Ten Years in the Making: the Four-Park Challenge

In lieu of posting a summary of Day 21 today, we're going to postpone that until we get back to South Carolina. Today was a great day and we want to share the details, particularly about our students' projects and final presentations, but we need to pack and hit the road bright and early tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for a few more blog posts over the coming days. In the mean time, we'll share some details about the Four-Park Challenge we ran with alumni last week!

One of my favorite movies when I (Dr. Hutson) was young was called Midnight Madness. The movie centered on a scavenger hunt designed by a brilliant graduate student in which undergraduates race around Los Angeles collecting clues to find more clues. Each new clue offered a direction for the next, challenging the students to decipher clues from physics to music. The movie starred a really young Michael J. Fox (then Michael Fox) as an angsty young teenager who desperately wants the attention of his older brother, who is mostly interested in the scavenger hunt and the affection of his girlfriend. Michael J. Fox’s character softens his angst and helps his brother’s team win the race by a matter of seconds. The movie appealed to me as a kid because I loved solving puzzles and racing competitions, and I ended up creating wild-goose chase games for my friends to solve. Given the enduring popularity of shows like The Amazing Race, it seems that this type of competition appeals to many.  

One of the fundamental problems in the area of combinatorial optimization is the Knapsack Problem. Like many problems in this field, it is easy to state but difficult to solve. Suppose you have many items that you would like to take on vacation, and each has some value to you on the trip. However, each also has some capacity that it takes up in your suitcase. The problem then is to maximize the value of the items taken while not exceeding the capacity limitations of the suitcase.

This year, Math and the Mouse (MatM) celebrates its ten-year anniversary, and we invited our alumni to come back to share their life experiences since their MatM trip and to participate in a Knapsack/Amazing Race Competition that we called The Four-Park Challenge. Four alumni returned to take part in the competition, Joey Ianetta ‘15 (MatM ’14), Courtney Brown ‘20 (MatM ’18), and Kyle Gartman ’21 and Hannah Thomas ‘22 (both MatM ’19). The alumni and their friends made up three teams added to six teams from this year. Five of this year’s teams were composed of students, and one team was comprised of the professors accompanied by special guests, Furman President Elizabeth Davis and her husband, Charles!

Game Preparation

The professors worked with Len Testa of Touring Plans, whom you met earlier in the blog, to create a point value for each attraction (rides, shows, and character meet and greets) in all four Walt Disney World theme parks. This point value was based on average wait time for the attraction, ride duration, and a measure of how often the attraction breaks down. For example, Slinky Dog Dash in Hollywood Studios has an average expected wait time of 90 minutes/day (two standard deviations above average), a ride duration of 3 minutes, and an average downtime of 65 minutes/day (1.5 standard deviations above average). We used these “z-scores” for all rides to give them point values. Slinky Dog, for example, got an overall point score of 700, the highest among all of the rides over the four parks. The challenge was for each team to accumulate as many points as possible within the time constraint of seven hours (8:00am-3:00pm). That is, in the language of a Knapsack Problem, how many rides (items to take on vacation) could be fit into the time constraint (suitcase) to maximize the points (utility value)? There were also bonus points for completing special challenges like completing ten attractions in a single park, visiting an attraction (ride, show, or meet) in each park, meeting the Fab Five characters (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto), and taking different modes of transportation between parks.

