A Comparison of Algorithms for Finding an Efficient Theme Park Tour

Abstract EN

The problem of efficiently touring a theme park so as to minimize the amount of time spent in queues is an instance of the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time-Dependent Service Times (TSP-TS).

In this paper, we present a mixed-integer linear programming formulation of the TSP-TS and describe a branch-and-cut algorithm based on this model.

In addition, we develop a lower bound for the TSP-TS and describe two metaheuristic approaches for obtaining good quality solutions: a genetic algorithm and a tabu search algorithm.

Using test instances motivated by actual theme park data, we conduct a computational study to compare the effectiveness of our algorithms.