Hi everyone, I'm Gary Daniels, Vice
President of Digital Experience for Disney Parks. Thank you
for spending your day with us as we share a
new experience coming to Walt Disney World and Disneyland
theme parks this fall. As many of you know,
we're always looking for ways to improve the experience for
our guests no matter how are or when they choose to
visit us. And our team has been working on
an incredible new service that I want to preview for
you today. We call it Disney Genie and this service
will soon be your new personal assistant to help you
create your best Disney day. It will provide personalized
itineraries that easily map out an entire day with your
individual preferences in mind. Disney Genie takes all the
information about the experiences you select and evaluates hundreds
of thousands of combinations of a day, checking operating
hours, showtimes, forecasted wait times, dining
reservations and more. Disney Genie service is all about
simplifying and maximizing your fun and you've never had a
friend like this. It also features an option that
will be available for purchase called Disney Genie+,
which gives you a way to save time in line
at many fan-favorite attractions. With Genie+, guests can
choose the next available time to arrive at select attractions
and experiences, one selection at a time, throughout the entire
day using a queue we're introducing called the Lightning
Lane entrance. Disney Genie+ service is a lot like Disney
MaxPass at Disneyland Resort, which has been a guest
favorite for years. Making your visit even more personalized
than ever is the goal. Guests will also be able
to use Disney Genie to purchase individual arrival windows at
one or two select attractions each day using the Lightning
Lane entrance. This option will be available at a
different set of attractions than those included with the Disney
Genie+ service. There's so much
to experience at Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts, we
never want guests to feel overwhelmed. That's why we're
so excited about the Disney Genie new features that will
help you throughout the day. But don't worry,
we realized that there will be guests that want to
experience the parks like they have before and they will
still be able to do that. Our traditional standby lines
will still be there at most attractions and virtual queues
will continue to be used at certain other attractions.
Disney Genie service will be available this fall in the
My Disney Experience and Disneyland apps and I'm so proud
of what this service will do for our guests.
Let me show you how...I love how easy it
is to get started with Disney Genie service. Just
tell Disney Genie what you want to do. If you're
a seasoned pro and know the attractions, dining or entertainment
you want to do, just tell Disney Genie! It
will look at the forecasted future wait times and
availability of entertainment, dining across the day for you and
recommend the best time to experience them. If you're not
sure what you wanna do, that's okay, just
tell Disney Genie your interests, whether it's Star Wars,
Princesses or Pixar, Disney Genie takes your preferences and
interests and evaluates thousands of ways to experience the park
that day, presenting you with a special itinerary designed
to maximize your time in the park. Disney Genie
service is powered by innovative tech that was developed by Disney
cast members. This technology takes more than 60 years
of knowledge and expertise in how our guests experience our
theme parks and puts it in the palm of your
hand to create your best day. So let's see
what Disney Genie service has for me today. Based
on what I've told Disney Genie and all the Disney
Parks information, it's recommending I should start my adventure
by heading to Big Thunder Mountain first. And that's
good news as I love that attraction. Genie
took into account the forecasted waits and availability throughout the
day for the experiences I selected and determined now is
a great time to go on "The wildest ride in
the wilderness!" It also looks like Disney Genie service
also suggested a convenient location near my plans to mobile
order lunch before I head over to Buzz Lightyear's
Space Ranger Spin. I can place my order, and
ensure I add that Chocolate Bundt Cake from Cosmic Ray’s,
you know the one with the purple icing, at a
time that works great in my day! If I'm
not familiar with an experience or just wonder "why did
Disney Genie recommend this?", I can easily see why
Disney Genie service believes it's a good
fit. And don't worry, Disney Genie knows plans can
change. So, whether the kids or the adults in
your group need a snack, a nap or if an unexpected
rain shower comes through, it will make suggestions for
you in real-time. Need help throughout the day?
