Does the new Genie+ pay-per-attraction system alter your views on DVC's value?

[TheEpcotForEver]

This was my first thought when trying to justify the changes in my head. I do think the evening hours are a huge perk. But it seems like those are only happening at MK and Epcot and on weekdays. Most of a week-long trip and half the parks are not included. So I don't see this as really offsetting the new added costs.

The way they announced it made me feel like the evening hours were a temporary perk for the 50th

 

[robinb]

I think I need to know more about the surge pricing options before I decide. I have been somewhat soured on WDW for a while as they show time and time again that they are not that into us any more. The focus for the last 5 years has been the "once in a lifetime" guest who opens their wallets wide to the 4-fingered mouse and not people like me who were going 2-3 times per year on an AP. They are far more likely to pay for money grabs and upcharge events like after hours parties than I am.

On first blush, Genie+ looks to be OK. I liked the spontaneity of paper FPs and I really liked MaxPass in DLR and I have hated FP+ and all the planning that needed to be done so far in advance. I don't mind paying $15 each to be able to get LL passes on my phone just as I didn't mind paying $10 for MaxPass a couple years ago. However, if the surge pricing is simply another money grab that prevents me from riding something without a LONG wait, then that will be another nail in Disney's coffin for me. If I can knock off Space Mountain at rope drop, I'll be OK but if I have to stand in line for an hour of spend more to ride it? That's a big nope.

 

[Leight19]

For me this directly impacts value of dvc direct membership. The best perk for dvc direct is the discount on annual pass. This change really seems to target annual passes because $15 a day isn’t a big relative cost on 5 day ticket but it is a huge relative cost for someone who uses annual pass for multiple trips with 20 to 30 days a year.

I also think this change and several changes in general devalue staying on site; this in turn has impact to devalue dvc.

 

[ctl]

I was unhappy with the Genie+ announcement, not just because of the additional costs, but especially I feel like this adds uncertainty and anxiety. You don't know you can get the FPs you wanted until 7 am (so have to get up early), and then it might conflict with other plans like ADRs. But you're already a captive audience and paid a lot of money for your DVC points to be at WDW/DL.


DVC is kind of like a commitment to Disney, but with so many perks going away and rapidly increasing costs, I'm questioning the commitment. Does this affect how anyone else feels about DVC? Honestly, my first thought was that maybe it's time to sell our contracts... It feels very sad to write that. Maybe I'll feel differently later on, maybe I just have too much sticker shock or something.

I share exactly the same thoughts as you. I was really sad yesterday as I have only recently purchased DVC and with the pandemic I have not even been able to stay in RR yet. The culmination of all the losses in value, drop in quality and service, and constant increases in price, have brought me to this point. I am truly considering selling my DVC contract.
I have lost any good feeling about going to WDW. I purchased DVC in the hopes of ,in later years, enjoying WDW with some grandchildren. I remember in the beginning years staying off-site in the cheaper motels and then over the years being excited to stay at the All-Star values. Finally, after many years of saving we took the plunge and bought DVC, thinking our kids would never be able to afford WDW the way room prices were going up. Now I am gutted.
I thought the maintenance fees were rough as it was, but why even stay on property now? No fast pass 30 day booking window, pay each day for a daily fast pass or individual ride fast pass, and get your rear up and in the parks for 7am in the hopes of booking 1 fast pass. What happens if you actually pay the daily charge for genie fast passes and the ride goes down? Ticket prices have already gone up substantially, with no signs of leveling off.

It will be the very well-off that can afford to buy fast passes for themselves; double income no kids, not the families that have multiple kids that save and economize to afford the trip, or seniors that have spent years of their income supporting Disney.

