We put it to the test: Disney Lightning Lanes slashed wait times in half and get on 16 rides in 1 day

If life were a fairytale, guests would saunter straight to the front of every line at Walt Disney World without ever waiting to ride their favorite attractions. But this is the real world, where waits for popular Disney rides can get pretty darn long. Unfortunately, no amount of pixie dust can make the lines any shorter, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to make your wait times magically shrink.

Enter Disney Lightning Lane (formerly known as Disney Genie+) — Disney's current version of the line-skipping service available at most theme parks. You can purchase a Lightning Lane Multi Pass, Lightning Lane Single Pass, or both to skip the standby line and get to more attractions with shorter waits.

TPG has a comprehensive guide to Disney Lightning Lane passes, but there is only one way to truly test the limits of this new line-skipping service. We put boots (er ... supportive sneakers) to the ground to find out just how much ground you can cover and how much time you can save with Disney Lightning Lane.

TPG sent two staffers — myself and Director of Content Summer Hull — to hot, sunny Central Florida to test Lightning Lane vs. old-fashioned waiting in a real-world situation. I purchased the Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Single Pass so I could skip virtually every line at Disney World.

Summer, on the other hand, had to wait in the standby line.

We started and ended at the same time and planned to spin, zoom and fly on most of the same rides. For science, of course.

How much time did we spend waiting in line? How many rides did we get on? And do you really need Disney Lightning Lane to enjoy your Disney World vacation? Our findings may surprise you.

Related: How to use points to pay for Disney tickets

Disney Lightning Lane basics

You can learn everything you've ever wanted to know about the basics of how this all works in our guide to Disney Lightning Lanes, but here's a quick breakdown of how they work at Disney World to get you up to speed for the purposes of our test.

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Most attractions are included in the Lightning Lane Multi Pass service, but one or two top attractions at each park require a separate Lightning Lane Single Pass purchase to skip the line. It's not necessary to purchase a Lightning Lane Multi Pass to buy a Lightning Lane Single Pass and vice versa, though by combining the two, you are almost guaranteed to get on all your favorite Disney rides during your visit.

Although Multi Pass and Single Pass are separate services, you can purchase one or both in a single transaction. You can purchase both services through the My Disney Experience app.

Disney Lightning Lane Multi Pass

Lightning Lane Multi Pass is the current iteration of Disney's skip-the-line service. If you remember FastPass, FastPass+ or Disney Genie+, you should already have a basic idea of how this system works. The price varies but generally costs between $15 and $39 per person, per day.

You can purchase Lightning Lane Multi Pass and make your first three ride selections ahead of time — up to seven days before your visit if you are staying in a Disney World hotel, Shades of Green or the Walt Disney World Swan, Dolphin or Swan Reserve hotel. If you are staying off-site, you can make your choices up to three days before the first date of your ticket.

When you purchase, you can choose up to three rides and the time you'd like to ride. You can make additional ride selections on the day of your visit each time you redeem one. If you are park hopping (subject to availability), you can make new ride selections or modify existing ones for any ride and return time at any park. You can also modify or cancel your ride selections if your plans change or you hope for a better return window.

Disney Lightning Lane Single Pass

One or two attractions at each park require a Lightning Lane Single Pass to skip the line. Lightning Lane Single Pass attraction pricing varies by attraction but typically ranges between $7 and $25 per person per attraction. Each guest can make up to two Lightning Lane Single Pass purchases daily, and they don't have to be for the same park.

You can purchase the Lightning Lane Single Pass before your visit along with or separately from the Lightning Lane Multi Pass and choose up to two rides and return times. You can also purchase and make Single Pass selections on the day of your visit, pending availability.

Putting Disney Lightning Lane to the test

It's one thing to research and write about new Disney offerings; it's another to see how they work in the real world. That's why Summer and I headed to Orlando to test Disney Lightning Lane in a head-to-head competition.

As a Walt Disney World Swan Hotel guest, I could purchase and book my first three Lightning Multi Pass reservations and two Lightning Lane Single Pass selections when my seven-day prearrival booking window opened. Summer had to put her fate in the hands of the Disney crowd capacity gods and hope for a day that wasn't too busy.

I scored a spot in line for Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Pirates of the Caribbean and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad via Lightning Lane Multi Pass ($27 that day for the Lightning Lane Multi Pass) as well as Tron Lightcycle / Run ($20) and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ($20) via Lightning Lane Single Pass.

We didn't try to make this a "rope drop to fireworks" race to see who could get the most rides without stopping to think, eat or breathe. Our goal was to replicate a typical Disney day with breaks to enjoy a nice meal or rest at the hotel, meet characters or watch a parade. Our official test times were 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a relaxing sit-down lunch in between.

