Algorithms of Terror: Developing and Testing New Algorithms for Tower of Terror Seating

PAC Gym

As part of Furman’s Math and the Mouse May Experience course, we researched the loading algorithm used by employees of the Tower of Terror (ToT) attraction in Disney’s Hollywood Studios and attempted to write a more efficient algorithm. We wrote three algorithms, one with the intent of mimicking the exact loading process of Disney’s employees, one with the intent of improving upon Disney’s algorithm, and one where seats were filled left to right to be used as a control group. We observed the ToT loading process on multiple instances to gather data on the party-size distribution and loading algorithm employed by Disney. We then used simulation to test the effectiveness of the three algorithms and found that we could improve upon Disney’s loading procedure in some special cases.