I am afraid the price of DVC resales will tumble now. I was the 1 in our family that pushed for DVC, I was the biggest cheerleader for Disney, but I have zero good feeling or desire to go back. Maybe some of you can understand when I say, I feel like I had this wonderful partnership with Disney, where I loved everything Disney and supported them by buying annual passes, visiting annually, buying Disney merchandise every trip to give for birthday gifts and Christmas. Never looking at going anywhere else for my vacation.
But now I feel I am in a toxic relationship and no matter how much I would like to fix things I have zero power to do so. My only option is to stop giving them power over me, stop going , stop purchasing. I would like to think that many people together refusing to buy the fast passes might be able to make a change in direction where Disney changes its mind, but I don't think that there are enough people like myself who are willing to take a stand.
I am still figuring out if I can afford to sell my DVC at this point, or if I will lose a large portion of the hard earned cash I saved up all these years to buy DVC with.
I'm sorry my post is so long, but I just feel gutted and sad. For those of you who will say that Disney is a business etc, has shareholders etc, I am one of those shareholders. (I actually was so proud to have Disney shares and framed my certificate). I bought my children a Disney share each for Christmas when they were little, so we could frame their certificates and have them up on our wall, because we felt like we were part of the Disney family. Now the magic is gone.

 

[Sandisw]

This was my first thought when trying to justify the changes in my head. I do think the evening hours are a huge perk. But it seems like those are only happening at MK and Epcot and on weekdays. Most of a week-long trip and half the parks are not included. So I don't see this as really offsetting the new added costs.

My hope is that eventually they will add the other 2 parks...at least HS to the mix.

 

[AaronEuth]

I do think this will alter how we use DVC, at least for the next few years while we wait to experience all the changes. The lack of overall onsite benefits being the dealbreaker. We like to use our points to bring family, and so while this is a small increase for me directly, it does mean that the "treat" we offer family members becomes more expensive for them. It feels like I am nickel and dining them to say, ok I got your hotel. Now give me your flight money. Now give me your mears connect money. now give me your ticket money. Now give me your genie money. Oh, we skipped line for Avatar? Give me some of that lightning money.

I own 240 points at roughly $8 in dues per.point. That means we spend roughly 2k per year in dues, plus tickets, plus airfare to visit. I could rent those same points out for about 4k, pay my dues, and have 2000 to put towards accomodations, rental car, and have some leftover. If we switch to every other year, that's 4000 after dues for a big family rental home, that gets 99 percent of the benefits we would at DVC.

 

[TheEpcotForEver]

I share exactly the same thoughts as you. I was really sad yesterday as I have only recently purchased DVC and with the pandemic I have not even been able to stay in RR yet. The culmination of all the losses in value, drop in quality and service, and constant increases in price, have brought me to this point. I am truly considering selling my DVC contract.
I have lost any good feeling about going to WDW. I purchased DVC in the hopes of ,in later years, enjoying WDW with some grandchildren. I remember in the beginning years staying off-site in the cheaper motels and then over the years being excited to stay at the All-Star values. Finally, after many years of saving we took the plunge and bought DVC, thinking our kids would never be able to afford WDW the way room prices were going up. Now I am gutted.
I thought the maintenance fees were rough as it was, but why even stay on property now? No fast pass 30 day booking window, pay each day for a daily fast pass or individual ride fast pass, and get your rear up and in the parks for 7am in the hopes of booking 1 fast pass. What happens if you actually pay the daily charge for genie fast passes and the ride goes down? Ticket prices have already gone up substantially, with no signs of leveling off.

It will be the very well-off that can afford to buy fast passes for themselves; double income no kids, not the families that have multiple kids that save and economize to afford the trip, or seniors that have spent years of their income supporting Disney.

I am afraid the price of DVC resales will tumble now. I was the 1 in our family that pushed for DVC, I was the biggest cheerleader for Disney, but I have zero good feeling or desire to go back. Maybe some of you can understand when I say, I feel like I had this wonderful partnership with Disney, where I loved everything Disney and supported them by buying annual passes, visiting annually, buying Disney merchandise every trip to give for birthday gifts and Christmas. Never looking at going anywhere else for my vacation.
But now I feel I am in a toxic relationship and no matter how much I would like to fix things I have zero power to do so. My only option is to stop giving them power over me, stop going , stop purchasing. I would like to think that many people together refusing to buy the fast passes might be able to make a change in direction where Disney changes its mind, but I don't think that there are enough people like myself who are willing to take a stand.
I am still figuring out if I can afford to sell my DVC at this point, or if I will lose a large portion of the hard earned cash I saved up all these years to buy DVC with.
I'm sorry my post is so long, but I just feel gutted and sad. For those of you who will say that Disney is a business etc, has shareholders etc, I am one of those shareholders. (I actually was so proud to have Disney shares and framed my certificate). I bought my children a Disney share each for Christmas when they were little, so we could frame their certificates and have them up on our wall, because we felt like we were part of the Disney family. Now the magic is gone.

