Cris the Cruising Duck Man, The Joy of Cruising Podcast, 12/23

Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and, in my effort, to portray cruising in all its diversity, now for something completely different. This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Cris Kostiuk, creator of Cris the Cruising Duck Man. Let me preface by saying that for the most part up until recently, I have been rather ambivalent toward the phenomenon of hiding and finding toy ducks on cruise ships. First of all, I assumed it would be a short-lived trend that would fade away. Wrong! Secondly, I kind of thought it was mainly for kids—and since I no longer have young children to cruise with I have “aged out” of the target clientele. Wrong again. Cruise ship ducks are very much a kids, and adults, aspect of cruising.

The tide started to change for me in terms of paying a little more attention to cruise ship duck mania when I began to read about this duck trend in non-cruise media. Then I read a blog post by arguably the top cruise blogger/podcaster in the world, Matt Hochberg, of Royal Caribbean Blog that opened my eyes. In a blog whose title seemingly was directed at me, Hiding Ducks On A Cruise Ship Is A "Crazy" and Popular Trend - Whether You Like It Or Not https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2024/09/05/cruising-ducks-how-to-hide, Matt shared some information that put to rest any notion of cruise duck mania being a passing fad. For instance, there is a cruising ducks Facebook group that is approaching 300k members. And, Matt’s blog mentioned today’s guest.

What moved me to a podcast about duck mania though were images of ducks that would regularly show up in my Facebook feed; these ducks were a far cry from dollar store ducks or ducks sold in bulk on Amazon. They were amazing. You see I was Facebook friends with Cris the Cruising Duck Man. So, I invited him on the show.

After a catastrophic accident that Cris was fortunate to survive, following his recovery, Cris formed a new outlook on life and decided to start traveling more, including his 1st cruise. Of course, he got hooked. On his 2nd cruise, he took his kids and started learning about ducks. He got hooked on that too, to the point he purchased a 3-D printer (which ultimately became 6 3-D printers!) Cris takes multiple large suitcases of ducks every cruise & created a website cruisecave.com for selling his 3-D printed ducks. Cris says, ‘I love getting photos with people. I always try to get a photo with the Captain and the Cruise Director giving them a duck.’  

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