Talk:Ride the Ducks

Incidents

User:Ladybugluvr2004, Why did you remove the following incident from Ride the Ducks?: July 7, 2010 - At 2:40pm, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a "Ride the Ducks" boat was hit by an 800-foot barge and sank Wednesday afternoon in the Delaware River. More than 30 people had to be rescued. The accident happened off Market Street and Columbus Boulevard around 2:40 p.m. Wednesday. The Coast Guard says 37 people were on the boat, including two crew members. Of those people 35 had to be rescued. Eight people were taken to Hahnemann University Hospital in stable condition. Philadelphia Police say two people remain unaccounted for. On 8 July The parent company suspended all operations pending the results of the investigation. "Our thoughts and prayers are with our Philadelphia tour guests, crew members and their families. We are attending to their needs first. In the interim, we have voluntarily suspended our Ride The Ducks operations nationwide. If you already have a reservation, you can receive a full refund or reschedule for a future date. We will resume operations shortly."

I also added the following: 2 May 1999 - Hot Springs, Arkansas - Thirteen people died after an amphibious tourist boat took on water and passengers panicked while scrambling for life preservers, officials said. The duck sank in 51 feet of water on Lake Hamilton, south of Hot Springs, the city manager said. Residents of nearby condominiums saw the boat in trouble, ran to their own boats and rushed to rescue as many people as they could, a local emergency director said.

--Degen Earthfast (talk) 17:27, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

1. (adding(TW))
2. (cur | prev) 23:57, 8 July 2010 Courcelles (talk | contribs) m (6,480 bytes) (Protected Ride the Ducks: Semi-protection. using TW ([edit=autoconfirmed] (expires 23:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)) [move=autoconfirmed] (expires 23:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC))))

Utilizing other theme park companies (Disney Parks, Six Flags, Cedar Fair, etc.) as a guide, an Incidents at Herschend parks article has been created that will house summaries of any notable incidents occurring within properties owned/operated by HFEC. All the incidents here have been moved there, with an appropriate short mention of the most recent incident in Philadelphia. In such summaries, it has been determined (again based on the similar articles for other park companies) that names of victims should not be included. If an 2010 Philadelphia Ride the Ducks accident article is created, discussing the entire situation, then it would be appropriate. As to the anti-Duck petition, the cited article is a non-notable blog, and for all we know a single disgruntled person. If the local news covers the story, then perhaps it can be included, but without the text of the petition. --McDoobAU93 (talk) 00:30, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Quickie update on that petition. I looked at the site ... its last edit was over 2 years ago. Sounds like the creators lost interest, or didn't get many signers (perhaps a lot of page views, but few willing to sign it). Very non-notable, in my opinion. --McDoobAU93 (talk) 01:04, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Good deal.--Degen Earthfast (talk) 14:42, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

References

September 24 2015

So from what I understand, the Ride The Ducks vehicle that crashed in Seattle was being leased/rented from RTD International (the subject of this article) by the smaller company, RTD of Seattle. Is that correct? ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:59, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

If you have a source that confirms that the company involved is a direct subsidiary of the company that is the subject of the article, it would be added. Borrowing equipment is not the same as borrowing personnel. That said, if the investigation reveals a mechanical failure associated with the vehicle and that the specific vehicle was indeed on loan from the subject of the article, then it would belong here. --McDoobAU93 22:05, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

This is kind of ridiculous that you claim that this does not belong to the article. The Seattle operation is a franchisee, and uses leased equipment. By this standard, an food poisoning incident at a McDonald's does not belong in the McDonald's article because it was a franchisee. This is the article for "Ride the Ducks," which is a nationwide franchised operation. It should include information related to the franchisees. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.157.1.216 (talk) 22:23, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I was looking at ridetheducks.com/about-us which says, "1997: Ride The Ducks agrees to provide vehicles to Ride The Ducks of Seattle, also a relationship that continues today." ~Adjwilley (talk) 22:48, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I went ahead and added a sentence to the article, indicating the boat was being operated by RTD Seattle. From what I've read so far it looks like there probably was some sort of mechanical failure (blowout possibly?) but it's certainly too early to say anything about that in the article. I think one sentence (two at the maximum) will be the appropriate amount of WP:WEIGHT for the incident. ~Adjwilley (talk) 01:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