Maybe you want to know how late the monorail is
running that night. Disney Genie service can find out
or connect you to a cast member if you need
additional help. Now, if you want even more flexibility
and spontaneity throughout your day, Disney Genie service
has a suite of features designed to make it even
easier to find the best time to experience the things
you really want to do. It's kind of like
your very own personal Tip Board with forecasted future wait times.
With My Tip Board, you can see attractions and
dining options at a glance with their current wait times
and/or next reservations available. This brings several of our
existing planning features together in one central place to make
your day easier. You can even call up forecasted
future wait times throughout the day so you can
decide the best time to experience an attraction with less
time waiting in line. By this point, I'm
sure some of you are getting hungry and Disney Genie
services ready for that as well with the Dining
Tip Board. Here, you can quickly find where to
eat and place a mobile order and look for dining
reservations. If you didn't make a dining reservation, Disney
Genie still has you covered because you can use it
to join a restaurant wait list without needing to visit
the restaurant. For guests that want to take their day
to the next level, you can purchase Disney Genie+.
service which lets you save time in
line through an alternate queue we're introducing called the
Lightning Lane entrance. You can add Disney Genie+
option to your ticket right in the app. Disney
Genie+ service includes over 40 attractions at Walt Disney
World and more than 15 at Disneyland Resort. These
include Disney classics like Haunted Mansion to thrill rides like
Big Thunder Mountain and newer favorites like Star Wars:
Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run. It works a lot like
Disney MaxPass at Disneyland Resort. Using the app,
you choose the next available time to arrive at an
attraction. When your arrival time begins, head to the
attraction using the Lightning Lane entrance and enjoy the ride!
With Disney Genie+ service you can choose one
available selection at a time, throughout the entire day!
A feature with Disney Genie+ is that you also have
access to exclusive new augmented reality lenses at Walt Disney
World Resort and Disney PhotoPass downloads from your day
at Disneyland Resort. With these new features, you'll
be able to bring your favorite characters to life or
have digital downloads of these incredible memories. With Disney Genie+
you also get access to immersive new audio experiences
featuring our incredible Imagineers and other special guests to learn
behind-the-scenes fun facts about our attractions and
the Parks. Wow, I just shared quite a
bit and I hope you enjoyed this preview. We
know our guests will have lots of questions. That's
why I was especially excited to share Disney Genie service
with our planDisney panelists just the other day.
The planDisney panelists are guests, just like
you, who have mastered the art of planning Disney vacations.
And now, they share their knowledge and expertise to help
others plan their Disney vacations. Let's take a look
at our conversation. Hello everyone. Hi Gary.
Hey, thank you for joining me today. Hey,
first I want to thank you for your passion for
Disney and for sharing your experiences and vacation insights with
countless guests so they can make the most of their
time with us. We know guests will have a
lot of questions about Disney Genie, so we wanted to
give you a sneak peek first and hear your thoughts
on what you think our guests will want to know
most. So let's get started. How about Courtney?
We start with you. So I'm wondering if a
budget conscious family will still be able to have an
enjoyable vacation with the help of Disney Genie, even
if they aren't able to afford to purchase Genie+
or individual lightning line entrance options. Great question,
yes, guests are going to be able to
choose from all those new options, some of them
or none at all. And they're going to continue
to be able to have a great experience no matter
how they decide to plan their day, because the
attractions, they're actually gonna continue to offer either a
traditional stand by queue or a virtual queue at certain
attractions like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. So
and those are available at no additional cost beyond the
park admission. You know, and don't forget what
we were just looking at too, is that the
complementary Disney Genie service is designed to help you better navigate
the theme park so you can reduce the time in
lines that way as well. For example, imagine
you're arriving at the Disneyland Park or the Magic
Kingdom, and it's the middle of the day
you're looking at the wait times and you have no
idea where to begin. Disney Genie is going to
help you make the best decision at that moment,
based on what's going on the park then. So
that way it can take into account your preferences and
the things that you want to do. And it's
just a great way to maximize your time in the
parks as a guest and so the guests get to
focus on just the fun with their families. Now Wes,
what about you? Okay, so this is gonna
be a really big change, especially for guests of
the Walt Disney World Resort because we're not used to
having like a paid service. So my question to
you is this, I'm just interested to see how
Disney MaxPass went at the Disneyland Resort.