Disney definitely seems to be shifting their target audience to the once every few years visitor that is willing to splurge when they visit. I am a frequent guest of Hyatt so I have their top tier status and the difference is night and day. I get free breakfast at their hotels, they proactively upgrade me to suites, often when I check in they will ask me if I would like a free 4 pm checkout time. I’ll get hand written letters from the managers thanking me for visiting. I go out of my way to spend my money at Hyatt’s because of this.

Of course I don’t expect perks like this when staying at a DVC resort, since we’re all owners but I don’t think it is unreasonable to give general WDW perks to loyal visitors. Disney on the other hand seems to be taking the approach that frequent visitors are a nuisance and just take up space. They give you a little discount on trinkets in their stores that just clutter your home and tell you to go away. Once you spent your money on DVC they don’t think you’ll be as profitable during your visits. I think this attitude will make Disney a lot of money in the short term, but hurt them in the long term as their loyal base shrinks and all that extra stimulus money and money that didn’t get spent on 2020 vacations dries up.

 

[RoseGold]

This Genie cluster is offset by the late night deluxe only hours IMO. That’s such a small group, those hours are a huge Improvement on the previous EMH and enough to ride the big ticket rides for me.

I’m on the fence on how this impacts my plans. AP and rope drop runaway railway and leave doesn’t even makes sense anymore. If AP includes genie+, or you can upgrade to genie plus, I think I happy with this. I could never get a fast pass to Snow White anyway.

 

[ctl]

I do think this will alter how we use DVC, at least for the next few years while we wait to experience all the changes. The lack of overall onsite benefits being the dealbreaker. We like to use our points to bring family, and so while this is a small increase for me directly, it does mean that the "treat" we offer family members becomes more expensive for them. It feels like I am nickel and dining them to say, ok I got your hotel. Now give.me.your flight money. Now give me your mears connect.money. now give me your ticket money. Now give me your genie money.

I own 240 points at roughly $8 in dues per.point. That means we spend roughly 2k per year in dues, plus tickets, plus airfare to visit. I could rent those same points out for about 4k, pay my dues, and have 2000 to put towards accomodations, rental car, and have some leftover. If we switch to every other year, that's 4000 after dues for a big family rental home, that gets 99 percent of the benefits we would at DVC

Thanks. Useful breakdown of the fees/value for you.

 

[monstermash23]

At first I wasn’t too unhappy with what they announced and what they offered.

But after discussing the costs with my group and creating a few mock itineraries around the new pricing schemes, we are taken aback. We are pausing and not sure we will be continuing with Disney or DVC anymore. At least initially.

We are all for spontaneous, especially after this last trip realizing it is possible at WDW. But after understanding how the app works and what it offers (still more to uncover of course, but this is our thinking at the moment given the details we have), I don’t think this is spontaneous. It is designed to make you “feel” spontaneous but it’s really just controlled chaos designed to push you into paid opportunities for Disney. The costs associated with Genie+ and Lightning Pass (not knowing what surge pricing will do - but assuming it will keep things high when we go - we go during very popular times) are just not worth it for us right now, especially considering the rising food costs (which we realized impacted our trip financially this year far more then previous years), rising ticket costs and rising travel costs.

We have a lot of gripes with Disney at the current state of things and this just adds insult to injury. Especially right now, while they are still trying to claw back to normal.

