Day 6: (Don't) Run to Finish a Rollercoaster of a Race

Hi everybody, and happy Magic Kingdom Race Day!

As Luke and Connor mentioned in yesterday’s post, we were tasked with finding the fastest way to make it through 12 Magic Kingdom attractions, and today we got to test out our plans. Each group used projected wait times, attraction duration, distance between attractions, and some good old fashioned Disney magic to inform their decisions. One graph, pictured below, demonstrates just how complicated this gets, even when just comparing walk time between attractions!

After a short monorail ride, the groups made their way to their chosen Rope Drop locations. Interestingly enough, all of the student groups rode Jungle Cruise first, despite our varying methods of determining our route. After this initial meetup, speed walking (NO RUNNING!) and calculated choices led each group on their own path to our finishing spot. Some groups followed their initial itinerary quite closely, while others deviated almost immediately. Once every group finished, the professors treated us to some celebratory (or consolation) Dole Whip. Win or lose, everybody had a great time engaging in some friendly competitive spirit. 

Stay tuned for the results of our competition! The group with the fastest time is currently enjoying their bragging rights and will be featured on an upcoming blog post by the professors.

After a very long day of running around Magic Kingdom, everybody returned to the hotel for a little rest and relaxation before returning to work. A few people even decided to beat the heat by jumping into the hotel pool!

However we each decided to reset from the day’s activities, we all gathered after dinner for a post-park debrief. First, we learned what worked (and didn’t work) for the winning team, and then we discussed our methods for planning our itineraries. 

(The day definitely took its toll on everyone involved)

Finally, we learned how actual trip itineraries are planned using computer modeling and real-time data. This lesson previewed our activities for tomorrow, where we will meet with professional data analyst and CEO of Touring Plans Len Testa, our first guest speaker. We wrapped up the day with some group work time to prepare for our Mickey Bar presentations that are coming up tomorrow!

Fun Facts from Race Day:

Aidan, Julia, and Mara’s group ate a combined 5 Uncrustables waiting in line today!

Ashton, Isabella, and Tram got stuck on rides 4 times throughout the day, and Ashton also drank zero ounces of water for the entire seven hours of competition.

Annmarie, Connor, Dylan, and Luke all got to know each other by sharing their most embarrassing stories in line!

Dr. Bouzarth, Dr. Harris, and Dr. Hutson’s Jungle Cruise tour guide reminded them of a Math and the Mouse alum!

Cassie, Della, Harrison, and The Anh’s group didn’t make any stops during the race, not even for the bathroom!

This blog was written by Isabella Sanchez and Mara Johnson!

Day 5: The Ballad of Traveling Salesman and Data: Big Thunder Mountain and the Tron-tastic Saga of Basic Graph Theory

Today’s blog entry was written by Luke Brownlee and Connor Lockett!

Welcome back to the fifth day of the 2026 Math and the Mouse cohort’s adventure to uncover the mystical secrets behind mathematical decision making!

On perhaps our most anticipated (and earliest) day yet, the group departed for the Magic Kingdom to obtain some data on the Tron Lightcycle/Run and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad attractions! Filled with excitement and a slight desire for a little extra sleep, we made our way towards the Magic Kingdom on the monorail where a handful of group members elected to play a round of Monorail Surfing to galvanize our spirits before meeting the CEO of Touring Plans: Len Testa. Len personally escorted us to Tron to secure the best possible placement in the regular entry crowd to measure the actual wait time for the ride and the amount of people who exited the ride before our first rider showed up; our three terrific professors made sure the other members of our Tron and Big Thunder Mountain crews were in position for the data collection to start as well (all the data we collected today is going to be used by Touring Plans to contribute to their own decision making for their customers. The Big Thunder Mountain group successfully finished collecting their data first followed by the Tron crew after a relatively brief delay in line movement.