The Math Behind the Scenes

After an initial meeting on Thursday to explain the rules, teams were dispersed to strategize and propose a plan for tackling the challenge. The Knapsack Problem is known to be NP-hard. This means that although producing a good solution might be easy and quick, verifying that is optimal is extremely difficult because it basically requires one to enumerate all possible solutions (which could be exponential in size).  So, most people use heuristic algorithms to produce near-optimal solutions in quick fashion to solve these types of problems. One of the most commonly used algorithms for the Knapsack Problem is known as the Bang-for-the-Buck Algorithm. This algorithm makes selections based on which attractions produces the most points per amount of time (wait time plus ride duration) it takes to achieve the points. In looking over the solutions, many teams employed this strategy, especially early in the day. Many teams chose ride Space Mountain (510 points) early, giving them a small wait (5-10 minutes) and lower ride duration (3 minutes).  This equates to achieving around 60 points per minute of wait. Contrast this with teams that rode “it’s a Small World” (230 points) early in the day, which had a small wait time (5-10 minutes) but has a 14-minute duration. This equates to only achieving around 10 points per minute. Teams that employed the Bang-for-the-Buck algorithm repeatedly throughout the day generally were able to accumulate more points, while those that chose to get in line for high point rides like Rise of the Resistance (620 points) in the middle of the day and waited more than an hour, reduced their points per minute to around ten (even lower if you factor in time to get to the ride).  

Bonus Effects

A strategy that paid off for most teams was to earn bonus points (1500) by not purchasing Genie+ or Lightning Lanes for the competition. Only two teams purchased Genie+, one alumni team and the “Profs and Prez” team. It turned out that these two teams were not able to make up for the lack of bonus points through lowering their wait time. Popular rides have Lightning Lane availability that fills up very quickly, and this pushed the available Lightning Lane time passed the 3:00 finish mark and forced Lightning Lane selections for smaller rides which did not have long wait times during the morning hours of the competition and had smaller point values reducing the bang for the buck. However, the teams that got Genie+ service generally felt not-so-bad at the end of the day because they didn’t have to wait in line all day.

Almost all teams achieved the bonus of riding ten rides in one park. Since the Magic Kingdom opened an hour earlier than other parks, and it has an abundance of attractions, most teams were able to achieve ten rides in that park within the first two-and-a-half hours and move on to another park. This bonus of 1000 points was neutralized since all but one team satisfied the requirement.  

And Now For What We’ve All Been Waiting (In Line) For

First place team: Jacob, Erin, Katie, and Riley

The winning team was a student team comprised of Jacob, Erin, Katie, and Riley. The bonus point structure did benefit teams unequally, and the winning team took full advantage of it, amassing 3700 points by riding ten rides in the Magic Kingdom, riding a ride in each of the four parks, taking four different modes of transportation, and doing this without purchasing Lightning Lanes. That was pretty impressive, and it separated them from the second-place team. The winning team rode 16 rides, visited four parks, and accumulated 7830 points by riding eleven Magic Kingdom rides, two rides in Animal Kingdom, two rides in Epcot, and one ride in Hollywood Studios. Their ride total was 4130 points. 

Meanwhile, the second-place team (Will, Hayes, and Ellis) hustled all day but only got 2700 bonus points because they didn’t make it to all four parks. However, they achieved more ride points (4565) than the first-place team by riding popular rides in Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  

Second place team: Will, Hayes, and Ellis 

The third-place team had the most diverse set of attractions visited by riding only ten rides in the Magic Kingdom and Epcot but meeting all Fab Five characters. They had 3500 bonus points and 3200 ride points to achieve 6700 total points. 

Third place team: Alyssa, Emily, Morgan, and Hannah

Our highest alumni group was Hannah and Kyle. They only rode 11 rides, but hit pretty much all of the popular rides in Magic Kingdom (Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Space Mountain, TRON: Lightcycle Run, Peter Pan’s Flight, etc.) and one ride (Tower of Terror) in Hollywood Studios. Their 3960 ride points combined with 2500 bonus points to finish fourth. 

Fourth place: Hannah '22 and Kyle '21 

The cumulative total for each team is shown in the table below.

The Profs and Prez team

Mathletes stretching after the Four-Park Challenge

Meanwhile, the Profs and Prez team achieved sixth place but were one of only two teams to make it to all four parks. Their ride total was 3800 but only achieved 2100 bonus points, limited by their purchase of Genie+. However, kudos to President and Dr. Davis for walking over 20,000 steps, surviving the Tower of Terror, taking tons of pictures on the safari, getting stuck on the Navi River journey for twenty minutes listening to a song that rivals “it’s a small world”, and doing that with huge smiles on their faces. We enjoyed spending the day with them, laughing, and exploring the parks.  We may not have won the race, but we didn’t wake up the next day complaining about how sore we were like some twenty-year-olds that we know.

