If you’ve been on a cruise in the past year you may have heard about people discovering rubber ducks on board the ship. And naturally, you were probably thinking “what the duck?”
In the past year, there have been sightings of rubber ducks all major cruise lines, including Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Princess, and Crystal Cruises.
These hidden rubber ducks are left around the ships as an unofficial game of “hide and seek” on cruises, and this odd trend has become popular with cruisers of all ages.
CruiseRadio.net reported recently that the cruise duck phenomenon started last year when a ten-year-old girl named Abby from Liberty, TX left around 50 rubber ducks in random spots aboard the Carnival Breeze for her fellow passengers to find.
But there are instances of people doing this as far back as 2015.
The rubber ducks on cruise ships thing has gotten so popular that there is a Cruising Ducks group on Facebook with around 30k people.
The way most people do it is to purchase a bunch of rubber ducks and then customize them in various ways, such as writing the date of the cruise sailing and the name of the ship.
There are not really official rules with the rubber duck fun, but usually, they are left in public areas, except on decks where they may blow into the water or in the gift shops where they might be mistaken for gifts to purchase. Some people will hide them in their stateroom for future guests to find.
When people on cruise ships find a rubber duck, they often post them to social media with the hashtag #CruisingDucks.
Happy rubber duck hunting.