Once we all regrouped, we noticed that the line for Tron was considerably shorter than normal, so it was a given that the entire group rode on Tron since many group members still had not been on the ride, especially after a focused session of data collection. We all received a serendipitous surprise from Dr. Harris who used his sweet talking skills and overall congenial personality to snag our entire group lightning lanes to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (the reworked and revamped Splash Mountain), another ride multiple group members had not yet experienced. The overall atmosphere of the ride was quite homey and invited our group to relive the story of “The Princess and the Frog” via a relaxing ride through the vivacious Louisiana bayou. As the original name of the attraction suggests, we ALL got soaked, albeit at varying levels. Of course, this did not dampen our morale, and we left the park content knowing that we had already had a day full of both work and play! On our way back to the hotel for lunch, we relaunched onto the water after discovering the monorails were temporarily down which gave the group an opportunity to “surf” back to the hotel after
all.

Once we got back to the hotel we all still had considerable work ahead of us but that would wait until our lunch break was over at 2pm. The Mickey Bar Stand projects were our first order of business and would be worked on until 5:15. Though the groups had finished working with their data to find the optimal places to locate their Mickey Bar Stands for all three parts, they needed to work on their presentations. The presentations themselves did not have any strict guidelines, which gave us lots of freedom on how to present the information.

During our class today we learned some basics to Graph theory and what Complete Graphs are. These are graphs in which all the vertices or corners are all connected to one another by edges. This is also the basis for the Traveling Salesman Problem. This problem is one in which a salesman is trying to go to all the towns (vertices) in the most optimal way. The roads (edges) which connect all towns all have different lengths of time, which makes this problem complex. This problem is also known to be NP-hard, meaning the only way to know the solution would be to check all possible solutions, and the number of solutions grows factorially! Even with just 20 vertices it could take millions of years to check all the solutions, so how would you figure out the best solution? This is where heuristic solutions come into need, as they find a good but not optimal solution, allowing us to find solutions in a quick time frame.

Next, we were explained the Traveling Tourist Problem, which makes the times between locations change as the time changes, making the problem even harder. Then we were broken up into four groups so that we could solve this problem for Disney rides. The four groups plus the professors would need to create their own itinerary based on the average queue time of rides, how far away they are, and how long the rides were, and then compete to see who made the best itinerary. Though at the park we will be allowed to change our plan in case of better opportunities or disastrous events that might occur. For this we will be going to 12 rides in Magic Kingdom, including Big Thunder Mountain, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, and It’s a Small World, all without lightning lanes. After looking at the data, the teachers and students got worried that the time to ride all these rides would take longer than the original ending time of 4pm, so after we gaggled and discussed for some time, we decided to extend the time in the park to 5pm.

While the groups were working on their itineraries the professors bought them food from a nearby Greek restaurant named PITA Mediterranean Street Food. The food there was delicious and this also gave us more time to work on our new projects. After the groups decided on their plans, many of us decided to head to Target to make sure we had portable lunches and snacks to not waste any time in Magic Kingdom tomorrow. After that everyone was exhausted and decided to go to bed early for another long and fun day tomorrow!

Thanks for reading today's blog!

-Connor and Luke

Day 4: Mickey Treats, Data Sheets, & Animal Kingdom Streets

Our fourth day of math and the mouse was spent with lots of group work in the morning followed by a fun time in Animal Kingdom in the afternoon. For the first time of the trip, the group was finally able to sleep in. On their own time, groups woke up, grabbed hotel breakfast, and got to work on the Mickey Bar project. Today was all about Excel and Tableau! For part one of the project, groups had to figure out where to put two Mickey Bar stands throughout the day on one half of the park in order to maximize efficiency. In part two, groups were given a hypothetical scenario where one of the rides shut down for an hour and a half and were forced to adjust their Mickey Bar stand locations to account for this. Finally for part 3, you paired up with another group that was assigned a different side of the park and you put your data together with the new scenario of only having three Mickey Bar stands throughout the entire park for the day. These projects will be finalized and presented on Tuesday so today’s task was to mainly wrap up your calculations and match them with spots on the park map.

