Disney World Makes Genie Plus Attraction Changes

 

Starting February 25 and continuing through August 7, Walt Disney World has made some changes to their Genie+ service.  In the past, two attractions at each park have been available for purchase via Individual Lightning Lanes (ILL), which are a la carte purchases and not included with the general umbrella Genie+ service.  During the holiday season, one of these attractions at each park were moved to Genie+, leaving just one ILL per park. That change is taking place again, and this time for a significant period of time, as announced.

The attractions moving to Genie+ are Space Mountain (Magic Kingdom), Frozen Ever After (Epcot), Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway (Hollywood Studios) and Expedition Everest (Animal Kingdom).  Remy's Ratatouille Adventure at Epcot was formerly an ILL that is also moving to Genie+ for this time period (and perhaps beyond). That leaves just one ILL attraction at each park - Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (Magic Kingdom), Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind (Epcot), Star Wars Rise of the Resistance (Hollywood Studios) and Avatar Flight of Passage (Animal Kingdom).

 

Breaking: Disney Eliminates Indoor Mask Policy

Disney is officially eliminating the indoor mask mandate at both of its domestic parks effective Thursday February 17.  Here is the official statement from Disney:

Beginning February 17, 2022, Face coverings will be optional for fully vaccinated Guests in both outdoor and indoor locations. We expect Guests who are not fully vaccinated to continue wearing face coverings in all indoor locations, including indoor attractions and theaters. Face coverings will still be required by all Guests (ages 2 and up) on enclosed Disney transportation, including Disney buses, monorails, and Disney Skyliner.

To review, upon reopening after the Covid-related closure, masks were required EVERYWHERE at Walt Disney World - indoors and outdoors.  These protocols were in place, along with other restrictions, such as social distancing markers and capacity limitations.  Once case numbers started declining, Disney revised their policy to first allow masks to be removed for outdoor photographs, and then again to be for indoors only.  There was a brief window of a couple of months when, following CDC guidelines, Disney removed the requirement for all vaccinated people in all locations, indoors and outdoors, except on Disney transportation.

Tips for Making Dining Reservations

 

I've written a bunch about food on this blog, because ... well, why not?  Dining is one of the things that makes your WDW vacation so unique.  Here I talked about classic Disney snacks and I have an in depth guide to dining in the trip planning section, which talks about (among other things) quick service vs. table service, the Disney Dining Plan and more.  Today we're going to focus on table service restaurants, because we're going to talk about making dining reservations (until Disney starts "allowing" people to make quick service reservations, table service are the only ones we need to worry about here).

Specifically, I want to talk about the when and how of making these reservations.  In the past, you could make advance dining reservations (ADRs) 180 days before your trip.  That's about six months ahead of time!  Partially due to Covid and also partially due to guest satisfaction, that time has been cut down to 60 days before your trip.  Personally, I preferred the old system, as I'm a planner (as you can probably tell) and since a lot of people weren't prepared to even book a trip 180 days beforehand, let along reserve seats in a restaurant, this worked to my advantage (and is probably a factor in why it was changed).

Disney First Quarter Earnings Call Notes

 

 

The Walt Disney Company had their quarterly earnings call yesterday, in which they discussed the financial aspects of the company with their investors.  This can be dry material (and often is!) but sometimes bits of information can be gleaned in terms of where the company sees itself and where it's going.  

There is a lot of information in these calls and I'm not going to discuss all of it here (if you're interested in the number of new Disney+ subscribers and such, there are plenty of places to find that information).  But there were a couple of tidbits relating to Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, which obviously includes Walt Disney World, that might be relevant so I figured I'd talk about a couple of those here and offer some quick commentary.