Day 18: Soarin' Through the Day

We're Soarin', Flyin'
Hi everyone, Caroline and Courtney here! Even though we had a late night last night celebrating Animal Kingdom's first night opening, we got up early for rope-drop at Epcot for one reason: the reopening of Soarin'. The popular simulation attraction has been closed for renovations, but reopened this weekend with an updated version of its former California-themed show. The final update will be titled Soarin' Over the World, and will showcase sights from around the world. Shoutout to Dr. Bouzarth for getting us FastPasses and noticing that it would be open today! We were able to ride the attraction once right when the park opened, and again using our FastPasses, and I was very impressed. While it isn't as "thrilling" as some other attractions, the entire simulation is beautifully done.

A selfie with some of the students before Soarin'

The Mouse Himself
In between our two Soarin' expeditions, we took a quick detour to the Character Spot in Epcot. We got to meet Mickey, Goofy, and Minnie, and loved getting to interact with the characters. Goofy seemed to particularly like one member of our group.

Goofy really like Mary Lib!

We made all the guys take a picture with Minnie!

One Day, Two Parks

After our flights at Epcot, we made the trip to Magic Kingdom so that one of our independent project groups could collect more data. When we arrived, my group (Caroline), ate a quick lunch at Casey's on Main Street before heading towards Liberty Square and Frontierland. After missing the showtime for the Hall of Presidents, Dr. Hutson thought it would be a good idea to take some of us to Country Bear Jamboree. I will only say that it was a memorable experience where we also got to see some of the earliest animatronics at Disney World. After helping the Fastpass group collect some data, a few other students and I went back to Main Street for some souvenir shopping.

My group (Courtney) grabbed some food at the Colombia Harbour House then headed to Big Thunder Mountain to gather some data. Since we were only focussed on one ride, not all twelve students were needed to collect data. Therefore, we decided to go to see The Enchanted Tiki Room for the first time this trip. There were some mixed reactions, especially since the song can get stuck in your head throughout the entire day. However, I personally believe that it is a classic that you have to do once every time you go to Disney.

Some Math with our Mouse
Back at the hotel, we began analyzing our data for our independent group projects. My group (Caroline) is looking at the Rock n Rollercoaster and Expedition Everest single rider lines. Disney utilized single rider lines to make their rides more efficient, as they can even out an odd party with an individual. We are trying to analyze their efficiency while also comparing the two lines. By counting party sizes as well as wait times for both of these attractions, we have been able to track the efficiency of the single rider line. We have established a hypothesis for how fast the single rider lines should be moving for each attraction, and plan on testing it tomorrow.

My group (Courtney) spent the past few days gathering data on the Disney characters guests can meet in each park. We continued to organize our data today by the 12 different characters that we observed. We arranged the data further by looking at the time characters spent with guests to analyze the number of autographs that the characters signed from 0 to 2 or more and how this affected the time they spent with each guest. Our second half of our project looks at the number of people a character can visit within 30 minutes. We recorded the party sizes seen by each of the 12 characters to find how many people each character could see a 30 minute time span. We are looking to determine whether the number that a Disney cast member gave us, which was 80 people in 30 minutes, could be correct.

We finally got a good group picture with Mickey!

Illuminated for the Last Time
For the last time, our group went to Epcot to enjoy a delicious dinner and fireworks. When we arrived at the park, some of us went souvenir shopping and exploring at our favorite pavilions, while others took the opportunity to journey to Mars one last time. We had a great dinner at Nine Dragons. Right after dinner, we caught our last viewing of Illuminations, the Epcot firework and light show. It was just as dazzling as it was the first time, and we left the park with nothing but great pictures and memories!

Written by:

Caroline

Courtney

Day 7: Takeovers, Rainstorms, and Bratwurst

Hello, everyone! Caroline and Johanna here to take you through our 7th day at Disney. Well recovered from our borderline traumatic day at Magic Kingdom, we began the day with a great lesson on graph theory and then visited Epcot for the second time.

Pick the Right Path

Courtney mapping out a path for the class

Today, we built upon our earlier work with network models to create shortest path models. Basically, we wanted to find the best path to get around a certain number of vertices based on different constraints. One constraint could have us not trying to hit every vertex, but every edge. Another could have us trying to hit every vertex only once and end up at our starting vertex. Finally, the professors introduced a problem where certain vertices and pathways had certain values, where the goal was to find the non-repeating path with the lowest total value. The vertices had different values depending on their order in the sequence, which made the problem simulate walk and wait times in a park. In one example, the vertices had different values depending on whether they were among your first four or last four, which resembled increasing wait times throughout a day at Disney. At the end of the session, Dr. Hutson introduced how the Traveling Salesman Problem, the basis of our Traveling Tourist Problem from yesterday, relies on a lot of the same data we used in our practice problems, and how companies like Touring Plans can make good solutions quickly for their clients.

OR We There Yet?
After class, we continued working on our OR problems. My group (Caroline) has made a lot of progress, and was actually able to start putting the pieces of our constraints together. Because each section of the constraint can be very long, we incorporated some Mouse into our math by naming each different section after a Disney character. Hopefully tomorrow we can begin consolidating our "characters" and have a model ready to present! My group (Johanna) has also made good progress. We are currently working on building generalizations from our constraints that make the strings of different variables we are summing more concise for the sake of both the computer and our classmates. Though we won't have a solution until we use a program like Mosel to calculate the problem, we have built a good bit of our model for Thursday, which is quite exciting!