Yeah, MaxPass was very popular and rated
really highly by the guests and we've done a lot
of guest research and really tried to make sure we
understood what was important to the guest and to help
us create Genie, and particularly we found that flexibility is
really important. We need to provide guests options.
We've got to make it all easier and we don't
want guests to feel locked in, guests visit our
parks and they enjoy it in different ways. This
is not a one size fits all approach.
That just doesn't make sense anymore and we think there's
a better way. So now, we're offering more than
one option to experience our park. So guests can
customize their visit based on what they want to do
most. I mean, but also I know some
of you are experts as well and have experienced MaxPass,
you know. Andres, what about you?
What was your experience like with MaxPass? It
was hard for me to adjust to the idea of
paying for MaxPass. Um I actually waited a
couple of months before I actually tried it, but
once I did it was a game changer for my
family and there was just no going back to the
old way. We made it part of our day at
the parks. That's great. What are the questions
on your mind? So I'm wondering how will Annual
Passholders at Walt Disney World and Magic Key holders
at the Disneyland Resort add Genie+ to their day.
Yeah. Really excited about getting the Magic Key members
and {assholders at Walt Disney World to be able
to use Disney Genie+ and we think they're going
to love it. And at launch, Passholders at
Walt Disney World and Magic Key holders at Disneyland are
going to be able to add Disney Genie+ on
the day of their visit. In the future we're
going to continue to explore other enhancements. And of
course we're gonna appreciate their feedback when we launch this
service as well. Donyell, what are you thinking?
What's on your mind? I'm wondering when and from
where can guess make attractions selections in Genie+.
And then what about Lightning Lane selections? Yeah.
Great question. Okay so at Walt Disney World all
guests are gonna be able to make their first Genie+
selection at 7 a.m. On the day of their
visit. They can purchase individual Lightning Lane at park
open time, whether they're an Annual Passholder or
just visiting for the day. At Disneyland, all guests
are going to be able to make their selections once
they're in the park. So for all guests it's
easy to make their selections with Genie+
via the My Disney Experience app or the Disneyland
app and we've also heard, and this was important to
us, that gets really enjoy the simplicity of making their
attraction plans on the day of their visit. So
again they've got maximum flexibility through their day of their
visit. So we're excited about that. So Ashley,
what's on your mind? As a Walt Disney World Resort
panelist, are there benefits available to guests of Disney
Resort hotels with these new offerings? Yeah good question.
So that Walt Disney World, guests staying at a Disney
Resort hotel who are interested in purchasing and scheduling an
individual selection Lightning Lane entrance, for example, Seven Dwarfs
Mine Train at the Magic Kingdom. They will be
able to do so at 7 a.m. ahead of other
guests who would be able to do so when the
park opens. So and again these selections are limited
based on availability but they will be able to make
those selections a little bit earlier. And again,
Disney Genie will take into account if they're staying at
a Disney Resort hotel, any plans they have there
and they'll be all integrated into that single My Disney Experience
app and Disneyland app for them. So we have
covered a lot of ground today. I cannot thank
you enough for all your insights about Disney Genie and
thank you again for helping us make magic for our
guests, you know. See you real soon! Bye Gary!
Thank you much. That was really great. I
want to thank the planDisney panelists for the
great discussion. I also want to thank you for joining
us here today to learn about Disney Genie service.
Whether you like to fully plan your day in the
parks or whether you prefer to go with the flow,
this new service will have something for everyone. It
will allow you to personalize your experience, enjoy our
parks the way you want to and spend more time
making memories that will last for a lifetime alongside your
family and friends. So please stay tuned to the
Disney Parks Blog for more information as we get closer
to the launch and thanks again. Take care everyone.