As the excitement died down following an eventful Rum River Festival weekend from June 6-9, the Princeton community reveled in the positive impacts left in the wake of “Mama Duck,” the world’s largest rubber duck.
The streets of Princeton were filled to the brim with visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the large duck, and the thousands of people made this year’s Rum River Festival one to remember.
According to the Executive Director of the Princeton Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism (PACCT) Kim Young, Mama Duck drew in between 60,000 to 70,000 people to the community for the weekend event.
“We got that number from the big duck crew. They base that number off of their merchandise sales, and that’s where we got those numbers from. It doesn’t count Sunday or the parade day, that was just Friday and Saturday,” Young said. “We had a feeling it was going to be a big event, but we had no idea it was going to be that big. It was unreal. I am still kind of in shock about it.”
Young also predicts that the traffic through Princeton over the weekend was also higher than the duck’s crew estimates as many people were spotted doing drive-bys of the duck and taking pictures of it from the comfort of their cars on Rum River Drive.
The large crowds created a big boom in sales and traffic for local businesses, based on responses sent to the PACCT.
“We’ve been trying to collect very unofficial data about how it impacted our community, and we’ve gotten some really positive feedback about how it positively impacted them. Their sales were increased, their foot traffic was increased,” Young said.
Below are a few of the responses the PACCT has received so far about the festival weekend and Mama Duck’s visit. The names of the businesses were requested to remain anonymous.
- “Our store increased about 25% in our customer count on Friday and Saturday. We heard a lot of positive feedback about how busy downtown was, and that no one had ever seen that many people in Princeton.”
- “We may have had one of our busiest weekends ever!”
- “The Big Duck was such a great draw for Princeton! It was amazing to see the people that were in town from Thursday through Sunday.”
- “Momma Duck’s visit brought in more sales and services than we’ve seen on any day in the last year!”
According to Young, Princeton’s Idle Hands Tattoo was offering rubber duck flash tattoos over the weekend and the shop ended up having tattooed 63 of them on folks visiting for the festival. Young also said that Pizza Pub sold almost 300 of their rubber duck drinks over the weekend.
“It was incredible. That is a really big part of why we do what we do at the Chamber, to bring people into the community to see how awesome Princeton is,” Young said. “It was a really great way to show off our community. … I think overall, it really brought an economic boost to our community. It was just absolutely fantastic. I don’t have the words.”
That economic boost brought on by Mama Duck’s visit was helped by the advice of crew in the recommendation of placing her downtown to make it easy for visitors to walk to local businesses and restaurants.
“When we first arranged to have the Big Duck here, it was recommended to put it downtown so that people could easily walk to our local retailers and restaurants,” Young said. “Although parking was a bit of a challenge, we are so glad we put it where we did, because our small businesses really benefited from it.”
At the site of the world’s largest rubber duck, the Bremer Bank Parking lot, the PACCT had a booth with the Duck-orating contest rubber ducks on display as well as some merchandise for sale to support the chamber’s tourism department.
According to Young, the booth had 200 T-shirts and 100 hats for sale at the booth and all of the items were sold out by the end of the day Saturday, June 8. Young also said that the Mama Duck’s crew sold out of all of its merchandise as well.
The Duck-orating contest display was popular among visitors as well, with over 2,000 votes placed on the 53 ducks in the running.
“One thing that we are really proud of is that it was truly a community event. We had so many partners that helped put this on, so many volunteers, and we had 53 businesses that decorated ducks for the Duck-orating contest,” Young said. “We had people tell us that that was their favorite thing there. They just couldn’t believe just the creativity and the time that our businesses put into these (ducks). We had about 2,000 votes that people cast for these ducks, and so that was really fun.”
After tallying all of the votes, the winner of the Duck-orating contest was Coffee Corner who took home a golden duck trophy. Close behind in second place was Prairie Restorations Inc.
Also big at the festival this year, despite safety issues causing a last-minute change in plans, was the Lucky Duck Drop. According to Young, this year was the first time in her time with the PACCT that all of the tickets were sold for the event.
“For the first time since I’ve been here, we sold all 1,000 tickets,” Young said. “Because the river was so high, we had to do a different way to draw tickets. So we came up with the idea to dump them all in a pool and put duct tape over Dylan’s (Donner, Princeton liquor store manager) goggles, and we Facebook lived it. We really got some positive feedback about that — it was a lot of fun.”
The winner of the Lucky Duck Drop was Rick Swanson, who took home a cash prize.
While Mama Duck brought a lot of positivity and community togetherness to Princeton, uncontrollable circumstances prevented her from being on display for the full weekend.
Due to wind conditions Thursday, June 6, and Sunday, June 9, Mama Duck needed to be deflated for safety reasons.
“We were extremely disappointed about needing to take it down on Sunday. We were watching the weather really closely and we were not expecting those winds at all. It was literally pulling probably more than 10,000 pounds of concrete across the parking lot,” Young said. “When they were deflating it, they really had to fight it, because it acts like a sail. It could’ve been very dangerous. We know that people were extremely disappointed, as were we.”
Communicating the take down of Mama Duck also became a challenge on Sunday as AT&T and Century Link towers were down, preventing the PACCT from announcing the canceled event and people from learning of the news.
Despite the weather challenges, Mama Duck’s crew also found themselves enjoying the festivities. Young said the owner of Mama Duck loved his time in Princeton and would be happy to return.
“Craig, the owner of the big duck, said he just really liked being in a small community like this and that he would really like to come back,” Young said.
While Mama Duck is not confirmed to make a return to Princeton for the 2025 Rum River Festival, Young believes it could be a possibility.
“People have asked, ‘How are you going to top it?’ And I don’t know yet,” Young said. “I know that the world’s largest rubber duck crew would like to come back to Princeton; they just thoroughly enjoyed themselves here.”
Overall, Young said that Mama Duck’s visit really brought the community together.
“I just can’t say enough about our community coming together for this event. We were overwhelmed with the wonderful response,” Young said. “The Chamber is all about collaboration. It just makes it all the better when everybody works together, it makes it fun for the whole community. Thank you for being such a big part of it, being so positive about it, and just really embracing the Rum River Festival. It was incredible.”
To see more from the 2024 Rum River Festival and photos from the Duck-orating contest, visit the PACCT Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MNPACC.
Reach Chloe Smith at chloe.smith@apgecm.com
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