Just got back from a 10-day trip, with a mix of onsite and off, G+ users and non, race weekend and hard ticket after parties, rain, cold, sun, heat - it was quite a trip!
First things first,
staying onsite is a huge advantage for the free transportation if you don’t have your own car or intend to rent - rideshares were difficult to come by. We stayed the first weekend at Coronado Springs which is bus-only, middle of the week offsite which required rideshares, and last weekend at Caribbean Beach which was AWESOME for the Skyliner alone -
Skyliner is such a game-changer and a vast improvement over the buses this time of year.
Onsite is also a
huge advantage for the early entry if your touring style always includes rope drop - they hold offsite guests at the tapstiles, so you are physically further back than before and behind quite a few onsite guests for all attractions, especially the headliners. It felt so nice to breeze right past the crowds and on to the attractions.
Genie+ was a hassle - good for the people who have figured out how to game the system with it already, but we got so frustrated at MK and HS trying to secure spots that we eventually gave up and
just stuck with standby, which was perfectly fine.
Wait times were way overstated - Rise posted 110, we were at the preshow/drop shop in 50, Peter Pan posted 95 we waited 40, Mine Train posted 90 we waited 19 minutes, Slinky posted 70 we waited 45 - all with line pauses to allow LL guests, but from what I can tell they’re interspersing the same # of LL and Standby as compared to the old FP+ which makes the lines move better than the old system. It’s now much easier to judge accurate wait times visually based on where the line starts. For some reason to me it felt less crowded than Spring Break but that’s just my perception.
Genie+ also necessitated a lot of criss-crossing of the parks - my in-laws used it on different days and while they were able to figure it out in the app, this was their biggest complaint.
We did the
Very Merriest After Hours on Friday night and it was WAY better than the Halloween After Hours! Having that extra hour to the event was great to get more done, plus the park felt probably 70% LESS crowded because there were more parades/shows/events to keep people out of the ride lines. Everything was a walk-on, Mine Train was a 10-minute wait in the middle of it. We got a great spot for the parade right as it came down Main St. standing in front of the Bakery. I ate 3 buckets of popcorn and washed them all down with the surprisingly palatable hot chocolate and I was loving my life.
Overall a really fantastic, magical trip and I’ll be happy to NEVER pay for Genie+ again lol.