Math and the Mouse 2016: Day 16: Happy Happy Birthday

Hey guys, its Alyssa and Zack blogging our way through day 16 of our 21 day adventure. Today we had some choices for our morning activities (Animal Kingdom or sleeping), a birthday party, and spent the night in Hollywood Studios.

Morning Choices

This morning our group had the choice to be early birds and go to Animal Kingdom for rope drop or to act like Sleepy at the hotel.

We both chose to arrive at rope drop, we saw the pre-show for opening the park where a flock of brightly colorful parrots flew over us. We were able to ride Expedition Everest three times, Primeval Whirl, and Dinosaur in about an hour and a half. Time well spent if you ask us! Three of the four students that chose to go to the park this morning are working on the single rider project, collecting data to compare the single rider lines of Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom and Rock 'n' Roller Coaster in Hollywood Studios. We found that Everest's single rider line is easily observable while you are in it and we gathered a large number of data points to use in our project.

Birthday Cake Time!

After our morning adventure it was time to celebrate Dr. Bouzarth’s son’s birthday! William turned a whopping four years old today, and we had a Cars themed birthday bash full of cake, gifts, and festive party hats.

After the party we met to sort through all the data we had been collecting for the past few days. Each group met to evaluate the data they had, look for potential anomalies or patterns, and establish marching orders for tonight in Hollywood Studios.

Our group is still playing with different hypotheses we might test once we finish data collection. One thing we've found interesting is that Rock 'n' Roller Coaster and Expedition Everest both have two people per row, but the single rider lines move at different speeds. There are many obvious reasons, such as larger train capacity at Everest, but it is evident that Rock 'n' Roller Coaster's single rider line takes more time to go through.

Hollywood Studios

After we made it to Hollywood Studios, project groups split up to collect data in the park or ride a few rides before dinner at Backlot Express. Dr. Harris and Dr. Hutson tried out the newly opened third track on Toy Story Mania and gave positive reviews of it. The FastPass project group worked on Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, collecting data on the relative speeds of the FastPass and standby lines and the number of riders entering each line. Working on the character meet project, the third group of students gathered data from the Disney Junior characters.

We met for dinner at Backlot Express where I (Alyssa) got the opportunity to fight the dark side by eating a Darth Vader waffle. After dinner we split up again to collect data and ride some more attractions. Our group worked on counting party sizes at Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. I (Alyssa) also ran into one of my Furman friends Elise, who went to all four parks in one day!

Since Hollywood Studios closed at 8:30, we had time to stop at Twistee Treat and eat some delicious ice cream. We returned to the hotel with enough time to enjoy the pool before resting up for the fun that awaits us tomorrow. We are headed right back to Hollywood Studios at rope drop for data collection and a guest speaker!