Remember the Traveling Tourist Problem? Well, it’s back, but we’re looking at a different problem today. For one of our final projects, Connor, The Anh, and Harrison started to ask, what attractions should a person ride in order to have maximum fun at Magic Kingdom? This is something called a knapsack problem. Basically, if you can only put so many things in your knapsack, what are the best things to put in there? In this case, our knapsack is a day at Magic Kingdom! Each attraction was given a score based on its ratings and average wait time, which was used to rank attractions on which would be the most fun. More points means more fun! So, given four hours, what attractions should someone ride to get the highest score? The group who is working on the project needed a way to find out if their solution was the best, so we were broken up into groups of two to three people to try to maximize our points. We started bright and early as we all headed to Magic Kingdom for rope drop.
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| Harrison, Connor, and The Anh on The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train |
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| Julia, Mara, and Della at the finish line |
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| Annmarie and Cassie at Cinderella's Castle |
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| Tram and Dylan at Main Street |
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| Luke and Ashton on Tiana's Bayou Adventure (third row) |
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| Aidan and Isabella hanging out with Mickey |
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| Professors on Haunted Mansion |
Each group had to decide the best place to start off their four-hour adventure. Some groups, including Dylan and Tram, Luke and Ashton, and Della, Mara, and Julia, rope-dropped Jungle Cruise, while the rest of the cohort headed to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Unfortunately, the ride opening ended up being delayed, prompting Cassie and Annmarie to switch their sights to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Big Thunder eventually opened back up, but it was not the last problem to plague us during our activity.
Throughout the morning, we all tried our hardest to minimize our wait times and maximize our points. From riding Tron (20 points) to meeting Cinderella (5 points), every group plotted their way across the Magic Kingdom until our ending time of 1pm, with varying degrees of success. For example, Aidan and Isabella lucked out with a five minute wait time for Peter Pan, while Della, Mara and Julia stuck out a 45 minute wait at Big Thunder before being kicked out of line for technical difficulties. Good news, they were able to get Lightning Lanes to ride later!
As an end-of-activity celebration, the professors treated us to lunch at Columbia’s Harbor House - just what a bunch of hot, tired, and sweaty college students needed! The weather was even kind enough to cool us off with a short period of torrential downpour - a perfect ending to a long day at Disney.
Once we got back from our exhausting trip to Magic Kingdom, everyone took a well-deserved shower (even though we had the rain shower from before lunch), and got to work on our final projects. We also tallied up our points for the morning’s activity - with a total of 70, congratulations goes to Aidan and Isabella!! (The best and coolest group if this author says so herself).
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| It was a long day for Dr. Hutson |
After a few hours, most of us packed back up to go to EPCOT! It was extra special, since the group thought we’d all ridden Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind for the last time. So, straight to Guardians for this group. We were able to ride it twice, getting in line just before the park officially closed. Between rides, we stopped by Joffrey’s Coffee for “dinner” (or in Ashton’s case, a cold brew after 8pm). Still singing the Guardian’s soundtrack, we all left Epcot for the last time with the professors who kindly waited to drive us home.
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| Everybody's favorite ride! |
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| The group rocking out to September on Guardians |
Today’s blog was written by Della and Isabella!
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