With all that said, I do NOT think DVC is worth buying into right now. But since we already have DVC the current question becomes how to utilize our points to make them work for best for us. Selling our points seems to be our best move now. Personally, because we bought into DVC right before the pandemic, we are feeling quite “scammed” at the moment. A lot of this is pandemic related but a lot of it isn’t and is strictly just poor executive decision making at Disney. And as the dust continues to settle with the pandemic (however long that takes), we are very worried that we will be left with continued poor decision making from Disney. They are not guest-centric at the moment. They are corporate focused, almost entirely right now. This Genie app is a perfect example and a huge reason we will not be going to Disney for a long while. We will be selling our points over the next few years and will give Disney another shot in the future potentially, which makes my group and myself incredibly sad. I personally was not looking forward to getting up at 7am everyday on vacation to make ride reservations for my entire party either (thanks for awarding the planners Disney, you just screwed any Disney planner that doesn’t like to wake up early, aka me).

To Disney,
I hope this gets read somewhere important. Doubt it will. I can’t speak for anyone on this board. But with regards to my family/touring group, you have effectively alienated all of us. We have been going annually for 30+ years and have spent an ungodly amount of money at WDW. And we have done so happily. Not anymore. Between this summer’s trip (where you were a shell of your former self, which we expected and accepted, but you still decided to raise capacity past the point where you could handle it appropriately). You have raised our costs while not enhancing the magic. In fact, you have taken away a lot of the magic due to your own “cost cutting.” And now, you have forced upon us price gouging tactics that are typically reserved for other areas of the industry. You have always strived to be different then the other amusement parks and to offer your customers MORE. That isn’t the case anymore. You are now clearly working to BECOME those amusement parks that you worked so hard for 70+ years to seperate yourself from. You offer us less, charge more and cut your own costs. Well, we have to cut costs too. And you have proven that you don’t care if we hold onto you during these tough times. We wanted to continue to go every year, but we keep having to add more and more to our yearly trip budgets, especially next year’s trip, without getting anything extra in return. In fact, we’re now paying huge costs for things that we’re once free (you couldn’t even throw us a bone by giving DVC and AP holders a promised free lightning pass or two?!) This is being done to the point where we don’t feel it is worth it anymore, as we are getting no more then we did in previous years (we’re actually getting less). It’s
not a fair transaction anymore Disney, in our view. Therefor, we won’t be going for a long while. I hope the board eventually forces out Bob Chapek and installs somehow who can re-ignite the previous culture’s that existed with Disney’s organization. One that is actually guest experience and park centric, and not one that is so eager to push Disney to become fully corporate focused while undoing a lot of the magic we love. We need MORE magic, not less. This genie app is an example of corporate magic, which is not the kind of magic we need, or deserve.

Sincerely,
One of your longest, oldest, consistent, high spending (and potentially former) customers.

 

[Brett Wyman]

Im very upset by it. As AP and DVC it completely changes the way we visit. Knee jerk reaction is I don’t see how we’ll enjoy this new system but I’m trying to keep my composure and wait for things to shake out. We visited DL before and didn’t like MP. More for the early morning distribution than the cost.

 

[ctl]

I think I need to know more about the surge pricing options before I decide. I have been somewhat soured on WDW for a while as they show time and time again that they are not that into us any more. The focus for the last 5 years has been the "once in a lifetime" guest who opens their wallets wide to the 4-fingered mouse and not people like me who were going 2-3 times per year on an AP. They are far more likely to pay for money grabs and upcharge events like after hours parties than I am.

On first blush, Genie+ looks to be OK. I liked the spontaneity of paper FPs and I really liked MaxPass in DLR and I have hated FP+ and all the planning that needed to be done so far in advance. I don't mind paying $15 each to be able to get LL passes on my phone just as I didn't mind paying $10 for MaxPass a couple years ago. However, if the surge pricing is simply another money grab that prevents me from riding something without a LONG wait, then that will be another nail in Disney's coffin for me. If I can knock off Space Mountain at rope drop, I'll be OK but if I have to stand in line for an hour of spend more to ride it? That's a big nope.

