I’m heading to WDW next week. It’s my first visit during Xmas and my first visit since the pandemic, so I am trying to wrap my head around the brave new world of G+ and ILL without freaking out. I would greatly appreciate your help in clarifying a few things. Apologies in advance if these are silly questions (hopefully others have the same ones). I’m hoping to get G+ and ILLs each day because of high crowds (it’s just me and DD13 so not too crazy expensive).
First, if I’m staying onsite, am I correct in saying that I can/should purchase G+ at midnight the night before but then need to actually grab my first G+ LL pick at 7:00 am (just one, since I can’t book the second until I’ve tapped in to the first LL?). And then, at the same time (7:00 am) I also somehow need to also book any ILLs for the same park? That sounds crazy, as I’m assuming on a peak day everything gets snapped up within seconds. Or am I missing something?
Last (for now), I realize that this means that I have to be both up at midnight and then up just before 7 to try to grab both my first G+ and my first ILL. But in the chat I’ve heard people talk about sleeping in and “stacking” LLs from their hotel rooms. How does this work if you have to be up at 6:55 to grab your picks? Or do some people think 6:55 is sleeping in?
Again, THANK YOU for any help you could provide. I’m seeing lots of general info about G+ and ILL but not sure how the two work together.
If you’re awake and in the app at 6:45-6:50 you should have plenty of time to buy your G+… it’s like 3 taps as long as you’ve got a saved payment method. No need to stay up until midnight if you weren’t going to anyway.
Also, it doesn’t take 10 minutes to pick your first LL and the ILL won’t sell out before you get there. You might not get your first choice of times, but you’ll still get it.
As far as stacking goes, what they mean is that they’re choosing to wait until the available LL times are a little later to make their first selection.
To get an idea of how fast LL go out find a recent day with the same CL as your day, then go to thrill-data.com and select that park (it will be in the left side menu). On that park’s page there’s an iron at the top to change the date, so change it to the date that had the right CL. Then scroll down until you see the box that shows LL times… I always lock the blue button that says get a bigger annotated plot. You’ll be able to see what LL time was offered at every 15 minute interval of that day for each ride, which is a great guideline to get a picture of how your day might look.
If I were going to stack LLs at MK and I didn’t want to meet Mickey then I’d probably go for Jingle Cruise or Peter Pan… if I wanted to sleep in until 8 then I’d look and see that oh, at 8am on a CLX day people were offered a 5:45pm Jingle Cruise time. I’m good with that, so I set my alarm for 7:45am. I wake up, buy my G+, and at 7:55 I grab a 5:35 LL. I go back to sleep for another 90 minutes, then we start to get ready for the day.
The park opened at 8am, so I can make my next selection at 10am. We’re having breakfast at 10:30 though, so I look for another later offer, and find Peter Pan is available at 3:15, so I pick up that one. We have our breakfast, and are heading into the park at noon when it’s time to make my next selection.
Since we’re heading in now, I have to choose whether to just start taking whatever is soonest and nearby or to keep stacking later times. I personally choose to just churn through everything nearby, banking on shorter lines later at night.
There is no benefit in buying G+ late at night as opposed to for example 6:50. as long as you are done ahead on 7am.
As @Nikkipoooo you have time to make your G+LL selection first and then buy the ILL. The quicker you are the more choice you have for ILL times.
I found this TP blog post useful, the tables show what LL’s go the fastest and what you might want to pick first. they are for the most part fairly obvious - the most popular attractions tend to go first so it would make sense to pick those first.
You can book your second regular LL 2 hours after park opening OR when you’ve used your first regular LL.
Stacking: you book your first LL at 7am, second one 2hrs from park opening so for example at 10am (if the park opens at 8), third LL at 12… This way even if you go to the park at noon, you already have 3 LL’s + possible ILL booked. Depending on the crowd level you might be able to book more at 2pm and even 4pm but this of course depends on crowds, which park, which rides you have left etc.
I just read Becky’s post (the one Mike referred to) and she said (back in the summer) that the best way to combine park hopping and Genie+ is to always just stack up reservations for the second park and only do standby attractions at the first park.
Is that still true?
I will watch the video too! Thanks.
I think that makes sense as crowds tend to build up towards the afternoon so wait times are likely to be longer after you hop.
If you rope drop the first park, you should be able to tackle some rides with short waits while at the same time getting up to (in an ideal situation) 4 LL’s booked for the second park by 2pm.
I’d mostly agree with Becky, and can suggest this tweak: if you can (ahem) somehow score a very early return time on a desirable first LL in your 1st park, you can tap into that and then start your stack with very little downside to your 2nd park (Remy/SDD excepted). It’s like a bonus LL.
Stacking for a 2-park hoping day doesn’t necessarily work in such black and white, this park or that park terms. You may find yourself without any good options left for your second park, because the times offered are before you’ll get there… it’s totally fine to have LL in 2 parks at once.
Don’t get too caught up on just skipping the longest lines… sometimes waiting in one 60-80 minute but interesting/interactive queue is the better choice over waiting in 3 20-30 minute boring ones. Like, I’d rather wait in one line for Peter Pan than wait in 3 lines for small world, philharmagic, and Tomorrowland speedway because the line for Peter Pan at least has fun stuff… those other 3 are like watching paint dry, and speedway isn’t even indoors.
We tried stacking at MK into the evening. It worked, but…there was a lot of waiting around until the next attraction was late enough. I think that stacking at MK itself is more of a pain simply because with so many rides, it just takes longer. Now, if you really plan to hop right at 2, it might be easier…but that forces you to really cut short the first park. The other thing is that stacking slows down how many you can possibly book. Not stacking means you can book LLs as the day progresses faster because you can book your next one as soon as you ride, rather than waiting the full 2+ hours.
I think with the other parks (other than MK), given the fewer rides, it is easier to stack LLs into the evening.
