Wrapping Up

Our last full day at Disney started early for some of us on Tuesday.  A group of seven went to Hollywood Studios for a final couple of rides on the Tower of Terror.  They had a fun time and bid farewell to one of the group’s favorite rides.

The entire class met after lunch in what has become our classroom away from Furman --- Room 440 (a.k.a. Dr. Harris and Dr. Hutson’s common room).  Groups of three each gave presentations on the projects on which they have been working.  Each group had prepared a poster (digital for now, but to be printed back at Furman) containing a description of the project and the findings.  The first two groups spoke about throughput and single rider lines (topics discussed in the previous two blog posts).  The final two groups discussed the third major project of the class.

Making the Rounds

As you may have read on the blog over the last few weeks, the students have been involved in a project that relates to the mathematically well-known Traveling Salesman Problem.  This problem concerns the discovery of shortest routes in a network of locations, and it is known to be very difficult to solve on a large scale.  The students developed networks that modeled the attractions at Epcot’s Future World and in the Magic Kingdom.  Using data collected by hand (and foot!) and from special distance-measuring iPad apps, the students determined all appropriate distances they needed to model these places.  A small group of students generated an algorithm that worked to find strategic routes through these parks.  The algorithm involved distances between attractions, average wait time for the attractions, and the ride times themselves.

Showing Your Work

The poster presentations were very well done.  Everyone was involved at some level with every project, and so each person was able to contribute to the content of the presentations.  The students will present these posters again as part of Furman Engaged (a day celebrating student research) in the spring of 2015.

After the poster portion of the meeting, the students spent some time discussing possible t-shirt ideas for our class.  They were excited about getting a t-shirt to commemorate what has been a great experience for them --- educationally, intellectually, personally, and socially.

The Final Evening

For dinner, the group went to Boma, a well-known restaurant in the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  This was a buffet style feast of food from Africa, and we enjoyed it so much we wished we could be carried out afterwards (some called this a Boma Coma).

After dinner, the group gathered by the pool and presented Dr. Bouzarth with a surprise “Golden Mickey” award --- recognizing the fact that the wonderful experience we all have had (students and faculty alike) would not have been possible without her foresight, inspiration, and dedication to making it all happen.

We finished off the evening by one last trip to the Magic Kingdom --- a fitting way to end the trip as this was where the trip began three weeks ago.  We stayed until the midnight closing and enjoyed being with one another as we experienced the magic that makes up Walt Disney World.

Signing Off

We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog posts over the past three weeks.  If you have read all of them or just one or two of them, we appreciate knowing that others have been interested in what we have been doing. 

There are many people and groups who have made this experience possible.  We appreciate the support of Furman, the Office of Study Away, and the Mathematics Department.  Most of all, we want to end our posts by thanking the families of all of the participants whose contributions of many types made this the wonderful experience that it was.

As they say around here, we’ll see ya real soon!

A Day of Comparisons

On Monday, members of our group participated in several different activities.  One group of students enjoyed some time by the pool and visited Epcot and Hollywood Studios again.  Another group traveled to one of Walt Disney World’s primary competitors, Universal Studios, to do some comparative research (and to have a little fun, too!).  The group had its radars turned on in search of differences between the two entities, and we noticed quite a few.  We’ll say more about that in a bit.  First, we want to describe the second of the three major projects on which our students have been working during our time here.

Comparing Throughput

One of the things our students noticed as they experienced lots of attractions is that some lines move more quickly than others.  The line at Tower of Terror (Hollywood Studios), for instance, moves much faster than the line at Kali River Rapids (Animal Kingdom).  Another way to say this is that the “throughput” (the number of people that can pass through the ride in a given time frame) is greater for one than it is for the other.  Our students did lots of timing and counting at each of these rides, and they were able to estimate each ride’s throughput and compare their estimate to the official number given by Disney.  Their work on this project involved some fun data collection and some neat statistical analysis.