The After Party

After the long day, we spent the evening celebrating at Splitsville. Our alumni gave advice to our class on what matters after Furman. Each spoke to the impact of their Math and the Mouse time and other experiences they took advantage of while at Furman had on their lives today. It was fun to see how The Furman Advantage has paid off for these alumni, and we can’t thank them enough for coming back and interacting with our students. We also want to give a huge thank you to Mark and Melissa Gibson, Furman parents and owners of Splitsville, for hosting us for the event. Their hospitality was without bounds, and our students could not stop raving about the experience. The great food, bowling, and conversation complemented the fantastic second floor viewing of the inaugural drone show at Disney Springs.  

Gratitude

Through the decade since our first iteration of Math and the Mouse, we have been so lucky to work with amazing students, both during the three-week May Experience term in Florida as well as in other settings beyond a traditional classroom. When we planned the Four-Park Challenge, we reached out to our MatM alumni to see if they would consider supporting Math and the Mouse on Dins Day, Furman’s annual day of giving held on the last day of classes, even if they weren’t able to travel to Florida to interact with our students directly. We issued a challenge to our alumni that was tied to the Four-Park Challenge. For each donation received that ended in a 0, that would contribute bonus points towards the professor team’s score whereas donations that ended in a 5 would deduct bonus point from the professor team’s score, ultimately boosting the non-faculty teams. During the event at Splitsville, we shared that through the generosity of our MatM alumni and the Furman family, the professor team had 15 more donations supporting them than the students. We translated this difference into 1500 bonus points for the Profs and Prez team, which bumped us up from 6th to 2nd place! All silliness aside, we are so thankful to get to work with amazing students during their time at Furman and keep in touch with them afterwards, but we are also extremely grateful for the support of the past decade from friends, family, and Furman. 

Day 20: Rewinding the Course

As Math and the Mouse 2024 winds down, we give the students a break from the blog and give you a professor’s perspective on the course. Over the next few days, we will blog on “Math and the Mouse by the Numbers” and a final reflection. Today, we thought we would give a brief update on the day, but then reflect, from an academic perspective, what exactly the students have accomplished in the course.

The day began with a morning class where Dr. Bouzarth talked about the history of animatronic advancement in the parks. Starting from a base of the Abraham Lincoln animatronic from the 1964 World's Fair, she mapped how these attractions advanced from the simple pneumatic devices of the Enchanted Tiki Room to the complex Audio-Animatronic featured in the Navi River Journey ride in Animal Kingdom. She threw in a discussion of the mathematics of projection mapping images onto Cinderella’s Castle and Tower of Terror and ended with some cheap 3D tricks (a Muppet Vision reference from our discussion on how a three-dimensional image can appear from a two-dimensional movie screen). Students also worked on their final projects to conclude the morning.

In the afternoon, we headed to Epcot to get lunch and say goodbye to that park for this trip. Epcot is home to the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind ride, a fan favorite of both the students and the professors. The ride is known for playing different 80’s songs as you ride. The group’s favorite was “Conga” by the Miami Sound Machine. Although, Dr. Hutson just learned that “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears is one of the six songs in rotation, and now wants to go back to sample more rides tomorrow to hear this. We enjoyed saving the world a couple of more times with the help of the Guardians as well as Soarin’ Around the World, testing cars for performance and power at Test Track, and traveling to Mars in Mission: Space. Afterwards, we returned back to the hotel for the students to finish up their final project work and make their presentations. We look forward to these tomorrow and will update you on those presentations in the upcoming days. 

