Decision Analysis of Universal Studio Travel Plan

Decision Analysis of Universal Studio Travel Plan

Huimin Qi; Sijie Zhao; Wenyu Zhang

I. Background

Florida is a well-known tourist resort whose amusement parks, beaches and pleasant weather attract numbers of visitors every year. Especially, Universal Studio Florida is one of the theme parks that make up a significant portion of tourism. It contains 13 attractions of movie or TV series and numerous live shows. Due to the high volume of tourists, it takes the visitors much more time to queue up for tours.

Nevertheless, long wait in line reduces tourists’ pleasure and makes them feel exhausted. Waiting time forecast consequently becomes critical in choosing the appropriate visiting plan. Another essential problem is to make the decision about whether to buy the Universal Express to “skip the line”.

II. Problem setting

I am going to visit Florida with two friends next week and I am making my three-day travel plan. Besides the amazing beaches, we plan to visit Universal Studio Florida and hope to enjoy all the attractions in one day. However, the endless waiting time might be unbearable to us. In order to ensure my friends and I have a memorable experience in the theme park without feeling exhausted, I will conduct quantitative analyses: The first one is to forecast the daily waiting time by using multiple regression and determine the best day for visiting; the second one is to make decision about buying Express tickets based on my friends’ personal preferences.

III. Forecasting Average Waiting Time of April 15th — Time Series Method

To start with my quantitative analysis, we collected the daily average waiting time data from Touring Plan website (https://touringplans.com/universal-studios-florida/wait-times) and Orlando’s climatic data provided by The Weather Channel (https://weather.com/weather/today/l/USFL0372:1:US).

We collected the daily waiting time data from November 2015 to April 2016, and then divided the data into groups of three to find the average waiting time in this three-day period. Based on the averaged data, we decided to use time series methods to forecast the approximate average waiting time, ran MS-Excel 3-period moving average data analysis and got the forecast results as the following graph:

[pic 1]

According to the following graph, the forecast curves and observation curve coincide in some points and tend to move in a similar pattern. Therefore, the forecast result for the average daily waiting time of April 13th to 15th period is 384.67 minutes and the average error equals to 55.46 minutes.

[pic 2]

Since we hope to reduce the standard errors and increase the accuracy of forecast results, we decided using Weighted Moving Average Method to optimize results by selecting different weights for different data points. After trial-and-error, we picked up weights as: W1 = 0.6 (most recent), W2 = 0.3, W3 = 0.1 (oldest). And the result of time series analysis shows as follow:

[pic 3]

The forecast result is 355.33 minutes and the average error equals to -1.13 minutes. Approximately, we will wait for a total of 355.33 minutes during our visiting day.

IV. Whether to buy the Express tickets? —Multiattribute Decision Analysis

There are two kinds of Universal Express Pass tickets: Universal ExpressSM Unlimited Pass and Universal ExpressSM Pass^[1]. Universal ExpressSM Unlimited Pass allows people to skip the regular line over and over again on participating rides and attractions while Universal ExpressSM Pass allows you to skip the regular line one time.

According to forecasting analysis in part 1, the total waiting time of April 15 will be 355.3 minutes (5.9 hours). For Express line, the total waiting time is calculated as 60 minutes based on a 5 minutes’ maximum waiting time for each attraction^[2], and since there are limited Express pass tickets available each day . If we buy a Universal ExpressSM Pass, we will save approximately 295.3 minutes (4.9 hours).

If we buy an Unlimited pass, during the total opening hours from 8:am to 6:pm (10 hours) on that day, excluding 2-hour for dining, single experiencing of all attractions will take us 3 hours, because we need 1 hour in total to transfer^[3], 1 hour in total to wait in Express line, and  1 hour to actually enjoy ourselves inside these attractions. Therefore, we will be able to experience all attractions 2.7 times approximately^[4], hence the time we save will be 797.31minutes.

Therefore, for my two friends and I, there are three alternatives with different cost and time saved (se Table below):

Furthermore, we computed the utility for each alternative, based on the concern that people usually have a decreasing marginal utility for attractions^[5], and a linear utility line for cost^[6] (see table below).