On Friday, April 15th, 2022, we tracked down all of the Golden Statues for “The Most Magical Celebration on Earth”. You can read about that here, All 50 of Disney’s Golden Character Statues Location. In conjunction with that, we decided to purchase Genie+ which includes Lightning Lane. Grab a coffee as this post is long, but very informative.
Lightning Lane is very controversial among Disney fans. It is sold as a way to save time in the parks by not waiting in line, however after many guest complaints and low satisfactory scores about the service, Disney has been altering the language surrounding the service, lowering guests expectations, or at least trying to. Also worth noting is Genie+ which includes Lightning Lane replaces Fastpass, and Fastpass+ at both Disneyland and Disney World.
While we don’t yet have an article for Genie+ we will do our best to outline what we accomplished using the service at four parks in one day. A couple of administrative items to get out of the way: Genie+, which includes Lightning Lane, is NOT free. Equally important, you do not have to purchase the service to enjoy your day at the theme parks. One more clarification to call out is, Genie+ is different than the free Genie service on the “My Disney Experience App”.
Genie+ which includes Lightning Lane
In order to utilize Lightning Lane, you need a cell phone with the “My Disney Experience” app, and also purchase Genie+. There are two ways to purchase Genie+. First option, when you purchase your vacation package, simply add it to your tickets. I caution this method as Genie+ is not a necessity at each park, however if money is no object, go ahead and purchase it to make life a bit easier. Second way to purchase Genie+ is to do it daily right before 7am EST on the day of your visit to the parks. It is very important that you purchase this before 7am or you will miss out on attractions that are fully booked at 7.
To complicate things more, certain rides aren’t even included in the purchase of Genie+. You actually have four attractions, one per park currently, that you have to purchase separately. These are called “Individual Lightning Lane”, or Lightning Lane a la carte. These attractions are currently:
- Magic Kingdom: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
- EPCOT: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
- Disney’s Hollywood Studios: Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom: Avatar Flight of Passage
Each Individual Lightning Lane can be purchased at 7am by guests staying on property for any of the attractions above. Guests not staying on property can purchase them at each park’s respective opening times, however be warned that most of the attractions above are gone within the first couple minutes or even seconds in the case of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
Also one more point of contention, if you are the person in your group managing the Lightning Lane and also Individual Lightning Lane, you have a choice to make at 7am on which one to concentrate on. Meaning, if your day started at DHS and you wanted to grab Slinky Dog Dash, and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at the same time, you will more than likely to miss out on one of them. These two attractions disappear within the first minute of being available.
All of this happens through the “My Disney Experience App”, and also by the person in the trip party who is managing all of the tickets. Trust me I just said a lot of words about Genie+, Lightning Lane, and Individual Lightning Lane, but this is just scratching the surface on using this system and also strategizing to maximize your fun for the day. For this reason, we will work on an article that goes into this more in depth. For now, on to our day and what we accomplished with Genie+ utilizing Lightning Lane.
Park #1: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Our first park of the day was Disney’s Animal Kingdom (DAK). We purchased Genie+ for the day as well. Again keep in mind if you are purchasing Genie+ daily, you do this before 7am so you do not miss out on selections at 7am. As 7am EST hit, I logged into “My Disney Experience” app to make my first selection for the day: Na’vi River Journey, this is one of the Pandora – The World of Avatar attractions. Our ride time was set for 10am-11am. This gave us two hours to wander around DAK to take pictures of those golden statues.
We were out the door at 7:45am and walked into DAK at 8:10am. We snapped our pictures of the statues and decided to go wait in the Standby Line for Avatar Flight of Passage, with a posted wait time of 65 minutes. Usually we do not wait for attractions with long wait times as we are local, but we have until 10am until it was time to tap into Na’vi River Journey. Remember Flight of Passage is not included in Genie+ and requires a separate purchase a la carte. This attraction is a can’t-miss experience. Flight of Passage is in our top 5 attractions at Disney World, and we will show you our list in a different post.
After Flight of Passage, it was time for us to tap in with our magic band to Na’vi River Journey, and because we redeemed a Lightning Lane, it unlocked us the ability to reserve our next Lightning Lane. To reserve your second Lightning Lane of the day, you either have to wait for two hours to pass, or tap into your first reservation, whichever occurs first. For our second attraction, we picked Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (DHS) for 2:45pm-3:45pm, therefore DHS will be our second park that we park hop to in order to take pictures of the golden statues.
