ANAHEIM, Calif. — Disneyland and Disney California Adventure visitors will have to pay more if they want to skip certain attraction lines.
The Walt Disney Company raised prices Tuesday on its popular Genie+ pay-to-wait-in-line-less service by 25% at Disneyland and as much as 46% at Walt Disney World.
The updated Disney website states the add-on service will increase from $20 to at least $25 at Disneyland, with the price varying by date. At Walt Disney World, the add-on product will range from $15 on regular days to $22 on busier days.
"Our tiered ticketing structure offers guests different options to experience that magic throughout the year, including our lowest price point – which hasn’t changed since 2019,” said Disneyland officials in a statement to Spectrum News.
Disney rolled out the complimentary Disney Genie and paid Disney Genie+ service last year as a replacement for its free FastPass and upgraded MaxPass service.
The new service was Disney's answer to the long wait lines that became familiar sights at particular high-in-demand attractions and a source of complaints for visitors, who shell out $100 or more to enter the theme park. On some days, and at certain attractions like Splash Mountain, visitors would sometimes wait several hours to hop on the popular ride.
The company also rolled out a separate Lightning Lane feature for visitors to pay an additional price to skip the lines on popular attractions such as Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Radiator Springs Racers.
Disneyland had a free FastPass system that allowed visitors to reserve a time for a popular ride on a first-come, first-served basis and come back later instead of waiting in line.
That system, however, was often abused by certain guests who would trade or give away the passes and shut out visitors who would come to the theme park later in the day.
For $20 more, MaxPass enabled visitors to book a time for a ride from anywhere in the park using their mobile phone and unlimited photo downloads.
Disney got rid of both features last summer.
The free Disney Genie service allows visitors to create a personalized itinerary of their day at the park and uses tech to make dining and ride recommendations.
Meanwhile, the upgraded and optional Disney Genie+ service allows visitors to access the Lightning Lane feature, where they can skip the line at select attractions one at a time. The attractions include Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones Adventure and Toy Story Midway Mania.
The Genie+ also comes with unlimited Disney PhotoPass digital downloads.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek has praised the new Genie+ service as an extra revenue stream for the company.
Chapek told investors in August that half of the people who visit Disneyland and Walt Disney World are paying for the upgraded service.
“[The] Genie product — which, as you know, we released just a little bit short of a year ago — now about 50% of the people that come through the gate buy up [the] Genie product, which I think you can see the result of in our yields,” said Chapek during the company’s third quarter earnings call.