Two Different Universes

In one sense, Walt Disney World and Universal Studios are very similar -- they offer entertainment via rides and shows, they have lots of food options, and there are many, many opportunities to shop.  While they certainly fall into the same broad category of amusement parks, there are some noticeable differences between the two.  Here are a few that stood out:

1. Locker Use.  At WDW, riders with backpacks and bags just carry them on the rides with them.  At Universal, however, there are some rides where this is not allowed.  In these cases, riders must store their belongings in nearby lockers (which are provided free of charge for short periods).  The automated, fingerprint-based locker assignment system is pretty neat but it does cause delays at the little kiosks, especially when users are unfamiliar with the system or have trouble with the touch screens.
2. Visible Backstage Areas.  We learned on our tours that WDW goes to great lengths to hide backstage areas and anything that might distract from the “show.”  For instance, they noticed that part of a backstage building could be seen from one place on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride, and so they installed a rock façade on that part of the building to make it blend in with Splash Mountain.  Further, they do all of their regular maintenance (cleaning, painting) during the overnight hours when the park is closed.  The situation at Universal is quite a bit different.  There were many places where we could see behind the scenes, and we saw a worker doing some painting while we were there.  This doesn’t make Universal an inferior park at all, rather it just points out a difference in approach.
3. FastPass vs. Express Pass.   Each park has its own system for getting through some lines faster.  WDW’s FastPass system has a number of complexities involved, but the basic gist is that any park guest can request FastPass admission to several attractions.  This allows the guests to bypass the regular line at a certain time of day and avoid the longer waits.  Universal’s system is the Express Pass, and it is similar to the Fast Pass system in that users can bypass the normal lines.  The primary differences are that at Universal, there are no return times associated with the pass and that guests must purchase this privilege unless they are staying at an on-site hotel.   Disney’s FastPass system is available to all guests free of charge, but those guests staying on-site are able to access the FastPass system 60 days ahead of time, while day guests (not staying at an on-site hotel) are only have access to the system 30 days ahead of time. This represents an interesting philosophical difference in approach between the two parks.
4. Park Hopping.  WDW consists mainly of four major theme parks and Universal Studios has two.  In each case, guests can pay for the privilege to go from one park to the other on the same day -- to hop parks.  At WDW, park hopping requires a bit of effort -- it often involves monorails, buses, or ferries.  This, of course, takes time away from being in the parks themselves.  At Universal the two parks are side by side, and walking from one to the other is easy.

We should point out again that these differences are not meant to imply that one park is better than the other.  Each one has parts that are more appealing to certain demographics than the other.  Each park has different goals and strategies.  One nice distinction that came up in our discussion was that Universal is a very nice theme park, and WDW is a very nice “themed” park.

An Illuminating Day

Our student pairs have done great work with our daily blog posts.  Each pair has written three posts, and we hope you have enjoyed their descriptions of our group’s experiences over the past few weeks.  For the final three posts, the professors will take a turn at the keyboard.

We have been remarkably impressed with this group of students.  They are cooperative, inquisitive friendly, and eager to learn.  Their curiosity has led the group to investigate a number of aspects of Walt Disney World.  All students have been involved with collecting data in lots of ways, in analyzing that data, and in the preparation of findings.  In these last three blog posts, we will describe three of the projects that have resulted from their work.  (Don’t worry, we will also tell stories about our experiences on these days, too!)

Single Riders?

One of the things that the group has investigated involves what Disney calls “single rider lines” at some of its most popular attractions.  When a ride has its seats arranged in pairs, then it is often the case that odd-sized parties can be completed by pulling from the single rider line (which is made up of people who don’t mind riding by themselves, or actually, with strangers).  Our students are investigating several issues related to this type of situation (for instance, when it is advantageous to try the single rider line as opposed to the regular line).  The students collected lots of data in a variety of interesting ways -- and this caught the attention of many other park guests.   We were certainly proud of their creativity and their persistence.  Fortunately, their work (which was all perfectly legal) did not get the attention of Disney security!

A Blast of a Day

Today started with a little “probability by the pool” as Dr. Hutson met with a group of students to discuss some of the probability ideas relating to the single rider line project. 

After that, the group loaded up and headed over to Epcot to meet with another Disney cast member -- one that one of our students knew from home.  This cast member had spent a number of years working in the pyrotechnics division of the Illuminations nighttime show at Epcot, and he had arranged for one of the show’s directors to give us a backstage tour of the Illuminations setup area.  We learned a great deal about the complexity of the show’s setup, execution, and take down.  We got some very close up views of the huge globe that is the centerpiece of the show as well as a rare look at the inferno barge that was out of the water for routine maintenance.  We were also treated to a peek inside the show’s control room, which is hidden inside a tower in the Mexico pavilion.  Since photographs are not allowed in backstage areas, this exterior shot of Mexico will have to suffice as a memento of our fun time in the control room, marked by the small window peeking over at the top of the decorative stairs going up the building.