To try and get on as many high-demand attractions as we could during this one-day test, we chose to start our day at Magic Kingdom and park-hop to Hollywood Studios after lunch.

Our day started long before we began our walk to our first ride, though.

At 7 a.m. each day, guests can request to join a free virtual queue to ride Disney's newest and most popular attractions. At the time of writing, those rides are Tiana's Bayou Adventure, Tron Lightcycle / Run and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. We weren't visiting Epcot, so Summer followed the directions in our virtual queue guide and snagged a virtual queue spot for Tiana's Bayou Adventure. There is no standby option for these rides, so you can only ride via the virtual queue or purchase Lightning Lane passes.

Even though Summer wasn't using Lightning Lane, the virtual queues are 100% free and fair game to those who can time hitting refresh as the clock hits 7:00:00 a.m. the best. But, since we tried our virtual queue luck on Tiana's, there was no option for Summer to get one for Tron that morning.

We started our day together by taking advantage of early theme park entry. Guests of all Disney World hotels and select surrounding hotels (see the full list on the Disney World website) can enter any Disney World theme park 30 minutes before the posted opening time. To make sure we were near the front of the pack, we arrived about 30 minutes before the early entry time and queued up to head for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train as soon as the park opened to on-site hotel guests.

We were near the front of the crowd and waited less than 20 minutes to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, a ride that regularly has waits upward of 90 minutes during the day. Our visit to Snow White and her friends was so speedy that we also had time to ride Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin together before the park officially opened at 9 a.m.

This is a useful strategy whether you are using Lightning Lane passes or not because you can knock out this perpetually popular attraction before the park officially opens for the day and the crowds descend.

Then, it was time for a quick coffee break before we parted ways and set out to see how much time you could really save with Lightning Lane while doing as many of the same rides as we could. Here are our results.

How much time I saved with Disney Lightning Lane

I want to preface this by saying that Disney did not feel super crowded on the early-August weekday of our visit. The Disney planning site TouringPlans rated the Magic Kingdom day of our visit as a 3 out of 10 in terms of crowds, so the odds are on a busier day, these results could vary, though we expect the pattern would hold.

In total, I spent just over two hours waiting in line and rode 16 attractions. For the attractions I used Lightning Lane passes for, I waited less than 10 minutes for all but one. My wait times mostly came from the handful of attractions I waited in a standby line for between Lightning Lanes, like Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Haunted Mansion.

My other longest wait was for Mickey's PhilharMagic. It's one of my favorite shows and gives you a few blessed moments in a cool, dark theater before heading back out into the Florida sun. But, I showed up with quite a bit of time before the next show and ended up spending more time waiting than I would have liked.

Even so, all in, I waited an average of 7.68 minutes per ride, which isn't too shabby for a full day at Disney World.

Summer, on the other hand, spent 3.3 hours waiting in line and rode 13 attractions. Her longest waits had less to do with the actual ride and more to do with the time of day. In the morning hours, she didn't wait more than 25 minutes for any attraction. As the day wore on, the posted wait times grew longer, as did the difference between Summer's wait times and my own.

Summer waited an average of 15.38 minutes per ride, just over twice as long as I spent, but she also rode three fewer rides.

Had it been a busier day with longer waits, my average wait time likely wouldn't have changed by all that much, but Summer's would have increased — causing the difference between her average wait time and ride count and my own to grow exponentially.

Here is a full breakdown of our results:

Extra rides I got on with Disney Lightning Lane

When you compare my results with Summer's, I rode three more rides and spent 74 fewer minutes in line than she did. That may not sound significant until you factor in the additional rides I was able to get on with Disney Lightning Lane.

The rides I racked up that she didn't include:

• Tron Lightcycle / Run
• Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
• Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

You can usually get on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue without a lengthy wait (the posted wait time was only 15 minutes during my visit), but Tron requires a Lightning Lane purchase or virtual queue, and Tower of Terror requires either a Lighting Lane purchase or a lengthy wait that is sometimes 60 minutes or more.

If you are wondering why Tiana's Bayou Adventure didn't make the list, we actually did get a virtual queue spot but didn't use it. The virtual queue line looked pretty long and we didn't want to get stuck in line with only a few hours left in our test. If it hadn't been for that, we would have happily waited it out to go on down the bayou with Tiana and her friends.

Virtual queue waits are not the same as Lightning Lane waits. A virtual queue is simply a crowd-controlled standby queue. You can't get in it without securing a spot ahead of time, but you may still wait anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes. If you enter via Lightning Lane, you usually will wait a maximum of 15 minutes.