After groups felt like they were at a good stopping point for the day, the whole class headed to Animal Kingdom! This was the last park we had yet to visit so far on the trip so the group was excited to try new things! To start off we went to arguably the most famous section of the park, the Kilimanjaro Safari’s. This was a 25 minute drive through of the animal sanctuary part of the park with a tour guide pointing out all the animals and telling us fun facts on each. We got to see all sorts of animals experiencing their days as if no one was watching. Our group was lucky enough to see some giraffe’s, rhino’s, elephants, hippos, cheetah’s, and many more fun animals.

After this we headed to the best thrill ride of the park, Expedition Everest. This fast moving rollercoaster goes all throughout Mount Everest and encounters a scary Yeti. There’s even a part of this ride where the track appears to be broken so we have to move backwards and down hill throughout the mountain in the dark. This was definitely a fun one for those who had never experienced it before!

Shortly after riding Everest, we decided to switch things up from classic rollercoaster rides and headed towards the more screen and movie based ride of “Zootopia Everybody Together.” While Expedition Everest was a fast-paced, thrilling rollercoaster, “Zootopia Everybody Together” was a 3D short film that took place inside a large, stationary theater. The show still offered many thrills as the 3D had the characters jumping out towards us, and the theater sprayed the audience with water and rumbled our seats. Overall, it was a nice change of pace from Expedition Everest.

Following the Zootopia show, we moved on to another ride involving a screen and set off for Avatar Flight of Passage. Since this is the most popular ride in Animal Kingdom, we decided to buy a Lightning Lane for this ride. It ended up being a great decision as the stand by line was a whopping 125 minutes. Avatar Flight of Passage involves riding on a banshee (a large flying predator from the Avatar movies) and has a 3D screen that makes you feel like you are really in the world of Pandora. This ride was definitely spectacular with amazing visuals, and it really is no surprise that this is one of the most popular rides in all of Disney World.

After some hours spent in the scorching sun walking about the park, we decided it was time for dinner and stopped at Satuli Canteen right by the exit of Avatar Flight of Passage. The restaurant was Avatar-themed and had some exotic-looking desserts inspired by fruit from the movies. The entrees mainly consisted of rice and noodle bowls with choices of chicken, shrimp, chimichurri beef, and pork. Overall, the food was great, and while we did not try any of the desserts, they looked good from a distance.

Finally, the professors allowed us to split off for free time to enjoy the last two hours of the park until it closed at 8:00pm. Our first thought was to try to ride Avatar Flight of Passage again, but we quickly realized the wait time was far too long. We decided to settle on Expedition Everest, and it ended up being the right choice. The standby line read 20 minutes for the wait, but it actually only turned out to be a 5 minute wait as the line moved quicker than expected. Even though it was our second time riding it today, we all had a great time, and as we were walking out of the exit, we noticed the wait time read only 15 minutes. Collectively, we decided to hop straight back in line and got up to the front even quicker than before. Now that we were all Expedition Everest veterans at this point, we decided to start posing for the picture, as we were well aware of the spot where it was taken on the ride. After the ride finished, we all rushed towards the screens that showed the pictures from the ride and had a good laugh looking at our poses. We decided to continue this pattern, and because of the short wait time were able to ride Expedition Everest 4 consecutive times with a new pose for each ride. This was one of the most fun parts of the day, and we were still able to rush back to the entrance of the park to meet the professors at the agreed-upon time of 8:00. Overall, this was an amazing way to cap off a great day of work and play as we visited Animal Kingdom for the first but definitely not last time on this trip.

Today's blog entry was written by Harrison Brown and Dylan Daniels!

Day 3: Hollywood Thrills & Mickey Bar Skills

Hello everyone! Welcome back to day three of our blog as we follow along our journeys on the Furman Math and the Mouse MayX. 

After eating a good breakfast at the hotel, we departed on the buses at 8:00. We scanned into the park around 8:30 and went straight to our first ride, Tower of Terror, at the Hollywood Studios. Our original plan was to head to Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, but Dr. Hutson saw a short wait time, so we pivoted our direction. Do you want to know a fun fact about this ride? There are four different drop patterns that you may have for each ride. We were lucky that we got to experience two different patterns!