Whenever you see an amazing fireworks display, we learned that it's nice to show your appreciation to the unseen pyrotechnicians who safely prep the show for the guests by cheering loudly afterwards.  Next time we're watching Illuminations at Epcot, we'll be sure to applaud the efforts of these dedicated experts after a great show!

Just as we were about to head to lunch, the bottom dropped out of the sky and the rain started to fall -- hard. We delayed by riding the Gran Fiesta ride in Mexico (our group filled an entire boat), but the rain kept coming.  We decided to brave it and so we dashed over to the Land Pavilion for a nice lunch together.

We returned to the hotel for the students to have some work time, and they made the best of that.  After dinner, a small group went over to Downtown Disney for some shopping and snack finding.  The van rides to and from our destinations continue to be sources of great entertainment.  As various songs from students’ playlists play through the speakers, you never know who you will see dancing, singing, or playing air drums!

Fun and Interactive

We had a pretty relaxing Saturday today here at Disney.  We spent the morning working on group projects (or sleeping in some cases).  We have divided into groups to work on poster presentations of the projects we have been working on.  The posters will cover the following: an optimal tour of Magic Kingdom, an optimal tour of Epcot, an analysis of single rider lines for Expedition Everest and Rock n Roller Coaster, and an analysis of the throughput for Kali River Rapids and Tower of Terror.

We had a well deserved change of pace spending time at Camp Hardy. Dr. Marvin Hardy is a Furman grad, classmate of Dr. Harris, and dear family friend of Kate. The Hardy family was incredibly gracious and thoughtful to invite the group over to their  house which happens to sit on a lake. We were greeted with friendly faces and a Mexican feast put together by Mrs. Carla. Kate's dad was in the area for business and able to contribute with his famous homemade guacamole and two delicious desserts and to participate in the fun of course.

After some yummy food and conversation we began to hear the rumbling in the distance of an approaching storm. During the downpour we got a chance to flip through Dr. Hardy's old Furman yearbooks, finding photos of family members and friends including Dr. Harris. Our favorites included the "Harry B-Shucker" intramural football team of Dr. Harris, Dr. Hardy, and friends and the one shown to the right. We recognized a few friendly faces from the 1991 Furman Mathematics Department.

We decided that we could never let a thunderstorm rain on our parade, so once the lightening and thunder ceased, some of the most daring of the group braved the rain to hit the lake for a thrilling turn on the tube slipping and sliding across the lake. I will refrain from mentioning any names, but some were definitely more prone to flying into the lake than others. Whether watching baseball on the couch, conversing on the porch, or being slung back and forth on the tube, all are thankful opportunity this afternoon to regenerate our energy for the final stretch of our time in Orlando.

After a relaxing time at the lake, we returned to the hotel for a little down time before dinner.  We ate at the Nine Dragons Chinese restaurant in Epcot.  The food was delicious.  Popular orders included honey sesame chicken and a ‘fun and interactive’ mix your own noodles dish.  Several of us also tried caramel-ginger ice cream, which was delicious.

After dinner we stayed to watch the Illuminations fireworks show.  We received a Fastpass+ for a special viewing area as part of our Epcot Undiscovered Worlds Tour yesterday.  We got to watch the show from a small overlook in Italy.  We had a great view of the images projected on the rotating globe as it moved through the lake.  The fireworks were amazing.  We were in the front of the crowd, and even the shorter members of the group (i.e. me, Stella) had a great view.  Tomorrow we are going on a behind the scenes Illuminations tour, and we cannot wait to find out how Disney creates such a beautiful display.

Kate and Stella

That Floating Feeling

Hi! Danny and Arianna here to tell you all about the ups and downs (literally) of our day here at Epcot and Hollywood Studios.

We started the day with a behind-the-scenes tour of Epcot, which is actually an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. We are definitely pros in the field of backstage touring by now, so the familiar Walt Disney history wasn't the focus of this tour. Instead, we went with Julie, our guide, to learn about the specific attractions at Epcot. For example, we learned about the history of Soarin', including an interesting anecdote about how the imagineers came up with the design for the ride, and even got to skip a two hour wait and go straight to the front row of the ride!