After Na’vi River Journey, we were hungry. We strolled over to Yak and Yeti to see if they had room for two, and they did! Yak and Yeti is one of our favorite restaurants at the resort. We will have a separate post about them in the future. If you can score an advanced dining reservation (ADR), we highly recommend it.
After Yak and Yeti, we wandered around DAK to look at animals, and then decided to wait for Kilimanjaro Safaris which had a standby wait time of 45 minutes. During this wait, we were able to secure a Lightning Lane for Peter Pan at Magic Kingdom (MK) for 7:50pm-8:50pm, and we were able to do this since two hours had passed since our last selection.
MK will be our last park of the day so we are starting a practice called stacking Lightning Lane reservations for the evening. We rode Kilimanjaro Safaris, and had a lot of active animals during the tour which is always nice. Kilimanjaro Safaris offers you an up close look at animals that you don’t even see in the wild anymore due to poachers or extinction, which makes this attraction a must do!
Park #2: Disney’s Hollywood Studios
We walked out of DAK at 1:30pm and headed over to DHS. Remember if you are park hoping you cannot enter your second park until after 2pm. We parked, and headed into DHS where our first stop was Starbucks. A lot of you know me as the coffee snob and home roaster, however I do drink Starbucks though out of necessity, don’t judge!!!
With our cold brew coffee in hand, we set out to snap pictures of the golden statues in DHS. After that, we went say hi to our favorite snowman Olaf since we are doing good on time. After our visit to Olaf, we tapped into Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. This attraction is such a blast, and often times is one we drive over to DHS just to ride it in the evening for a quick bite of magic. Also we were lucky enough to catch a character cavalcade. This is something Disney introduced during the pandemic. It is a way to see a lot of characters parade quickly through the parks.
At this point we headed over to EPCOT to get pictures of the statues over there. One thing to mention as 2:42pm hit, we secured a Lightning Lane for Haunted Mansion at MK for 8:05pm-9:05pm. This is due to the fact that we tapped into Mickey and Minnie’s.
Park #3: EPCOT
Entering EPCOT at 4:14pm, our mission was to snap a picture of the golden statues, eat a snack, ride an attraction, and visit a character. We headed up to the statues which are in the middle of the park mostly. First we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Mexican Pavilion stand for the Garden Festival. The Taco Vampiro is really good, furthermore at 4:55pm we secured a Lightning Lane for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for 9:10pm-10:10pm.
After our quick snack, we visited the imagination pavilion and our good old buddy Figment. The wait time was 10 minutes and well worth it. Also it is worth noting that the weather on this day had a threat of thunder and lightning. While walking over to Journey Into Imagination With Figment, it started to sprinkle, but the real show was happening in the sky and far away from us. Lots of thunder and lightning off in the distance.
After Journey Into Imagination With Figment, we spotted a photo op with Joy from Inside Out. We stopped for a picture with her. With that it was time to head over to MK, and finish off our golden statue hunt.
Park #4: Magic Kingdom
By this time, it was 6pm and we wanted as much daylight as possible to capture the golden statues in MK. We parked and took the monorail into MK to enjoy the evening. Upon entering MK, there was a character cavalcade going on so we watched a little bit of it as we worked our way up Mainstreet USA towards the main hub.
We snapped pictures of the statues around the hub, and headed into Adventureland to try the orange cream soft-served cup at the Sunshine Tree Terrace. Neither of us had this before, and decided that today was the day. It was decent, and I would ask you to try it to figure out if it is better than a Dole Whip, on the other hand you could order both.
We made our way around finishing off our golden statues hunt, which ended at Stitch. Yes remember that was our main purpose for today, to take a picture of all of the golden statues for the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World. As 7:07 hit, we were able to make another Lightning Lane selection, now at this point of the evening the selections are very slim but we grabbed Pirates of the Caribbean at 9:45pm-10:45pm. More than likely, this Lightning Lane isn’t even needed for that time of night, but we grabbed it anyways for our sixth and final Lightning Lane of the day.
At this point we have lined up four Lightning Lane entries for the evening at MK. This planning started way back in DAK while waiting in line for Kilimanjaro Safaris, and it is about to pay off. Hold onto your butts! We are about to accomplish a lot in MK in the evening, and on a very busy day.