As we look back through the course, we want to emphasize the academic experiences these students have had. We designed the course so the students are introduced to applications of mathematics in the real-world in three parts: data analytics, mathematical modeling and algorithm design, and dealing with uncertainty. In three weeks, the students have learned (and sometimes re-learned) material that appears in eleven different mathematics courses at Furman (MTH 120—Intro to Statistics, MTH 150—Calculus I, MTH 151—Calculus II, MTH 160—Vectors and Matrices, MTH 245—Statistical Methods in R, MTH 250—Multivariable Calculus, MTH 335—Mathematical Modeling, MTH 337—Operations Research, MTH 340—Probability, MTH 341—Mathematical Statistics, and MTH 435—Scientific Computation)! The course is quick, exhausting, and intense, and our students have responded to the challenges. Let’s rewind the course from an academic perspective.

The first project, the Mickey Bar Project, asked the students to study how the crowd density changes throughout the day to move a mobile concession stand to where the people are at different times a day. The solution method involves using a data analytics tool called k-means clustering to locate a central point within a park-wide distribution of crowds. Think of this as putting tug-of-war participants of varying strengths on each ride, and they are each pulling a rope tied to the concession cart. Stronger participants (more dense crowds) pull the cart more than weaker participants, but as the crowd moves and wait times fluctuate throughout the day, the tug-of-war landscape changes, some become weaker and some stronger, and the cart moves. Facility location problems like this have a great history in mathematical fields as logistics companies compare alternatives to place warehouses and governments have to decide where to place fire stations to better serve their communities. One of the group’s final projects is using another data analytics technique, regression analysis, to determine what factors best predict a person’s score on Toy Story Mania, a video-game-like ride in Hollywood Studios.

In the second week of the course, the students learned to model real-world optimization problems such as those involving logistics, scheduling, and resource allocation. These types of problems are not only applicable to Disney’s operations but serve as foundational material for professionals working in the areas of industrial and systems engineering and operations management. The students completed a fairly sophisticated modeling project involving assigning workers to jobs in Yak and Yeti restaurant to cover the demand throughout the day. Although their problem was a factor of 100 smaller than the ones solved by Disney, the concepts learned by students through the project were the essential concepts Disney (or your local McDonald’s) uses to schedule workers.   Further, one of the student group’s final projects involves designing and comparing different algorithms for filling seats on Tower of Terror, a resource allocation problem where information is not known with certainty.

Once the students learned how to form a mathematical model, we showed them how to exploit the mathematical structure present in their created models to design algorithms to produce an optimal (or near optimal) solution. Their investigation of algorithms consisted of those normally used to solve the types of optimization problems we discuss in the class. However, one of the hallmark activities of the course, the Traveling Tourist Problem, involves the students trying to solve an instance of the Time-Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem. This is the same problem that companies like UPS, FedEx, and Amazon solve on a daily basis to route pickups and deliveries in an efficient fashion within a complex transportation network. In fact, the students employed many approaches used by these types of companies to produce quick solutions to a very hard problem.  Afterwards, we helped the students understand the types of algorithms that Touring Plans uses in producing tours of Disney attractions for their customers so that when the students met with Len Testa, the President of Touring Plans, they are able to have a fuller understanding of that industry.  

In the final stage of the course, we introduce students to some basic concepts in probability and statistics so that they might understand that all models are wrong because the inputs to those models are not always known with certainty and thus experience high variability. Most of the students’ final projects incorporate some sort of probabilistic or statistical analysis ranging from a chi-squared test to see if different rides have different party size distributions and a hypothesis test of whether omnimover rides, those with a continuous loading system like Peter Pan’s Flight and Spaceship Earth, have a more accurate posted wait time than other rides.  

We would like to emphasize that we throw a lot at these students during the three weeks. We don’t expect all of it will stick, but we hope that what they hear will pique their interests and inspire them to learn more by taking more classes in the mathematics curriculum. However, we are always impressed at how much they actually do absorb from the course. To those parents out there, we are really proud of this group, and we hope by emphasizing the academic content in the course that you will be impressed by them as well.