But by far the coolest part of our backstage tour today was - of course - the hidden passages leading to exclusive, uncharted rooms. Walt Disney himself had an apartment in Disneyland, and Disney continues to rent out some very exclusive guest spaces at Epcot. We got to see the Mission Space private lounge, currently sponsored by HP, and also the private upstairs room located in The Seas. The room in the Seas, used for wedding receptions and other fancy events, was incredible; it had a window looking directly into the second largest aquarium in the United States, which houses one particular sea turtle that was especially interested in the colorful tourists in the human tank. Most of our group also enjoyed a lovely painting of some manatees that was displayed in this fantastic hidden space. Unfortunately, we can't show you a picture of these rooms, so here's a picture of some manatees instead.

After our hang gliding/walking tour came to an end, we were given exclusive all-access reservations to view the IllumiNations fireworks show tomorrow night. The excitement continued as we made use of the ferry boats to head over to Hollywood Studios and straight toward the Tower of Terror and Rock'n'Rollercoaster. We had originally planned to collect data using the single rider line on Epcot's TestTrack, but the once-sunny skies had other ideas (the ride was closed due to lightning in the area). So we pooled our resources to collect data for our project on the single rider line of Rock'n'Rollercoaster, an indoor attraction where the team was able to gather a lot of data.

Teams also continued our throughput data analysis project on the Tower of Terror using a process similar to that used for the Kali River Rapids. However, today's data collection included the golden opportunity to ride these crazy elevators ourselves after an hour of counting the hundreds of people riding and screaming up and down through the fifth dimension.

We were able to get some great data while also getting some new photo ideas from a few of our team members who counted the guests in the ride photos. They had the chance to sneak a peek at a few of the best ones during their analysis in the basement of this famous hotel.

Some of our group stayed to watch the Star Wars fireworks special, but only after one last fierce 3D Toy Story Mania competition. Rest assured, the 3D glasses you wear on this ride are 100% spotless, thanks to the massive cleaning operations we saw earlier today on our tour in Epcot. Scores were close, and we have certainly been improving! Others ventured back to the hotel to catch some well-deserved sleep after such an exhilarating day.

Everest and Animals and Everything Else

We all woke up bright and early Thursday morning for our backstage safari tour of Animal Kingdom.  The main function of the tour was to show us how Disney maintains all of the animals on property given that most of them in the wild would require miles of space to be able to live.  After slipping backstage, we saw how they manage each animal according to its species.   For example, giraffes have a specialized two-story building where they sleep at night, whereas monkeys have to live in a bunker-like structure because they are clever enough to escape the habitats of similar-size animals.  Each animal sleeps backstage in their enclosures rather than in the actual safari, and while they’re in the safari, Disney uses a combination of natural and artificial barriers to keep some animals separated from others.  For example, the lions are surrounded by a moat not visible to people on the Kilimanjaro Safari so that they are unable to reach the zebras.  Another such example is how they use cattle guards—pipes that require a dexterity level greater than that of cows in order to be crossed—to deter animals from leaving their section of the safari and entering that of another animal.

My (Jamey) personal highlight of the tour was being able to stand about five feet away from a 3,000 pound white rhino.  Probably the closest I’ll ever be to one (here’s hoping).  One thing I learned on the trip was that black rhinos have a problem with iron absorption.  They absorb so much of it that the iron concentration in their bloodstream can actually kill them when they are housed in zoos.  Disney circumvents this problem by giving them phlebotomies regularly, thus keeping their iron levels down and the rhinos healthy.  We also saw the skull of an American Lion, which I previously had not known to have existed, apparently the biggest of all the cats before going extinct approximately 11,000 years ago.

After the backstage tour, we began collecting data for ride output and average party size for Expedition Everest, and we also collected data on how many people Disney puts on each raft for the Kali River Rapids.  For Everest, what we’re doing is spacing ourselves out every ten people in the single rider line and then recording data on both the posted standby time, posted single-rider time, actual time in line, and then the average amount of people per party in the regular standby line, with hopes that we can eventually calculate the benefit of riding single-rider and also the throughput for Expedition Everest.  This, of course, required that we ride the roller coaster several times, but we put up with it in the name of statistical analysis.  We got lots of interesting looks from fellow riders as we craned our necks to see how many people were in each party and as we recorded information on our tablets and notebooks, and people inevitably asked us what we were doing.  Jordan got so tired of explaining the trip that he eventually resorted to telling people he was working for NASA or that he designed the ride.

