Should I book virtual queue or lightning lane first?

At 7 a.m. on the dot, you should aim to get your Virtual Queue spot first as they usually fill up the quickest. Then, immediately switch to purchasing your Individual Lightning Lane for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Afterward, make your reservation for Peter Pan's Flight.



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Usually, you'll make your first Genie+ booking before your individual Lightning Lane purchase if you're a Disney resort guest (this tip is always subject to change, and is covered in specific detail in each park-specific post, but usually as long as you're booking by 7:05AM you'll have a wide range of individual ...

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Virtual queues are completely separate from Lightning Lane, and don't affect your ability to pay for a Individual Lightning Lane selection. In fact, if a ride has both a virtual queue and paid Individual Lightning Lane access, you can use both and ride it twice!

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Missing a Lightning Lane entirely will result in you not being able to book another one for the same ride. However, once the appropriate time elapses you can book another ride. My suggestion is to be strategic with the Lightning Lane bookings and aim to keep modifying to a time you know you will make it.

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While you can not make lightning lane selections in advance like the previous Fastpass+ system, it's still very simple to plan out your Theme Park days with Disney's Genie Service.

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For individual Lightning Lane purchases, guests of a Disney Resort hotel and other select hotels* may make their first purchase starting at 7:00 am on the day of their visit. All other Guests can make their first purchase during normal park opening hours. Pricing and availability vary by date, attraction and park.

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For individual Lightning Lane purchases, guests of a Disney Resort hotel and other select hotels* may make their first purchase starting at 7:00 am on the day of their visit. All other Guests can make their first purchase during normal park opening hours.

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Can Genie+ sell out? Yes. It can. Although it isn't common, we've seen it happen a few times during busier times of the year (like over the holidays and Spring Break).

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At all crowd levels, Flight of Passage sells out first. And Cosmic Rewind has worse availability than Rise of the Resistance on low and medium crowd days too. We also see many more availability “drops” throughout the day for Individual Lightning Lane attractions that we do for Genie+ attractions.

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Yes! Just because you join a virtual queue and “virtually” wait for your boarding group to be called doesn't mean you won't have to wait in an actual line once your group is called. Usually, once your boarding group is called and you join the actual, physical queue, you will experience a bit of a wait.

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For Individual Lightning Lanes, guests are limited to 2 Individual Lightning Lane purchases per day. With Genie+ Lightning Lanes, guests may not reserve the same ride twice in one day, and there are limits on how frequently you can reserve.

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All guests, regardless of where they stay, are limited to a maximum of two pay-per-ride attractions per day and can only book a particular ride once per day. What about Annual Passholders? Annual Passholders will need to purchase Genie+ on the day(s) of their visit.

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You do not have to purchase Genie Plus service to access them. I'll say it again in case it wasn't clear the first time: YOU DO NOT NEED TO BUY GENIE PLUS TO PURCHASE INDIVIDUAL LIGHTNING LANES! Individual Lightning Lanes are sold separately for each attraction through the My Disney Experience app.

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Genie Plus is definitely worth it for Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, and if you don't like early starts, you might consider it for Epcot and Animal Kingdom. If you are park hopping, Genie+ is even better value as it maximises the number of rides you have access to.

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You can only book two Individual Lightning Lanes per day. No matter how many parks you plan to visit in one day, you are only allowed to book two Individual Lightning Lanes. For example, you're planning to start your day in Hollywood Studios, but want to park hop over to Magic Kingdom in the afternoon.

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So, there is your step-by-step, screenshot-by-screenshot guide to purchasing an Individual Lightning Lane through My Disney Experience. Here are a few more things to keep in mind: Remember that you will still need a ticket and a Park Pass Reservation for the park where you are purchasing an Individual Lightning Lane.

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There is a grace period if you're early. While there are specific times linked to your Lightning Lane reservation, they do give a little leeway to guests who are early. There is a five minute grace period before that stated time where they will go ahead and honor your Lightning Lane pass. But five minutes is it!

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The Genie 120-minute rule says that you can make a new reservation at most 2 hours from when you made the last one, and this countdown timer doesn't change if you modify the reservation.

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You can only use the Lightning Lane for an attraction once a day. Unlike with Fastpass, you are only allowed access the Lightning Lane once per day per attraction. So if you wanna ride an attraction multiple times, you'll be using that standby line for all but one of your turns.

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