How Much Time Can Genie Save You at Each Disneyland Park?

Last week, I posted our first analysis of Genie time savings and availability at Disneyland. Spoiler alert if you haven’t read it – time savings at almost every eligible attraction are decent, and availability is a breeze. This week I’m mashing those two analyses together to give you and idea about how much time you can expect to save at each park under various crowd conditions on any given day.

You can look up an almost identical analysis for the WDW parks here. I’m not going to bury the lede on this one. The results from last week make it pretty clear that Genie+ is much easier to use at Disneyland. And individually each attraction still has good time savings compared to standby. So it should surprise no one that the overall results show much better time savings per park through lots of crowd conditions when compared to any of the WDW parks.

Explain the Math!

All of the details about the math can be found in last week’s post. This week is just about combining those two detailed datasets:

1. Reservation availability (how many reservations I can make in a day, and for which attractions)
2. Time savings (how much time I would save at each reservation I can successfully make)

The real question that we’re trying to answer is this – how can we take what we know about time savings at each attraction, and then contextualize it with information about return time availability and how it shifts throughout the day?

This question was really difficult to answer at WDW – because at the parks where you can save the most time for individual attractions, reservations book up really quickly. So you have to pick and choose which ones you’re going to use in order to maximize your overall savings.

At Disneyland, we find a much happier place. In almost all scenarios, you’re going to be able to use every Genie+ options available to you throughout the course of the day. A lot of the time, it won’t even be difficult to accomplish. And on some low crowd days, it’s feasible to use all Genie+ options at both parks in a single day. But for now, we’re going to say that you’re sticking with one park per day.

Note: this post accounts for all current Genie+ offerings as of March 14th, 2022. If things change significantly in the future, that will require new calculations.

How Much Time Can Genie+ Save Me At California Adventure?

The colors on these bars relate to the various time savings conditions at WDW, so the fact that we already have two green bars is a good sign!

• On low crowd level days, there just aren’t many attractions that have really high wait time savings compared to standby, because standby times are already manageable throughout the park. Even still, it’s incredibly easy to get and use a Genie+ reservation for every eligible attraction in a single day (or even half a day). And doing so will still save you over an hour and a half compared to standby.
• On medium crowd level days, things get even better. It’s still very very easy to get and use Genie+ reservations for every eligible attraction. And you’re saving more time compared to standby because those wait times are picking up a little compared to low crowd days. That means you can save even more time – in this case, just about 2.5 hours compared to standby. By way of comparison, that’s more time than you’ll save at almost every WDW park on a medium crowd day (other than Magic Kingdom).
• On high crowd level days, the value proposition for Genie+ goes up even more. Reservation availability doesn’t get impacted too heavily – you can still get and use reservations for every eligible attraction with relative ease. Plus, standby lines are longer, so you’re saving more time at each attraction. That means you’ll be able to save over 3 hours compared to standby with Genie+ on these high crowd level days.

How Much Time Can Genie+ Save Me At Disneyland?

A whole graph of greens! That is something we’ve only seen once before – at Magic Kingdom. It makes sense, because Disneyland’s Genie+ profile is roughly similar to Magic Kingdom’s. Lots of options, which helps with availability. Some save a lot of time, and others have only mild savings.

• On low crowd days, wait times at many of Disneyland’s Genie+ attractions are pretty low anyway. But there are a lot of them to choose from, and you can very easily get and use all of them in just a day. So even though those wait times aren’t incredibly high, you can still save over two and half hours compared to standby! This is actually roughly equivalent to the time savings that we see at Magic Kingdom on low crowd days too.
• On medium crowd days, wait times go up at many attractions across the park. But availability remains plentiful. Very few rides sell out before the park closes (if any do). Those two factors combine to allow our time savings compared to standby to skyrocket all of the way to four hours! Not going to lie – purchasing Genie+ on a medium crowd day when I plan to be in Disneyland would be an absolute no-brainer for me. In fact, I’m personally doing just that in late April of this year. Yeah, it’s an upcharge. But $20 for four fewer hours in line is crazy. Once again, these time savings are roughly similar to what we’d see at Magic Kingdom under similar crowd conditions.
• Speaking of crazy, let’s look at high crowd level days. High crowd level days are where Magic Kingdom availability breaks down – it just can’t keep up with demand. Do we see the same thing at Disneyland? NOPE! You may have to miss out on an attraction or two – but out of the impressive time savings lineup of the park as a whole, that’s really not a big deal. Standby wait times continue to go up, so even if you miss getting reservations for two different attractions in the day, you’re still saving over four and a half hours compared to standby, on average.

What Does This Mean For You?

1. At this point, reservation availability at Disneyland doesn’t constrain anything enough to have a large impact on time savings. So, the higher the crowds, the more time you’ll save.
2. That being said, you can save more than three hours at Disneyland on high and medium crowd days, and at DCA on high crowd days. You can also feasibly save over three hours by park hopping and doing attractions at both Disneyland and DCA in a single day on low crowd days.
3. Genie+ is just remarkably easier to use at Disneyland, and incredibly less frustrating. It’s more expensive, but comes with more perks. I’d recommend using Genie+ at the California parks over any WDW park other than Magic Kingdom (which I’d put on par with the California parks).
4. I guess the only downside here is that if you’re a fan of stacking, it won’t be easy (or perhaps even possible) to do. Too many rides have almost immediate availability to allow stacking to work.

Have you used Genie+ at Disneyland? Are you a Florida fanatic that sees these numbers and seethes with jealousy? Do you have other Disneyland Genie+ questions? Let me know in the comments!