For Kali River Rapids, we stood on the bridge overhanging the ride and counted how many people were seated in each raft so that we might eventually see how many people Disney is not fitting per ride in terms of capacity, then comparing the theoretical optimal output of the ride with the actual output which we observed.

We are making headway on the Magic Kingdom algorithm; before long, we should have it up and running and showing us the optimal touring plan for the park.  We have begun data collection on our new project of examining single rider lines and average throughput, but we still have (get) to collect data on Test Track, Rockin’ Roller Coaster, and Tower of Terror.  Today we made good progress; hopefully tomorrow we might notice some peculiar trend in the data and perhaps get some insight from it.  We’re waking up early tomorrow for our Epcot tour, tomorrow will be a busy day.  Oh yeah, and Stella almost died stepping out of the Backstage Safari van.

Jamey and Joey

(We apologize for this post being delayed!  Our internet WiFi went down yesterday and this morning and we had a full day at the parks!  This is the post from Thursday May 29.)

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho...

Hello again! Hannah and Kelly here to tell you about the gems we experienced on Wednesday, May 28th.

It's Off to Work We Go

After a morning working away at various projects, we traveled over to meet with four different departments at Team Disney, where many major Disney offices are held.  While there, we met with representatives from the Workforce Management, Industrial Engineering, Design and Engineering, and Decision Sciences departments.

The Show Continues Even At Team Disney

Each of these departments use different mathematical models to accomplish their goals, from scheduling cast members in Workforce Management to designing attractions in Design and Engineering.  Every department plays a vital role in creating the Disney experience, and we throughly enjoyed getting a glimpse into that process.  The students on this trip have many varying backgrounds, but all got to see math at work in business world.

I, Hannah, as a recent Furman Mathematics graduate heading into a graduate program in Operations Research, thoroughly enjoyed getting to see and hear different applications of Operations Research outside of an academic setting.  It was a great experience to see how models and optimization play a big role in Disney's operations, and to see things that I love to do in a professional and industry setting.  In addition, it was intriguing to see how many different branches and types of mathematics and science weave together to make creative solutions.

For me, Kelly, a rising junior Mathematics-Economics major, this trip has opened my eyes and raised my interest to opportunities for math majors that I didn’t really know existed. Being able to see applied mathematics in many areas around Disney Parks has made me both more excited for more upper level mathematics classes and made me realize there are a lot of opportunities for post-graduate life that I didn’t know were available.

Overall, we had a great experience and are grateful that we got a unique chance to see some of the behind the scenes work that goes on at Walt Disney World.

Whistle While You Work...Or Play

Even though none of us were grumpy after the long meeting at Team Disney, we were certainly not bashful in our excitement in getting to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train on its opening day. We dragged the docs headlong across the park in order to utilize our coveted FastPasses for the attraction.

While on the Mine Train, guests are placed into swinging mine carts and whisked around and through the gem mine.  Riders can see all seven of the dwarfs busy at work mining gems and whistling.  It was a happy romp through a beloved classic, and quite possibly the smoothest ride in the Magic Kingdom.  Don't be dopey, it is worth the wait!

Before anyone could be sneezy, we split up for some more fun in the Magic Kingdom.  Groups rode classic attractions like Space Mountain and Jungle Cruise, while some enjoyed the Carousel of Progress and the Enchanted Tiki Room. We ended the night some delicious Dole Whip before everyone became sleepy.

We look forward to a great big beautiful tomorrow at the Animal Kingdom (though the birds don't sing words and the flowers don't croon).

Prices, Pirates, and Pooh

Annie and Jordan are back for one final time to convey the events of Tuesday, May 27, which happens to be our classmate, Jamey McDowell’s, birthday! Though we’re not at Furman, the university tradition of throwing a friend in the lake, or “laking” as we call it, at midnight on his birthday had to be upheld. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lake at our hotel (and the pool was locked) so we had to use our unlimited supply of brain power (thanks, Ellen…) and improvise. To make a long story short, Jamey ended up with three buckets of water oh-so-lovingly dumped on his head from a balcony a few stories higher. Happy birthday, Jamey!

