"Disney Genie" Digital Product Revealed at D23

soooooooooooooo, I have many thoughts on this one too and they are night and day...

All I could think at first was "HOW COOL IS THIS??? I want to do all princess stuff today, click, boom, done"

Then it was more "WTF, I love to plan (and I know I still can) and I love people asking me my thoughts and favorites, will that stop?"

Then - "What will this do to Travel Agents"

I mean yea, it's cool tech, we all know they have been tracking us for years not only with MBs but surveys online and in the parks, and purchases. This just goes a step further. The day is coming where you can snag a FP to get a chip planted in your arm to forego MBs and your entire trip is planned just by thinking of the dates you want to go....

I am very interested to see how this plays out.

Here are my thoughts in a very small nutshell (I could go on for hours about it): Will this new system REALLY optimize people's plans based on what they want to do OR is it another way for Disney to spread out crowds? Touring Plans already offers a system where you can put in the attractions you want to do and it will give you their predicted optimal order based on typical wait times, events, FastPass availability, etc. Touring Plans has no other skin in the game that would benefit them to do anything other then tell you the best possible order of attractions. Disney, however, does have multiple reasons that they might want to send you certain places in the park, and they have already shown that they are willing to try and do that on other mediums.

Currently, when you go to get a rolling FastPass the day of, I have always found that the initial FastPasses they will show available are much later in the day then what truly is available; I'm assuming to try and spread people's uses of FastPasses throughout the day. For example, if I go to get my 4th FastPass of the day at 1pm, it will often show me initially that there are no Haunted Mansion FastPasses available until around 5pm. When I keep refreshing and keep playing with times, I might slowly but surely might get that FastPass bumped all the way up to a 1:30pm FastPass. It is also often been reported that a Space Mountain FastPass might randomly pop up for 5 min from now if lets say Frontierland is pack and Tomorrowland is empty to try and spread people out. So my main question is, how will this all work with Disney Genie?

I have a feeling that similar tactics might be utilized that are more in Disney's interest in keeping guest flow and traffic the way they would like more then it actually benefits the user. Compound that with the fact that I feel most people using this app are going to be newbie Disney travelers who won't know to question the prescribed touring strategy Disney Genie gives them, and I really truly feel like a knowledgeable travel agent or TouringPlans.com (or a combination of both...even better!) is still the best resource a less experienced traveler can have. But the Disney Genie is an easy "solution" that will be marketed directly through Disney.

I'm a 100% Disney fan through and through and I don't consider myself a pessimist, but manipulative is a great word for it. It's not only taking strategies that travel agents and dedicated fans have been perfecting for years and presenting them as their own, but they're also likely going to use those strategies to mislead people into following touring plans that actually benefit the company more then the person paying for the service. It makes me cringe a bit.

I don't use touring plans and won't use this new genie. I will book FP's, but it's truly based on how I feel at the time. We also go where we want to at the moment. I'm probably one of their worst guests in that regard, lol.

I agree with Jan. We have never used a touring plan. We quite often change plans based on what we feel like doing when we wake up. I am sure I would not use the genie.