Morning
We arrived at the park as soon as it opened for breakfast and a meeting with Len Testa, the co-author of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and president of touringplans.com, a website that creates personalized routes through different parks, including Disney and Universal. During his presentation he talked with us about many different resources that he and his team have come up with in order to create optimal touring plans. Since this is essentially a larger scale traveling salesman problem, like we learned about earlier in our trip, he uses evolutionary or genetic algorithms to provide optimal solutions. This part was very interesting to us because just yesterday we all presented our projects for which we had to use genetic algorithms of our own design to generate efficient routes that included ten rides in the Magic Kingdom. Touring Plans uses steps that are similar to those that we took in our own projects, however with more constraints and on a far greater scale. In addition, they are exploring other applications of various optimization methods, including the Disney Dining Plan and ticket purchases. Furthermore, he has recently extended his focus to the world of medicine by using his experience to guide doctors' prescriptions of medication to diabetes patients in an effort to minimize cost and maximize benefit to the patients.
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| Our group with Len Testa (second row, third from the right) |
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| McKenna collected data on Alice and got a picture too! |
Following our meeting with Len Testa, we split up into pairs for some data collection regarding character meet and greet lines. Each pair was assigned a character to collect data on for two 15 minute time periods. In those time periods we took note of how many families were in the line before we started our time, how many entered and exited, how long each family spent with the character, and how many autographs were given per group. At the end of our collection, we were all relieved that none of us were picked up by Disney Security since we were lingering around the character meeting spots collecting data. For our next project, this data will be used to analyze the efficiency of character meeting lines all over Disney.
Disney Springs!
After collecting data and lunch in World Showcase, we took our first trip to Disney Springs, formerly known as Downtown Disney. This area is similar to an outdoor mall filled with Disney merchandise along with well-known stores and some restaurants. Our favorite place in Disney Springs was the World of Disney, which is the largest merchandise store on Disney's property. If you are looking for something Disney, there is no better place to shop! Following an hour and a half of shopping, we all met back at Sprinkles Cupcakes for a sweet treat. We all enjoyed trying different ice creams, cupcakes, and shakes! As we were finishing our treats, it began to rain, so we decided to head back to the hotel for some free time before we had to leave for the Luau.
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| Everyone with their Sprinkles Treats! |
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| You won't like him when he's angry. |
Spirit of Aloha Show!
For dinner we went to the Polynesian Resort for a Hawaiian Luau. There was a lively atmosphere with delicious food, live music, and traditional dances from around the Polynesian Islands; Molly was even called up to dance on stage. Our favorite part of the performance was the fire dance. Watching him throw his flaming stick up in the air and balancing them on his fight had us captivated on the edge of our seats. The whole experience was so fun and definitely worth seeing!
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| The Fire Dance |
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| Polynesian Dancers |
Written By:
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| Jamie |
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| Molly |
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