Magic Kingdom

We spent the morning at Magic Kingdom working on two projects: our Magic Kingdom network project and our FastPass+ analysis side project. Regarding the big network project, the satellite images we found online were inadequate due to the new construction in Fantasyland. As a result, we each walked several “edges” today to and from certain waypoints and attractions to measure travel times in order to complete our data gathering. This will be entered into the algorithm that our Algorithm Team created to finish our outline of a complete tour of the Magic Kingdom with the shortest possible walking distances. Ideally, we’ll soon be able to take wait times into consideration to better optimize the tour! Our goal in the FastPass+ analysis is to determine how Disney’s implementation of their new FastPass+ system affected the standby wait times of two popular attractions: Winnie the Pooh and Pirates of the Caribbean. We collected this data throughout the morning by waiting in these two lines several times and measuring the amount of time we spent waiting for each. We’ll compare this data to wait time information from years past (before FastPass+ was implemented) to determine if there has been a statistically significant change in wait times.

Theme Parks and Resorts Pricing

This afternoon, we had the chance to meet with our first Disney representative. We left the familiar, highly decorated theme parks to travel to a large, much plainer office building, where a lot of “backstage” magic happens. There, we had the opportunity to meet with a cast member who works in Theme Parks and Resorts Pricing. During our meeting, we learned a lot about the extensive process of creating and adjusting prices for Disney’s products. Above all, we learned how much deep thought and consideration goes into a decision to adjust prices. Disney relies on an overwhelming amount of data including current economic trends, crowd levels, customer satisfaction, and overall demand. The pricing team carefully analyzes this data in consultation with numerous other entities within the Walt Disney Corporation to make an informed decision about pricing that benefits both the company and the customers. We really enjoyed our meeting with the representative from the Pricing Department and found all the factors that influence Disney prices very interesting!

'Ohana

To top off our busy day, the group ventured to Disney’s Polynesian Resort for dinner at the Hawaiian-themed ‘Ohana. We arrived early, so we had some time to explore the resort before dinner, including taking in the lake vistas during sunset.  Here's some of the group with the Grand Floridian Resort in the background.

The restaurant's motto is "'Ohana means family and we're all cousins here, so sit back, relax, eat, and enjoy time with family" (or something to that effect).  Our waiters told us to simply sit back and eat the mountains of food they brought us (it's family style, so you can ask for second helpings of anything you'd like), but what’s a Hawaiian dinner without some hula dancing? With that mindset, a group of us students took a break during the meal to take a mini hula lesson in the middle of the restaurant. Finally, after an overwhelmingly filling dinner, we watched the Magic Kingdom Wishes fireworks show from a new perspective, a dock at the Polynesian (across the lake from Magic Kingdom). We’re looking forward to a marathon day tomorrow of progressing on our projects as well as meeting with four more Disney representatives!

Deriving Solo

This is Hayden and Rahul for our final blog together!

Complicated Math

Today was probably our most intense purely Mathematics class thus far as Dr. Hutson gave us a statistics lesson. We started off in what was familiar territory for most, talking about linear regressions and lines of best fit. We got a little more technical as we talked about the interpretation of the slope-intercept form and how to make predictions using this information. And just like that we were using multivariable calculus to derive the formula.

Dr. Hutson did a great job of making the derivation very accessible to the entire class. We then moved onto an alternate derivation using Linear Algebra which was significantly more complicated (yes, what’s on the whiteboard is the easy version of the derivation). Although it was more convoluted, it had interesting implications on how to extend regression to non-linear functions.

Dr. Hutson derives the slope-intercept formula for Linear Regression

After this, we toned down the technical mathematics and moved back to the more applied math with a discussion on t-tests, a statistical hypothesis test. This led into our next side project: analyzing the FastPass+ system that Disney has recently put into place. The FastPass+ system was put into place ostensibly to reduce wait times both for guests who reserved FastPasses and for those who use the standby line by. Although clearly advantageous for users of the system, it remains up for debate if this actually reduces times for standby users.  Tomorrow we will see if this is indeed the case on two attractions in Magic Kingdom, Pirates of the Caribbean and Winnie the Pooh. We will split up in groups of two and record wait times for these ride at different times throughout the day tomorrow.

Project Update

The team in charge of measuring distances completed gathering and entering the data. The only hitch was Fantasyland, which having been redesigned recently did not have recent satellite images online to estimate distances. Tomorrow we will physically walk between attractions in this area of the park to gather this missing data. The algorithms team completed a program to find the shortest path between any two arbitrary attractions, given the above data. They also completed the design phase and began coding the Genetic Algorithm approach to solving Traveling Salesman Problem.