Some additional photos from today:

Furman FAN Club

Day 19: We (finally) met Mickey Mouse!

Happy Sunday! This is Erin and Virginia, reporting to you from the hotel lobby - a place we’ve come to
call home. 

We started off the day by learning about physics applications in Disney World, which was a really fascinating switch up from the topics that we had been focusing on. We talked about force, acceleration, and magnetism through applications in different rides. We were particularly interested in the mechanics behind Mission: SPACE Orange as we did not know that the forces we feel when we are “taking off” on this ride are as a result of spinning really fast in a circle. Additionally, the applications of magnetism on rides like Rock 'n' Roller Coaster (rip), PeopleMover (Erin’s favorite), and TRON helped us to better understand how those rides work and gave us a greater appreciation for those experiences. We also talked about the mechanics of Tower of Terror in the context of Newton’s Laws of Motion to explain why it cannot simply be a freefall as if it were, we would stay on the seat. Instead, Disney pulls us down with external force in addition to gravity. Lastly, we discussed Expedition Everest, which contains 3 structures (the roller coaster, the mountain, and the yeti) and how each of these are heavily connected which is why when the arm of the yeti stopped moving correctly, it was not able to be fixed. If they wanted to fix it, they would’ve had to take apart the entire mountain and roller coaster apparatus, which is crazy to think about. 

After class, we split into project groups to begin working on calculations and presentations! Most groups have finished up their data collection and are moving into the analysis stage. Here’s how our projects are going! 

Hey everyone, it’s Virginia! My group, consisting of Savannah, John, Tori, and myself, is studying Toy Story Mania!, a 4D shooting game in Hollywood Studios. To get points in this game, you ride through a series of themed screens, shooting at targets and trying to unlock different easter eggs that open up more targets with higher point values. Dr. Hutson has been the man to beat on the trip so far, successfully holding the highest score and being annoyingly good at hitting every easter egg; it should be noted some of this success should be attributed to Dr. Bouzarth, his ever-dependable shooting partner. However, Savannah and John put forth valiant efforts to take him down (to no avail, but the effort was commendable). 

For our data collection, everyone rode the ride multiple times, recording their scores and the easter eggs they hit in a Google form we created. Today, we exported that data into an Excel file and began working on a regression analysis to determine which factors (accuracy, easter eggs hit, etc) have the most impact on overall scores. Savannah, Tori, and Dr. Hutson began working on creating the regression analysis in R, a programming language, while John and I created data visulaizations in Tableau. After 3 projects of working with Tableau, we have (deservingly) dubbed ourselves the Tablexperts. Our graphs are looking beautiful and presentation-ready - themed in Toy Story colors, of course. Tomorrow we’re looking forward to finishing up our analysis and polishing our presentation! 

Erin here! My group is working on analyzing wait time data on omnimover rides (see blog from day 15 for more detail) and non omnimover rides, as well as breaking apart wait times for different types, intensities, and locations of rides. Specifically, we are trying to see how variable posted wait times versus actual wait times are, which is data that we have been collecting since the beginning of this course! We also worked several days on collecting even more data by watching rides and timing individuals as they go through the wait and ride then subtracting the ride duration to know their wait time. Now, we are cleaning the data and doing a few different analyses to see what conclusions we can draw. Mostly, this is happening in excel and Tableau, in which we are also, as Virginia mentioned, becoming Tablexperts. I think we are nearing some really interesting results, although we will hold off on revealing these until after we present. 

After project time and lunch, we headed towards Animal Kingdom for the late afternoon! We had some free time until dinner, so groups split into different directions to enjoy the park. Some of us ventured toward the Dinosaur ride, while others made their way to get a rollercoaster ride in at Everest. 