Following up with our first ride in the early morning, we headed over to Toy Story Land, where we got right in line at Toy Story Mania. In this ride, we put on our 3D glasses and worked as fast as we could to hit as many targets. To score points, you had to pull a rope, and by the end, we all felt like we just did a mini workout! Want to know a fun fact about this ride? There is a secret way to score more points that you can find on the Internet, so next time we come back, we will definitely be more prepared to win the game. 

As we left Toy Story Land, we found ourselves in Galaxy’s Edge as we prepared to fly an adventurous ship. We got separated into pilots who flew the plane, gunners who shot at the enemy, and engineers who worked to fix the aircraft. The goal of this adventure is to cause the least damage and collect two containers of coaxium. Here is another fun fact that you might want to know about this flight: if all six crew members coordinated the controls and hit the orange button, they would get Chewbacca as the mission guide rather than Hondo Ohnaka. 

After our groups all got at least one can of coaxium, we decided to discover more areas inside Galaxy’s Edge. We decided to hop on Star Tours and spent 20 minutes flying around different galaxies and successfully landed back at our home base. Guess what we figured out after the flight? This flight has been at Disney World for more than thirty years, which is considered to be one of the oldest original attractions at Disney. 

After we were exhausted from fighting other enemy ships, we decided to end the first day at Hollywood Studios with Tower of Terror, and you can probably guess that it was Dr. Hutson’s idea. Our second sequence was a lot more unpredictable than the first drop, but everyone seemed to get a nice pose for the photo. 

After we did Tower of Terror, we headed back to the hotel and had a longer break than usual, which did not feel long enough to us. We gathered back at 2:00 to start our second class time. Dr. Hutson handed out “Posted and Actual” instructions, which demonstrated the difference between the actual waiting time and the predicted time, which is displayed at the front of each line. Then, we got the handout about our very first project, which is where we should place the Mickey bar carts at the Magic Kingdom. We separated into our four designated groups that were split based on crowd levels and the East vs. West of the park. In the small groups, everyone was discussing how they plan to approach the project and started working hard for three hours with support from our three amazing professors. Dr. Bouzarth introduced us to Tableau, which is a visualization tool that will be helpful for our first presentation on Tuesday. 

After long hours of lots of hard work, we were rewarded with a sweet treat at Twistee Treats! This delicious treat gave us a boost of energy to continue working on our first project. Once we got back, everyone grabbed computers and got back to work. Today was filled with joy and fun followed by lots of hard work! Keep following along to hear about our first presentations on Tuesday!

Today’s blog was written by Tram Le and Cassie Larsen.

Day 2: Drastic Decisions for Dins in Disney

Welcome to Day 2 of Math and the Mouse 2026!

After a great night of sleep following the long drive yesterday, we had a hearty breakfast at our hotel, went to Target for groceries, and prepared our laptops and got our notes ready to begin our first classroom lecture.

Today’s lecture introduced us to the mathematics behind decision making. When making a decision have you ever wondered if you are making the right choice? Some people make pros and cons lists, some follow their heart, and others follow a decision making framework. Whether we are aware of it or not, everyday life is full of decisions, from big to small, and meaningless to life-changing. Making decisions can be a difficult thing to do so mathematicians have devised many models and methods to aid in the decision making process. 

The first decision making framework that we have is called “The Similarity Matching Problem”. Have you ever finished a show on Netflix and a screen popped up recommending different shows you might like? The problem Netflix is solving here is that you are done with a show and you need something new to watch. Netflix has collected all the data of the shows and movies that you have watched, and which ones you have liked and disliked, and they do this with everyone! With this data they create groups by matching those with similar interests, so when you see a show the Netflix is recommending just for you, it's because someone who has similar taste to you has watched and liked that show. This is done using fun but complicated mathematical models, but we aren't the type of blog writers to bore you with that. 

After class, we had lunch and ventured into Magic Kingdom. As a group we went to Space Mountain, It’s a Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Big Thunder Mountain, and as you can see from the picture above, Dr. Hutson was enthusiastic about It's a Small World. Riding rides was not all we did, in between we began discussing upcoming projects and ideas.