Animal Kingdom

Real Dung Beetle

This afternoon we went to the Animal Kingdom for our second time. As luck would have it, as soon as we entered the park it began to pour! We decided to make the trek to the It’s Tough to be a Bug show and wait out the rain there. After we were sufficiently scared by giant bugs and the feeling of insects crawling across our seats, the rain had stopped and we made our way to some of the outdoor attractions. We had to repeat favorites from our last visit, like Expedition Everest and the Kilimanjaro Safari. This time after we finished the Safari, we continued our animal encounter on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail. Here we got an up-close view of Western Lowland Gorillas, Naked Mole Rats, Okapis, and many other animals native to Africa. Luckily the Dung Beetles in the Research Station were much smaller than those in It’s Tough to be a Bug!

Activity patterns of gorillas

We finished out our day at Animal Kingdom with a ride on the Kali River Rapids. After our last time on the ride some members of our class developed a theory that the heavier side of the raft is more likely to get wet… Well, after our ride today the theory seems to be true, and I will remember to always try and sit by an empty seat. On our way back from the park, the students decided they would try to play some of their own music, but Dr. Hutson didn’t seem to enjoy this. After about fifteen seconds of Miley Cyrus, he turned off the stereo. Next we tried “Ridin’ Solo” by Jason Derulo to which Dr. Hutson replied he wished he was “riding solo.” We weren’t able to please him until Jamey brought out some Pearl Jam.

Birthday Party

Today was William’s 2nd Birthday (Dr. Bouzarth’s son)! And we all know what birthdays mean -- birthday cake! Dr. Bouzarth was kind enough to share birthday cake with the class, which was greatly appreciated.

Happy Birthday William!

Need a Laugh?

While eating cake, we learned that in high school Joey made a Friday parody for his calculus class. You won’t regret watching this video, featuring our own Joey Iannetta rapping about derivatives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAOVZ4zBiCU.

Sing-a-Long in the Mathmobile

We had a pretty relaxing day today here at Disney.  We had free time in the morning and early afternoon, and several of us spent time working on the big class project of creating an optimal tour of attractions in the Magic Kingdom.  We are working in three teams to complete the project.  

Beginning to create our  network of the Magic Kingdom

Team Waypoint is tasked with determining which nodes (attractions) and edges (walking paths) will be present in the network model of the Magic Kingdom.  They are also determining ‘waypoints,’ which are locations in the park that link attractions.  The use of waypoints allows us to measure the distance from an attraction to the nearest waypoint, and then use the distance between waypoints to determine the distance between attractions.  In this map of our network, you can see the nodes in yellow and the waypoints in pink.  This method prevents us from having to measure the distance from each attraction to every other attraction.

Team Map My Run is working on measuring the distances between attractions and waypoints.  They are using the iPhone app Map My Run to measure distances along sidewalks between attractions and waypoints.  The app’s website has satellite images that allow us the team to calculate distances without having to walk them.

Team Algorithm is working on writing a computer program to calculate an optimal tour through the Magic Kingdom.  The program will take the list of attractions and distances created by Team Waypoint and Team Map My Run as input.  The program will use a genetic algorithm to create an optimal a tour through the Magic Kingdom than minimizes walking distance.  Genetic algorithms are modeled after evolutionary processes, and involve mutating tours and replacing longer tours with ‘more fit’ shorter tours.  We hope to later extend the algorithm to minimize the time spent waiting in line.  However this complicates the problem significantly, since these wait times change throughout the day.

This afternoon we collectively voted to visit Hollywood Studios to experience Disney's "Star Wars Weekend" and to grab another ride what many would argue are the best two rides in all of Walt Disney World. (Tower of Terror and Rock 'n Roller Coaster of course!) It has been very hot here in Orlando, so a later start and a few showers this afternoon and evening greatly helped with the heat. We split up, hitting some highlights including the delicious ice cream shop outside of Tower of Terror and the Toy Story Pizza Palace Arcade. 

The whole group reconvened to watch Fantasmic, a dazzling light show featuring our favorite Disney characters adventuring through the world of Mickey's dreams. Although we got a little wet from the showers, it was a fun conclusion to our day. On the drive back we mustered up enough energy for a dance party and sing-a-long in the mathmobile. Moving from pop to classics to Italian opera to Disney ("Let it Go" of course), Dr. Bouzarth was a trooper to drive the van which was quite literally rocking and maybe even sing along!

Stella and Kate