Do we know if there will be a definite limit of each type of fast passes per day, once sold they are out? Or will they keep selling more fast passes until the line length gets to a pre-assigned wait? I assume the former, but I missed that detail when I read. That would affect the normal stand in line wait time for non-fast pass users.

 

[defrogger]

Just bought into DVC 4 months ago so this stings a bit, but I dont think it makes me regret getting DVC. But we did get it to go to the parks and stay in nice accomidations.

Im not sure how the Genie+ is going to work out, The parks were getting really crowded before the pandemic and it was hard to get fast passes even at 2 months. So that worries me, if it will still be hard to get the new Fastpass(lightning Pass) for allot of rides and now were paying extra for it. It kind of seems like there will be days were your only going to get 1 or 2 fastpass's for rides you didnt need them on.

I hate the 7am thing, it takes allot for us to get our family to the parks by Rope Drop, We usually never make it, always 20 to 40 minutes late. So i see myself trying to get that first fast pass while on the bus at 8:30, so im worried most good rides will be gone by then, or only available really late in the day. So im not feeling like its going to be a good value for us, but at the same time it still seems like a neccasity and will still pay for it.

If it gets really bad, i might have to start staying at DVC but go to Universal and Seaworld more often. Its funny because Universal kind of priced me out with express pass as going for one day can be over $300 per person. I love universal, just so much for one day if you get the express pass. But now i might have to go more often as im paying more for Disney Parks.

Who knows, maybe there will be nice dicounts for DVC members with the new Genie+ or hopefully ticket/AP discounts to help offset things.

I think right now, Disney isnt worried about the backlash, even if a small amount of people stop going to the parks they have plenty of people still going so there going to grab as much money as they can.
They really dont have to much competition to take away people, maybe when Universal opens there 4th park, but until then Disney is squeezing us for all they can get.

 

[princesscinderella]

I still think I will enjoy my DVC trips. I just might do more Resort only stays. Which for me will be less money going to Disney as my kids won't be wanting all of the stuff they see in the parks

We have been enjoying resort only trips since the pandemic and I’m in no rush to go back to the parks. There’s so much to do on property that we keep busy and it’s no different going to a beach resort vacation for us, much more relaxing.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

The way they announced it made me feel like the evening hours were a temporary perk for the 50th

Oh no, I hope that's not the case because then what's the point of staying onsite? The resorts are nice, the proximity is nice, but the value for all that has a breaking point. We all know those DVC and Deluxe properties are only so expensive because of the theme parks.

 

[monstermash23]

I think right now, Disney isnt worried about the backlash, even if a small amount of people stop going to the parks they have plenty of people still going so there going to grab as much money as they can.
They really dont have to much competition to take away people, maybe when Universal opens there 4th park, but until then Disney is squeezing us for all they can get.

Unfortunately this is, more then likely, very accurate

 

[OKW Lover]

IMHO, the introduction of Genie+ has absolutely no impact on my DVC experience. DVC for me is just where I stay. Its got nothing to do with visiting the individual parks.

 

[Epcot Forever Forever]

Yes. Most of the value of staying onsite for my family was the 60 day access window.

The Disney Springs Doubletree Suites has 1 bedrooms starting at $120/night including the resort fee. So that’s the relevant comparison point to me now.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

My hope is that eventually they will add the other 2 parks...at least HS to the mix.

Me too! If they have evening hours for all the parks during a week-long stay, then I'd say OK--I'm cool. Because then my expensive resort stay can guarantee my access to at least many of the busy rides without extra cost. Then we might do Genie+ some days, some not, more resort stays, that's all fine with me. Just don't make me have to get up at 7 on vacation to be able to ride stuff. I'm the planner type and Genie+ seems to work against us.

 

[Sandisw]

Oh no, I hope that's not the case because then what's the point of staying onsite? The resorts are nice, the proximity is nice, but the value for all that has a breaking point. We all know those DVC and Deluxe properties are only so expensive because of the theme parks.

I do not think the night hours are temporary. I think they are here to stay for deluxe guests. It could be why they added them...Those paying higher hotel have an option to get those top tier rides in without paying extra since they really are already based on room costs.