Day 4: A Roaring Good Time

Greetings and Salutations from the Florida jungle!  We are Morgan and Riley, your fearless explorers of the Animal Kingdom.  We started the day off at 7:15am and headed to Animal Kingdom to do regular rope drop. There are two entry groups at Disney World Orlando. The first group is the early entry crowd who are guests entering into the park 30 minutes early as an added benefit of staying at Disney World Hotel Resorts. The second group is the regular entry crowd who are guests entering into the park at the regular entry time. Guests enter the park in two ways: rope drop and interspersed arrivals. Rope drop used to refer to the literal dropping of a rope when the park opened where guests entered all at once, but now it just means the time when the park opens and guests enter in bulk. Interspersed arrivals refer to the flow of guests into the park following the rope drop as they flow into the park rather than going in all at once. Each entry group has a rope drop and an interspersed arrival.

    We were a part of the regular entry rope drop, meaning we had to get up early to make it on time because the earlier you get to the park, the more efficient you can be with your time. Last summer, Riley conducted research on Disney World ride lines through Furman’s math department, and we found later arrival times result in longer wait times. Therefore, the earlier we arrive, the more we can do in less time. And that’s why we awoke at the crack of dawn because it allowed us to get the most out of our time in Animal Kingdom. 

After the brisk walk, we arrived at Flight of Passage a ride based on the first Avatar movie where you get linked to a Na’vi pilot who controls a winged beast called a Banshee.  This ride was a thrilling start to the day and we can see why everyone heads there first.  The exhilarating flight was followed up by a couple more rides, but the most controversial ride was It's Tough to be a Bug where guests could experience as the name suggests life as an honorary bug.  Pretty much everyone in the group did not like this show since there was a part where the villain Hopper had the chair jab your back as if a bee stung you, spiders coming down from the ceiling, a stink bug spraying you with a foul smell, and finally termites and roaches crawling on the bottom of the seat as they “left” the theater.  Expedition Everest was the last ride of the day where we saw and then had to escape the yeti.  As avid rollercoaster fans, this was the ride highlight of the day for both of us!  Finally, when we were heading back to the vans we saw the end of the Feathered Friends in Flight show which featured a bunch of macaws and parrots soaring around the Tree of Life.

Following our time in Animal Kingdom, we then had class time where we learned more about probability as it relates to business decision-making and customer classification which will be important in our next project.  Then after our lecture by our lovely professors, it was off for more groupwork time since our first presentations are taking place on Tuesday.  This time we were farther along so we could use Tableau to visually display the coordinates of the optimal locations for the Mickey bar carts in our different assigned sections of the park.  After we gathered the data for our respective areas we were able to add other factors such as parades, fireworks, and new attractions that will be opening soon, and track how they affected our original positions of the carts.  The final and most fun piece of this project is coming together with other groups either those in the Pluto team or the Donald team and combining all of our data to figure out the best three places throughout a typical day in Magic Kingdom.  This work has been really rewarding since it is a real-world application that some of us may encounter if we pursue a career in data analytics.  

Our day of whimsy and math ended with more whimsy but no math as we enjoyed some delicious treats from Twistee Treats. Their strawberry sundae was a perfect reward to finish a day full of Florida humidity as we relaxed and talked about our day.

Have a Roaring Good Night,

• Morgan & Riley :]