Erin and a few others really wanted to meet Doug, the dog character from Up. This proved to be quite the task as Doug was “taking a walk” and wouldn’t be guaranteed to stop and say hi to anyone in particular. We tried extremely hard to get noticed by this friendly dog by taking fake selfies and walking right next to him. Erin tried her darndest to get noticed by literally walking next to the dog, waving, and putting her hand up for a high five. Doug did not entertain Erin, and instead made eye contact then promptly turned to his other side to wave and high-five the person to his left. Feeling defeated, they gave up and went into an air-conditioned shop to get over the hard rejection. 

Following that disappointing endeavor, we all met up to meet Mickey and Minnie Mouse! This was mainly because Dr. Bouzarth insisted on getting a group picture with them to hang on her office door alongside previous MatM groups, but we also did it for the memories. So, after 19 days in Disney World, we finally got around to meeting the mascots themselves. It was truly a magical experience. The professors then treated us to a delicious dinner at the Satu’li Canteen, and groups meandered from there to find sweet treats or get another ride in before leaving! Finally, we ended our time in Animal Kingdom with a ride through the world of Avatar - always a group favorite! 

From there, we finished off our night by going to EPCOT for a few hours! We were left for free time in the parks, so we each decided on some key attractions that we definitely wanted to get in before our course ended. We both started off by going to Mission: SPACE Orange to feel the centrifugal forces in action! Erin had a blast feeling the forces and it made Virginia’s face feel funny but she enjoyed it as well. From there, we split off and Erin and some others headed to Soarin’ to use a lightning lane, which was really fun as that ride has a lot of nostalgia for her. From there, they headed to Test Track to wait briefly in the single-rider line and enjoy the amazing ride that is Test Track. For Erin, all five of the rides we rode today (Everest, Flight of Passage, Soarin’, Mission: SPACE, and Test Track) are easily her favorite rides in Disney World, so she was super excited to ride all of them again. After Mission:SPACE, Virginia and some friends went to Test Track and got lucky with lightning lanes, then she watched fireworks before meeting back up with the large group. Overall, it was a very successful two hours at EPCOT!

Thanks for following along with yet another exciting day! It’s hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of our time here. Many of us were talking over breakfast about how we will miss each other, the parks, and the hotel we’ve been calling home (although we’re sure the hotel staff won’t miss the groups clogging the lobby every day). Be sure to look out for blog updates in the last few days! 

Signing off, 

Erin and Virginia

Honorable Mention Photos:

Day 18: Happy Birthday Goofy!!

*Intro to be read in your best late night radio broadcaster voice* 

What’s going on everybody? John and Alyssa coming at you late this Saturday night. Hope everyone is having a great evening. Sit back and relax while we bring you the latest of the Math and The Mouse Crew. 

We started off the day with a much-needed late start, with class time at 10:00 AM! Today, we finished up a conversation about hypothesis testing and did a general overview of a Chi-Squared test and Little’s Law. I’m sure y'all know exactly what those are, but if not, I’ll simplify it a bit for you. A Chi-Squared test is a tool used to check if two variables are related or independent and Little’s Law is roughly a theorem that allows you to estimate the average wait time of a queue. 

After class, we took a break for lunch and some groups met to discuss their plans for Hollywood Studios. For the most part, each group was in a good place for data collection, but one can never have too much data. We left for Hollywood Studios around 3:00 PM. The beginning portion of our trip to Hollywood Studios was filled with collective help to gather remaining data for teams that required more for their final projects (mainly John’s group at Toy Story Mania). After a couple rides in Toy Story Land everyone congregated at Tower of Terror to take advantage of our lightning lane. While most of the group got on the ride, Riley and I (Alyssa) caught the first glimpses of heavy rain. We warned the rest of the group as they exited the ride and we all quickly walked to dinner at Backlot Express, which was on the other side of the park. While there was some gloom about our soggy socks and shoes, the burgers and chicken tenders were “scrumdiddlyumptious” (as John puts it). 

What better way to celebrate Goofy’s birthday than by joining him on a wild ride on Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. Our group used a lightning lane for this attraction and Alyssa’s group gathered a few more data points for party sizes while in line. Later this evening, we were dazzled by Fantasmic. This show featured many fun lights, water features, fireworks, and characters on boats. It was a very magical experience! We sluggishly returned to the hotel where we changed our socks and met in the lobby to bring you this extraordinary blog. 