Speaking of projects, after initially riding Space Mountain, the group took a quick detour underneath one of the overpasses. Here, we took another group picture and started discussing one of our first projects: Queue Data Collection. In this mini project, we will soon be rope dropping Magic Kingdom and calculating lots of data points including time from entering queue to starting the ride, every person exiting the ride, time interval between consecutive dispatches, and other meaningful factors. In order to accomplish this task, we divided into two groups randomly to gather data for both Tron and Big Thunder Mountain at rope drop.  Some found out they were able to ride some of the biggest rides at rope drop and were ecstatic while others reluctantly accepted their necessary roles.

Next, we took a break after riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to discuss the placement for each person for the Data Collection project to visualize the incoming game plan, pictured above. Additionally, we discussed our first main project, the Mobile Mickey Bar Stand Ice Cream Stand. This project will focus on attempting to optimize and map out a location for a new mobile Mickey bar stand to rotate around the park. After introducing the concept, we were divided into four groups: CL3 East, CL3 West, CL7 East, and CL7 West. Since it is centered within Magic Kingdom, the park is divided into East and West sides where the individual groups will be focused solely on their side initially. Further, the CL3 or CL7 indicates the crowd level or density of people in the park where a higher number indicates more people. After giving this brief overview, the group was able to explore the park without the professors for the first time. 

Initially, the entire group agreed to adjourn dinner and wait in line for the Seven Dwarves Mine Train, but this plan soon caused divides as wait times went up during our approach. This led to a split where a group of 4 waited for Tron, and others stuck it out for 7D. For those that stayed, we gathered for a Mickey Bar group sweet treat to cherish our unity as we made our way towards the Under the Sea Little Mermaid ride and dinner. For the group that fractured to Tron, popcorn and soda was their dinner, but the others dined at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe until a sudden GroupMe notification halted the refueling. 

The notification explained that a select few were able to get into a boarding group for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Lightning Lane prior to reuniting at Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. In that group, only three were able to ride, and they made sure to get the 0.5 to prove it. 

After meeting with the professors again, the group also rode Haunted Mansion before scurrying out of the park to avoid the immense firework traffic that followed behind. Today was full of decisions, both for the group and the individual. Together, all of these decisions helped to strengthen bonds and communities that have already begun forming, but future projects and decisions will help analyze what is best for the Mouse. 

Today's blog was written by Julia Torres and Ashton Holt!

Math and the Mouse: Day 1 Blog (5/13)

Welcome to the Math and the Mouse 2026 Blog! This is the first of 21 daily posts of detailed stories and events of our adventure here at Disney World. We’re super excited to share the highlights of our trip with you all!

We started the day off dark and early at 5:45 where we met up to leave Furman's campus for Disney World! We took two stops along our nine-hour drive, one at a Pilot gas station and another at Buc-ee's for lunch. After finally making it to the hotel at around 3:30pm, we took a much-needed break before departing for Epcot at 4:00.

Once we arrived, Dr. Hutson spent some time introducing us to some of the mathematics behind maps and coordinates that we will be learning more about in the coming days. Not only did he talk about optimization and boundaries on a graph, he applied it to the map of Epcot in a fun way so we could easily visualize the concepts.

We then made our way to Test Track, the group’s first ride of the trip. By then, the professors were getting tired of hoarding several hungry college students around, so we all got dinner at Connections Eatery. We spent the next few hours riding Soarin’, Spaceship Earth, and the Gran Fiesta Tour starring the Three Caballeros in Mexico.

From there, we headed to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride; despite the wait time displaying 105 minutes, there was a near even split of students who wanted to ride and students who wanted to head back. Dr. Harris heroically rallied to accompany the students who wanted to wait in the line, while Drs. Hutson and Bouzarth took the remaining eight to view the fireworks.

Unfortunately for the firework-viewing group, it began to pour so they all collectively decided to head back to the hotel after half an hour. Everyone, exhausted from the long travel day, headed to bed early awaiting the long day ahead of them, full of math and the first Magic Kingdom visit of many!

This first blog was written by Aidan Barnard and Annmarie Henderson!