I’ve been taking a look at the wait times at various times of day for the parks we are planning to visit. On days when the parks are at similar crowd calendar numbers (MK-2, AK-4, HS -8) I am really starting to wonder if we need Genie+. HS, probably still. But, the waits at the other parks are still low throughout the day except for headliners. I feel like that can be solved with rope dropping/EE. I say all that to say, have you ever regretted buying Genie+ because the waits are already low all day? I would hate to buy it and still see 15 minute waits by afternoon on many things.
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Yes. On a trip or two with just DH and I. All of our family trips I still found it helpful, even if the crowd levels were low. Waiting 5 minutes is better than waiting 30. We are not rope droppers so those extra 30 min are not helpful for us.
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Regret is a pretty strong word, and for that I would have to say no
But there have been days I walked away from and thought - I didn’t really need that today.
I think it pretty much always makes a positive difference in the day, even if it’s a small difference.
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As a father of four children with very short attention spans, tired legs, and small bladders, I have never regretted buying Genie+. 
But to answer your question more directly, I think Genie+ is not necessary for AK and EP, and you can get by at HS and MK without it. In each of the four parks, I usually save at least an hour of waiting in line. But in exchange, there is a lot of attention and planning required to make the most of it. So there are trade-offs.
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Yes. We got G+ on two of our days…and the first day we did we stacked rides into a busy evening at MK. We had probably one of the worst times we have ever had at WDW (except once when we went around New Years). 5 stacked rides, and we felt like we were ticking off boxes. We still had waits, but we were fighting through crowds and not actually enjoying any of it.
It wasn’t entirely because of G+…just that in my effort to stack rides into the evening, it changed our entire dynamic in a way we wouldn’t have otherwise…so not necessarily regret that we bought it…but regret in the way we used it.
Here is a photo of us riding Space Mountain using G+…
I am in the back, my wife in front of me. And yes…we felt as excited as we look there. 
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Was your CPA telling you how much you owed in taxes during this ride?
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That’s his “I’m having fun” face. You know that!
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No. We were honestly having a miserable evening.
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You both look cute in matching red t-shirts though
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I agree that it can get to feeling this way, if everything is one on top of the other. Stacking is great in how much you are able to enjoy in a short time, but you literally run from one thing to the next and you can miss a lot of what there is to see along the way that contributes to the experience
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Thanks!
In hindsight, we shouldn’t have tried stacking and just used G+ as the day progressed. I think we would have enjoyed the earlier part of the day, and our evening would have been much more relaxed.
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I don’t like stacking either.
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I’m going to flip the script on OP’s question and say, how much tolerance do you think you’ll have for G+ complexity? The advanced strategies discussed on TP can help you get value out of G+ on any day, but at a cost in mental effort. I enjoy the G+ logistics challenge, but most people view it as a negative to be weighed against the wait time it saves them (and as noted, there are non-G+ ways to save wait time, too).
To help you make the tradeoff I recommend this TP analysis of G+ wait time saved for different crowd levels in each park.
If this analysis is already more complexity than you care for then I’d recommend G+ only for DHS8 and skipping it at MK2 and AK4.
A compromise might be to get $ILL only, which leaves only 1 ride to plan for, and allows choosing return time.
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This is a very important consideration
I have definitely not become an expert on it because I don’t care to devote that kind of time to learning it that deeply
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Did you want to also save told a bunch of steps walking thru queues? For MK party days, unless Jungle Cruise or Peter Pan are a priority, you don’t really need it. We skipped it today. Most rides were 5-10 mins tops. Unfortunately both Peter Pan and Pirates were down which built up times at other rides. (We were just about to board Pirates, so got an LL on exit and used it on Big Thunder)
I do find it’s needed for DHS, we were able to get thru all the rides there by 12:30 yesterday. Waits were lower, so made for faster LL return times.
(You also save on the time it takes to walk thru Queues)
At AK we skip it. Instead last week (I’m on 15 day trip …we have went to parks everyday) we got ILL for FOP. This week we have early entry so we’ll go on FoP then.(instead we are buying ILL for Tron to ride at night) For Epcot, we got Genie+ one day, and ILL for Cosmic Rewind when we could take advantage of early entry.
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I think the key to enjoy a stacked evening is to remember 1) that you can be hours late to a LL, 2) and that you don’t have to show up to every LL you’ve booked (let some lapse / skip the attraction). Think of the LLs you’ve stacked as options. If you have plenty of LLs to use, then just go to the ones you want to at the pace you want.
To be sure, this is a hard lesson for me to observe. But on my most recent trip with my family, I was successful on our last night. We left several LLs that I had meticulously stacked on the table and instead just went with the flow. It helped that it was day 7 of 8 at the parks.
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It is worth mentioning that our second day using G+ went well. We got it mainly to get onto SDD without a huge wait, which worked out. We rode a few other rides via LL…and then I was able to use it in Epcot on Soarin’ later in the day. It was a much happier experience.
I kind of recommend trying G+ perhaps a day earlier in your trip to get a feel for it so that you are ready to use if effectively on the day you actually want it…that is if the cost isn’t prohibitive
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@ryan1 This pictures to me looks like the ride broke down and you are waiting for it to start again. I’m sorry it was miserable. That is really what is impacting my decision too. The only memory I have from my oldest child’s first visit is that he didn’t have a good time most of the time. I think a lot of that is that he was only one and we did too much and tried too hard. My desire would be that Genie+ allows us to slow down and not worry about how long the lines are. But, as has been said, the key to making it work is that you have to work it. Thanks for the point of view. We are not planning many late nights because I have a very young crew. So I’m not even sure that stacking for later will work.
I’ll have little ones there and this is my primary reason for considering it. But, the tradeoffs… i don’t know.
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