*Outro to be read in your best late night radio broadcaster voice*

Keep your dial tuned, your spirits high, and your dreams even higher. This is John and Alyssa signing off from the airwaves. Until we meet again, stay inspired and keep rocking to the rhythm of life. Goodnight, good morning, or good afternoon wherever you are, and remember, the Math and The Mouse experience never truly stops.

Day 17: Four Parks, Seven Hours: Challenge Accepted

Hello MatM blog followers!

It’s Katie and Emily tuning in to give you an inside look at our day competing in the “Amazing Race: Disney Extreme Edition” aka Four Park Challenge. If you remember from a couple of days ago, we all competed in the Traveling Tourist Problem (TTP), which was a race to complete 12 rides in Magic Kingdom as quickly as possible. Today, we put an extra spin on it. Unlike the 12 specified rides in the TTP, we expanded the challenge to all attractions in all four parks. Each attraction was assigned a point value based on average wait time, ride time, and average ride downtime. For example, riding Slinky Dog earned a team 700 points while Dumbo was 150 points. In addition, bonus points could be earned if a team completed a specific task (like a side quest) such as completing a ride in all four parks. The goal of this challenge was to earn the most points possible by 3:00 pm. In a mathematical context, the Four Park Challenge represents a real-life example of the knapsack problem, which requires us to select the options that are most valuable to us, given that choosing all options is not possible. The knapsack problem is very difficult and sometimes impossible to solve on such large scales. Given all the options, each team had a unique strategy for determining their plan for the day, and below we will offer you some insight into each of our groups’ thinking. 

We woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to congregate for breakfast in the hotel lobby prior to our 7:00 am departure. This breakfast was unusual in the sense that we were all glued to our MyDisneyExperience App, selecting our team members and preparing to click the “join virtual queue” button for TRON Light Cycle Run. This is the only way to ride this attraction, unless paying for an individual lightning lane; TRON was one of the top attractions for points in the Four Park Challenge. Once everyone gave shouts of joy (or disappointing sighs), we loaded up in the vans and headed out for an action-packed, fun-filled day. We had a total of nine teams: one professor/presidential team, three alumni teams, and five student teams. We are so grateful to President Davis and Dr. Davis for joining in on the challenge and supporting this MayX. Let the race begin!

Katie here! Erin, Jacob, Riley, and I made an awesome team and had such a fun and memorable dash around Disney. I am excited to report that we are the official winners of the inaugural Four Park Challenge, so read the next bit closely so you too can maximize your experience the next time you visit Disney. Our strategy was to first focus on accomplishing at least ten rides (earns us bonus points) in Magic Kingdom since this was closest to the van parking location, and we were familiar with some efficient strategies from our previous TTP. We followed the lead of the winners from the TTP and headed to Space Mountain at park opening. A few other groups followed us, including one Math and the Mouse alumni group. From here, we proceeded to ride ten attractions throughout the park before heading to Tron. We are excited to say we visited all these attractions by 11:00 am!

Tron was our last stop in Magic Kingdom before we rode the monorail to Epcot. In Epcot, we quickly visited Journey of Water and rode Journey Into Imagination before speed walking to ride the skyliner to Hollywood Studios. We had less than 2.5 hours left and two more parks to visit. While riding the skyliner, we noticed Tower of Terror had dropped to a 20 minute wait! We celebrated. But moments later, we groaned- the wait time jumped to 90 minutes. We suspected 90 minutes may be an overestimate, so we thought we would give it a try. Once there, we immediately noticed very long lines for both lightning lane and standby. It was going to be a long wait, so we pivoted to Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, which had an estimated wait time of 50 minutes. This ride was the same point value as Tower of Terror. While in line, we checked the app and Tower of Terror decreased to 40 and then to 35...and then to 30...and then to 20 minutes. We were bummed but decided to stay positive and were determined to speed walk as fast as we could after Runaway Railway to catch a bus and make it to Animal Kingdom in time to complete a ride before 3:00 pm. Our team theme song became “Nothing Can Stop Us Now,” which played at the very end of the Runaway Railway attraction. We sang this song over and over as we raced against the clock. As we arrived in Animal Kingdom, we made a beeline for TriceraTop Spin, which was the closest and shortest ride. The ride itself is not all that exciting, but for us, it meant we would officially complete a ride in all four parks–one of our goals of the day. We were thrilled! 

