Thank you readers for hanging in there with me while I enjoyed fun and frolics aboard the Disney Dream and at Walt Disney World last week! I’m back so now you’ll have new stuff to read. I know you are excited!
First off, I want to share with you something entirely new for Disney Cruise Line, the Aquaducky Derby.
Aquaducky Derby
It’s so new that ours was the very first cruise to ever do this event. It was a fund-raiser for Make a Wish International, and we were able to raise over $5000 on our cruise for this fabulous organization. Did you know that every year Disney Cruise Line grants 735 wishes to children with life-threatening diseases? That’s just Disney Cruise Line! That does not include what they grant in their theme parks. That’s pretty awesome of Disney but Make a Wish International still needs cash to operate with so that’s where this fund-raiser comes in.
Throughout the cruise, passengers were able to purchase cute rubber duckies for $5 each.
Rubber Duckies were purchased for $5 each.
We were asked to write our room number on our ducky with a Sharpie so they could track the winner. This also made it easy to return the ducky to its rightful owner after the Derby. People even decorated their ducks in all different colors. Anything was fine as long as it was done with a Sharpie. Then on the last day, Disney VoluntEARS were on hand to collect the ducks in these mesh bags.
Disney VoluntEARS collected the ducks to take to the start line.
Even Donald and Daisy were there to cheer for the event, dressed in their cruise duds.
Donald and Daisy were excited for this event!
So, basically what happened is the water was turned off of the Aquaduck (the water slide/roller coaster which can be found on the Dream and the Fantasy), all the ducks were dumped in, the water was turned back on and each duck had to fend for itself to find its way to the finish line.
And they’re off!
More VoluntEARS collected the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers, the winners were announced, and the owners were presented with medals.
Here come the winners!
It was so much fun and way more exciting than I would have ever imagined a duck race in the Aquaduck could have possibly been.
They were also really organized about getting the ducks returned to their owners. I was curious as to how they were going to pull that off since there were over 1000 ducks participating. They had tables roped off and set up according to floor number. You walked up to the table that corresponded to your floor number, told the VoluntEAR your room number, and they found your duck(s) for you. I have to say, though, that my duck had a pretty rough ride!
My ducky got a little scarred and bruised.
He was all bruised up from all the other duckies’ Sharpie decorations. He was still smiling, though, so he didn’t seem to mind.
I really love that Disney did this event! It felt good to be a part of something meaningful on vacation, and they did a great job of putting on an exciting show. I don’t know if they have plans to do this every cruise but if they do, I would definitely do it again!
Would you participate in a fund-raiser on vacation?
Square Life Round World 