If the vehicles had been operated by RTD Seattle for nearly 20 years, I think it's safe to say that they're no longer connected to the original RTD company. If anything, this incident (and all the others) should go into a separate article discussing this type of generic attraction unless there's a much more direct connection. By more direct, I would say it would need to be a situation where RTD Atlanta (the subject of this article) was providing maintenance on the RTD Seattle vehicles. Absent that, there's no other connection, especially if the original transaction was nearly 20 years ago. --McDoobAU93 02:17, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. Ride The Ducks' website calls it "a relationship that continues today". RTD designs and builds the boats, and the RTD logo is prominently displayed on the side. I'm inclined to agree with the IP editor above comparing it to a franchise. I'm also unconvinced by the argument that this article should only be about the Atlanta company, and not the other "Ride The Ducks" tours that use identical boats with identical logos using the same "Ride The Ducks" name. ~Adjwilley (talk) 04:24, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

RTD's site is also a primary source. As you correctly pointed out in the article text, we need to clean this up significantly to remove copyvio issues and improve sourcing. The article lede is totally wrong, as even the RTD site says the company has been independent for a few years now (it is no longer part of Herschend). As to my point, the article currently is primarily about the company based in Atlanta. If you propose that we should redo the article to be more reflective of all the companies that use the "Ride the Ducks" name, that would be a very good idea and one personally I would support. Under that scenario, the Seattle incident would belong. --McDoobAU93 13:21, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I think I agree with Adjwilley that this article is not quite accurate. This article: http://q13fox.com/2015/09/28/state-regulators-suspend-operations-of-ride-the-ducks-tour-company/ perhaps makes the relation between "Ride the Ducks" and "Ride the Ducks of Seattle" more clear. Which is that RDI sold vehicles to Ride the Ducks of Seattle, but also provided service bulletins - the Seattle incident involved a DUC sold in 2005, with the service bulletin regarding an axel problem in 2013; clearly an on-going relation. The Seattle "Ride the Ducks of Seattle" company obviously uses the trademarked name "Ride the Ducks" - so part of the operations of "Ride the Ducks" is leasing out the name. The casual reader (such as I) would be rather confused about the situation. As an aside, I ran across articles from 2009 regarding a trademark dispute - RDI was opposed to other similar companies who got their customers to quack like ducks link. RDI is obviously protective of its trademark. Bdushaw (talk) 18:09, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Copyright violations

I removed some pretty blatant copyright violations from the article and tagged a couple more. The text seems to have been copy-pasted from the company's web page. I don't have time at the moment to edit the tagged text, but others are welcome to do so if they so desire. ~Adjwilley (talk) 04:10, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Locations and Ownership

The article states that Ride The Ducks has a location in Newport, KY, and that another company, which is not Ride The Ducks, has a location in Cincinnati. Anyone familiar with either of those cities will recognize the unlikelihood that this is true, and that duck boats based in Newport were crossing the river and operating in Cincinnati's Downtown neighborhood. Neither the source linked for the claim that RTD was operating in Newport, which was RTD itself, nor the source given that a company using the same or similar name in Cincinnati, which is RTD Seattle, has anything on the linked page claiming to operate in either of these Ohio River locations.

What brought me to this page in the first place was a local Facebook discussion claiming that RTD in Newport had closed. ridetheducks.com, which was previously given by multiple sources as a link for RTD Newport, now mentions Branson and only Branson on its main page (though another page mentions 100+ boats being in operation around the world), and Tripadvisor claims RTD in Newport had closed as of August 3 (though Groupn still has an ad!). A check of newspaper articles in other cities indicates at least a couple where operation seems to be suspended or closed.

Is there a non-Ride the Ducks Ride the Ducks page on Wikipedia that covers companies using RTD-manufactured boats and RTD branding? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.57.218.35 (talk) 04:59, 30 October 2017

More specifically, this article seems to be past tense, and indicates that Ride the Ducks has closed down. Yet there are still companies using that name. It isn't so obvious to me, when a company is sold to a new owner, yet still uses the old name, that it isn't still the named company. Gah4 (talk) 04:55, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

additonal

The locations section indicates additional locations, but not what they are in addition to. Can we just give locations, additional or not? Gah4 (talk) 01:33, 3 November 2020 (UTC)