Takeover Time
So, today, I (Caroline) had the opportunity to take over the Furman Snapchat as part of their showcase of different MayX courses. It was a lot of fun to be able to explain and update our activities in a way that would reach a lot of people. If you would like to see my story, follow furmanu on Snapchat, or look for it on YouTube!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

The crew sporting their fashionable rain gear in Epcot's Germany

Unfortunately, we had our first spot of bad weather today, but that did not keep us away from the parks. After class and lunch, we set out for Epcot, where we took advantage of the single rider line in Test Track, in what was probably one of the most efficient uses of the single rider line thus far in the trip. We made it on the ride in less than 5 minutes, just before inclement weather halted it indefinitely. From there, some of the group decided to test ourselves and our stomachs at Mission Space, where we learned that Zack is the last person you want on your space shuttle due to his inability to push buttons at the correct time. After Mission Space, a few of us ended up taking pictures with Baymax from Big Hero 6, who is as adorable as he is squishy, and who gave great hugs. After wandering around Epcot for a while, we all met up at the Land Pavilion to ride Living With the Land. Despite its slow pace, it was really interesting to see how Disney is a prominent facility for ecologically smart farming techniques. The food grown in the Epcot facility is actually used in the park. After the ride, we met with Furman student Haley Cottingham, who is just finishing an internship with Disney. Haley is a computer science major, and her internship actually deals with workforce scheduling, the same issue as our projects. She was able to give us a lot of information about the Disney internship program in general, and told us about all the possible career opportunities available at Disney. When we finished our visit with Haley, we had some time to kill before our dinner reservation, so we tried the ride in the Mexico Pavilion, and almost lost Dr. Harris when he nearly fell out of the boat!

We had a great time talking with Haley (third from right, bottom row) about her experiences at Disney

Did Someone Say Bratwurst?

Jamie enjoying some
delicious German food

We ended the day with a delicious dinner at the German restaurant Biergarten. While we waited for the table, we explored the nearby shops, including a toy store and a glass and jewelry shop. When we finally entered the restaurant, we were floored. The restaurant is perfectly decorated and even featured a performance by a German band. Because it's buffet-style, we were able to try a whole spectrum of German foods, and we could get as much as we pleased. Some favorites were the schnitzel, the bratwurst and sauerkraut, red cabbage, and apple strudel. Due to the rain, we decided to opt out on a 2nd viewing of Illuminations, and made our way to the exit. We didn't let the rain dampen our fun, and we splashed and laughed our way to the van, ready to get some rest for another day.



Written by:
            Johanna Swab                                                         Caroline Trammell

Day 2: Modeling and Epcot

Morning:
Hi, everyone, Caroline and Jamie here! Today we had our first full day in Florida, and we began bright and early exploring some of the math aspects of Math and the Mouse. We spent the morning learning about the basics of Operations Research (OR) Modeling. This form of modeling seeks to accomplish a main objective under a certain set of constraints. For example, a bakery would seek to optimize profits with the constraints of limited ingredients or time. At Disney, OR Modeling is used to design incredibly detailed schedules for the cast members in the parks, who often are moving every 15-30 minutes. After looking at several examples of different OR Modeling problems, we split into groups to solve some problems on our own. One of the problems we examined in detail was the Knapsack Problem, which seeks to fit as many items as possible, with the greatest utility, or usefulness, in a set space. Later in the day, we learned that this problem would be a critical part of tomorrow's activity. After working through and presenting the problems, we set out for Epcot.

The required photo in front of the Daisy Duck topiary

Epcot:
Our first stop at Epcot was in the big sphere itself, as we experienced Spaceship Earth. Soon, we moved to the much more exciting Test Track. We were a little parched after Test Track, so we went to the Coca-Cola Club Cool, where Dr. Harris and Dr. Hutson convinced several unsuspecting students to try the infamous drink Beverly. Luckily, the Flower and Garden Festival is going on currently, and there were many great exhibits and unique stops, including a Butterfly Garden.

Some of the beautiful flowers in the Butterfly Garden

Our next stop took us to the relaxing and almost sleep-inducing Journey into Imagination and The Seas with Nemo and Friends rides, though we did enjoy the air conditioning and seeing a dolphin. Following our time at the rides, we received our assignment for tomorrow, and split into our groups to formulate plans. From here, our smaller groups split up to see more of what Epcot had to offer.

Caroline:

After quickly finishing our project, my group decided to take advantage of the dinnertime short ride lines. Johanna and I had a great time on Mission Space and then enjoyed the quick wait for a second run on Test Track. After we had our fill of rides, we set out for the World Showcase, but not before I had my very first Dole Whip. We slowly made our way through all the pavilions, and ate our way through quite a few of them. We ended up enjoying teriyaki beef at Japan, gelato at Italy, and funnel cakes just in time for Illuminations. Even though Dr. Bouzarth assured me that the pavilions had not been renovated recently, I couldn't help but feel that they were so much bigger than when I last visited Disney! I could easily spend an hour in each pavilion, exploring the various shops and restaurants. Illuminations was just as exciting as I remembered, and was a great way to close out another day in Disney.

The Italy Pavilion, home to gelato and delicious food 

Jamie:
After a more tedious attempt at strategy, my group also went to Mission Space. While I was a bit queasy afterwards, it was quite fun.  Following that, we began our tour of the countries. We stopped for fish and chips in England, Bratwurst in Germany, and churros in Mexico. The national pavilions are fantastic with a variety of sights and tastes unique to each one. Following our walk, we regrouped with the others to watch Illuminations, a spectacular display of laser optics and pyrotechnics that left our ears ringing and our eyes dazzled. After so much excitement, we took the long slow walk back to the van to get some much needed beauty sleep.

The Illuminations Finale

Written by:

Caroline

Jamie