Rationing Experiences

Abstract

We describe practical, lightweight algorithmic solutions for the problem of one-sided matching with dynamic ordinal preferences and multiple capacities. In particular, we focus on amusement park scheduling where guests have preferences over rides they wish to experience and rides have limited capacity in each time period. We explore sequential variants of the Random Serial Dictatorship (RSD) and Probabilistic Serial (PS) mechanisms, and we experimentally validate their efficiency using a simulation calibrated to ride capacity and wait time data from Disneyland.

Term Project

This paper was our term project for ECON 285 at Stanford in Fall 2024. Theme parks are a personal hobby of mine, so it was very gratifying to unite my passion for market design with my love of theme parks! You can find a link to the PDF here. Thank you to thrill-data.com and darkridedatabase.com for providing the data used in the paper.

Team

• Lyle Goodyear
• Ivan-Aleksandar Mavrov