It's worth noting that even at seven days out, I wasn't able to secure a paid Lightning Lane Multip Pass for Tiana's as they were already sold out and never became available in all the times I refreshed checking in the week leading up to the test or on the day-of.

Related: Here's how much it cost to go to Disney World

Pros and cons of Disney Lightning Lane

Our test shows that you can save time and get on more rides with Disney Lightning Lane than without it, but that doesn't mean there aren't drawbacks. I spent a lot of time on my phone, not only booking and modifying Lightning Lanes throughout the day but also checking my return times to make sure I didn't miss my window.

This is partially because I wanted to dig in and learn the new system, but there is no getting around the fact that if you are trying to get certain rides at certain times, you will be staring at your phone screen for a good part of the day.

Summer, on the other hand, got to just enjoy the day and mostly rode her attractions in a pretty logical pattern that minimized walking and allowed her the 'freedom' to just do whatever looked fun next.

But an upside to being on your phone if you do buy Lightning Lane Multip Pass is that Lightning Lane availability changes throughout the day.

For example, Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway wasn't showing any availability during most of my attempts to modify one of my current selections, but a return window magically appeared at one point, and I managed to grab it before it disappeared. Of course, the ride had technical issues before I was able to ride, but when that happens, Disney automatically gives you a multi-attraction pass that you can use to skip the line on any eligible ride. I used mine to skip the line on Toy Story Mania.

When you use Lightning Lane, you also miss out on Disney's immersively themed and interactive standby queues. I actually love the queues for rides like Peter Pan's Flight and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, but when you zoom through the Lightning Lane, you miss out. I appreciate Disney's work to make waiting "fun," so if you do decide to go without skip-the-line passes, consider this a silver lining.

Making that silver lining shine a bit brighter is that on less crowded days, you may get by without spending money on Lightning Lane. Of course, there is no way to know exactly what the crowds will be like on the day of your visit, but sites like Mickey Visit and Thrill Data can give you a good idea of how busy Disney will be during your visit.

If you know you'll be there during a slower period like we were, you can feel more confident that you'll still get on several rides without spending additional money on Lightning Lanes. Even at the lowest price of $15 per person, per day for Lightning Lane Multi Pass, a family of four would spend $240 over the course of a four-day visit.

If you want to avoid that cost but still enjoy short lines, you can utilize some of the other methods we used, like early theme park entry, free virtual queues and single-rider lines. Summer got on Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run faster than I did by using the single-rider line, even though I had Lightning Lane access.

But, if you want to kick off your Disney World visit with a handful of rides already planned for each day of your visit and with the knowledge that you can continue grabbing more skip-the-line passes throughout your vacation, Disney Lightning Lane is the way to go. For me, it definitely removed a lot of the stress of the unknowns. I didn't have to worry about the crowds or which rides would have long lines because I knew I could skip right to the front using Disney Lightning Lane.

Related: Is the Disney Visa worth it?

Bottom line

As you can see, there is no one right answer to whether or not you should purchase Disney Lightning Lane for your next visit. I spent $67 more than Summer did to get on three additional rides I and saved approximately 74 minutes in waiting time.

That's an easy yes for me, especially given the caliber of a few of the rides I got on that Summer couldn't, like Tron.

Before you can decide, you need to determine your budget, which attractions are on your "must ride" list, how busy it usually is during the time of year you plan to visit and how you like to do Disney World. You may not need it if you prefer to get on just a few rides and spend most of the day soaking up the atmosphere and eating Mickey-shaped snacks. Or, you may decide to make very targeted purchases, such as just for a Lightning Lane Single Pass for Tron, but not the Multi Pass.

But if this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip or you want to race from ride to ride from the minute the parks open until a friendly cast member ushers you out at the end of the night, Disney Lightning Lane is a must-buy in my book.

If you fall somewhere in between, you can tell from our on-the-ground reporting that Disney Lightning Lane does help you spend less time in line and get on more rides but you can still potentially get quite a bit done even without it, especially if you get up early and/or stay up late. Knowing that you'll have to weigh your options and choose accordingly.

Personally, I would rather save money in other areas and use my Disney dollars to skip the long lines — especially when I am traveling with my three hot, sweaty, hungry and tired kids. But you may feel otherwise. What's important, and what we will always be here to provide, is that you have the information ahead of time so you can make a Disney vacation plan that works for you.

Related reading:

• A magical guide for how to plan a trip to Disney World this year
  
• Are the Disney Visa credit cards worth it?
• New swan on the block: A review of the Walt Disney World Swan Reserve
• The cheapest place to stay at Disney World is a tent — so I tried it
• Things you should never, ever do at Disney