign out and sign in again. Most of the time, that solves the issue.
That's why you should memorize your account email and password. You might need them several times during your day.
10. A Lightning Lane Single Pass purchase may still require a wait.
Attractions that are popular enough to allow Disney to charge per ride will also be crowded, so even if you pay for a time, you might still have to contend with a line (though not as long as if you didn't have a reservation.)
You may only buy two Lightning Lanes Single Passes a day. They don’t have to be in the same park, but they can’t be the same ride. If a ride breaks down, you’ll be allowed to return once it reopens, and if you are unable to wait, you’ll have to go to Guest Relations to get your money back—which is just about the only circumstance in which Disney will refund anything to do with Lightning Lane. If the ride remains closed all day to the park's closing time, you’ll get an automatic refund without having to wait in line at Guest Relations.
The biggest message we have about Disney's Lightning Lane is that you should adjust your expectations.
Obsessive fans compete for bragging rights of being able to wrangle the most Lightning Lane trips. But most casual visitors to Disney parks, and most families on vacation, aren't as well-versed in the attractions and attendance patterns—or they refuse to hunch over their smartphones all day.
Follow our 10 tips and at least you'll be able to use Lightning Lane better.
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