We finished the ride at 2:41pm, so we rode Dinosaur to gain a few more last-minute points. In summary, we visited all four parks, completed sixteen attractions, and rode all four modes of transportation (monorail, ferry, skyliner, and bus) in seven hours. Our positivity and support of one another were key reasons for our successful and fun day. I am so thankful for such an amazing team!  Also, a huge shoutout to everyone who competed today!  We gave it our all, persevered in the hot temperatures, and enjoyed a memorable Disney experience.

It’s Emily! I’m back on the blog to tell everyone how my team and I spent our day competing in the Four Park Challenge. My team consisted of Hannah, Alyssa, Morgan, and me. In all honesty, we were all feeling a bit under the weather and did not think it was smart to completely exhaust ourselves in the sun all day. Instead, we decided to stay inside to watch shows and meet characters. My team was more focused on not over exhausting ourselves, staying happy, and having fun. Our one big roller coaster of the day was TRON. We fortunately received a virtual queue this morning, and although our plan was not focused on hitting the big rides, TRON is ALWAYS worth it. We began our day in Magic Kingdom. After stopping by Starbucks on Main Street (caffeine is very important to us), we rope dropped Space Mountain and hit some other rides and shows in Tomorrowland before heading over to meet our first character of the day, Minnie! She was absolutely fabulous- I mean look at that tiara and feathers!

Despite our strategy not being very physically intense, we still earned a respectable amount of points. You may ask, “How could you earn points just hanging out with Mickey and Minnie all day?” Well, my team decided to take advantage of the “Fab 5” bonus. This was a bonus activity to earn a whopping 1000 points if a team met Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, and Goofy. Further, my team thought we could earn the bonus points for riding a ride, seeing a show, and meeting a character in all four parks. However, after reaching our 3rd and final park of the day, Hollywood Studios, we quickly admitted defeat to that plan. We literally all collapsed on the cold concrete outside of Mickey and Minnie’s Red Carpet Meet and waved the white flag to Animal Kingdom. You wouldn’t think watching shows and meeting characters would be so exhausting, but we were proven wrong! Our hard work of meeting the “Fab 5” paid off because we ended the day in 3rd place! I was overjoyed that we did so well and so incredibly proud of my team for being so adaptable throughout the day. Even though it was hot and we didn’t feel 100%, we still managed to have fun, look out for each other, and communicate. We found a strategy to maximize our points without over exerting ourselves and being mindful of our physical health. As one of my wise classmates said, “it’s about the people (or animals) you meet along the way,” and I totally agree. P.S. Pluto gave the best hugs.

Now, back to the two of us. After a long day of speed walking, sweating, and screaming on rides, we had the privilege to celebrate our hard work at Splitsville Luxury Lanes in Disney Springs, a restaurant and bowling alley owned by a Furman family. This was also the perfect opportunity to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Math and the Mouse. So, we were joined by a few alumni, Mr. and Mrs. Gibson, President Davis, and Dr. Davis! We spent the evening enjoying heavy hors d’oeuvres, chatting, and bowling. 

To top off our amazing day, we were treated with a drone light show in the night sky right outside the windows of Splitsville. 

Onward to our final four days and have a great weekend!

~Katie and Emily 

Here's a few honorary photos of the alumni who competed alongside us today. Again, a huge thank you to everyone who came to compete in this challenge and support Math and the Mouse!