Redeeming Lightning Lane at Magic Kingdom
As Peter Pan would say “here we go!” It was almost time for us to tap into Peter Pan’s Flight, however with some time to kill, we got in line for, Under the Sea – Journey of The Little Mermaid. The posted wait time was 10 minutes and ended up being 8 minutes. After we got off of that attraction, we made our way over to Peter Pan’s Flight to tap into our Lightning Lane reservation. Posted wait time for Peter Pan was 80 minutes and we were on with Lightning Lane in 15 minutes.
Next up on our Lightning Lane reservation was The Haunted Mansion. Posted standby wait time was 45 minutes, however Lightning Lane made our wait 10 minutes. After we visited our favorite ghostly friends, we decided it was time for dinner at Cosmic Ray’s. You can read about one of our favorite date night places in our article, Date Night With Sonny Eclipse.
After our dinner, we stepped out at 8:55pm to watch the fireworks from the side of the castle. We aren’t the type of people who camp out for hours to find the perfect spot to watch fireworks but to each their own. After the fireworks ended, we trekked over to Frontierland to tap into Big Thunder Mountain Railroad with our Lightning Lane reservation.
To get there, we avoided the crowds who were exiting the park after the fireworks by going behind the castle. Posted standby wait time was 50 minutes for Big Thunder, but the actual wait for us with Lightning Lane was 10 minutes.
After Big Thunder, it was time to redeem our final Lightning Lane reservation at Pirates of the Caribbean. Posted wait time for Pirates was 10 minutes, our actual wait time was 10 minutes, so it was a wash as predicted and not needed for the time of the night. At this point we still have an hour until the park closes, let’s hustle and get some more attractions in!
We proceeded over to the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, or just PeopleMover for us veterans. Posted standby wait time was 35 minutes however it was a walk-on. After a quick tour of Tomorrowland from the relaxing PeopleMover, we headed over to Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. Standby said 5 minutes, but we were able to walk all the way on to it. From there we headed to, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh where the posted standby time was 15 minutes, and once again we walked on.
Finally we reached 10:55pm EST and our last attraction of the day. We get in the last minute line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Posted standby wait time was 70 minutes, but the actual wait time was 25 minutes.
Summary
Well are you still with us? That is a lot of words which also turns out to be a lot of steps through the parks. 34,879 steps to be exact. Our day started way back in Disney’s Animal Kingdom at 8:10am, and ended at our car at 11:47pm. Let’s recap what we accomplished in four parks with Lightning Lane during the last 15 hours.
- Avatar: Flight of Passage
- Na’vi River Journey
- Yak and Yeti
- Kilimanjaro Safaris
- Starbucks
- Meet Olaf
- Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway
- Mexican Pavilion Snack
- Journey Into Imagination With Figment
- Picture with Joy
- Orange Cream Soft-Served Cup at The Sunshine Tree Terrace
- Under the Sea – Journey of The Little Mermaid
- Peter Pan’s Flight
- The Haunted Mansion
- Dinner at Cosmic Ray’s
- Disney Enchantment (Fireworks)
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- PeopleMover
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Conclusion
While this isn’t the best daily strategy, I can tell you this. If you plan out your days and know what you are doing, you can accomplish a lot at Disney World in one day. Disney World is very challenging to plan out. To that point it can even be scary and intimidating for some.
Lightning Lane will save you time, however you do need to know it inside and out. Achieving 6 Lightning Lane reservations is not normal. Disney even spells it our for you with a warning. This is right from the mouses mouth, “On average, guests can enter 2 to 3 attractions or experiences per day using the Lightning Lane entrance if the first selection is made early in the day.”
We do not advise vacationers to visit 4 parks in one day. If you are staying for 10 days or more, sure it is worth a try for one day. It is tiring, however rewarding at this same time. Schedule a pool day after you do it. After all, the resorts are expensive, and you want to use those amenities to their fullest.
So, is Park Hopping & Lightning Lane in four parks in one day doable? Yes is the quick answer, however it comes down to personal choices. To that point the choice is yours. It is a lot of effort, and we would only hit the 4 parks in one day on a longer trip rather than a shorter one.
We hope you enjoyed this article. Let us know what you think in the comments below. Would you ever consider exploring all 4 theme parks in 1 day? Below is the last picture of the night, Cinderella’s Castle.
