World’s Largest Rubber Duck Lands Friday @ Playland Beach

The World’s Largest Rubber Duck will make her grand return to Playland Beach this Friday, August 16th through Sunday, August 18th to celebrate the Second Annual Duck Days of Summer. The 61-foot-tall duck, nicknamed Mama, will be accompanied by her 10-foot-tall duckling Timmy, as well as a team of handlers led by Mama’s creator Craig Samborski. 

Samborski and his team are looking forward to bringing Mama back to Rye [see last year’s story At 61 Feet Tall, Mama Duck Lands at Playland Beach]. “We had a great audience [last year],” he said. “It’s an incredible setting. You’re right on Long Island Sound with an incredibly beautiful beach there. All the people who came to see us were awesome, and all the people at Playland that worked with us were just amazing helping us set up.”

Mama Duck is usually wrangled by a team of three people, though sometimes she needs four or five for events in which Mama Duck is the sole attraction. The Samborski’s team is assisted by local staff at the venues they visit.

Mama’s size makes her a high-maintenance duck. On land, she requires at least 16,000 pounds of concrete to hold her down and four hurricane blowers (two inside her and two outside her) to inflate her, in a process that takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. She is held in place by sixteen rigging points that are tied to the concrete blocks so Mama Duck doesn’t take flight unexpectedly. 

At her most recent stop in Ohio, high winds caused a rip on the top of Mama’s back. Fortunately, a tent company that makes military-grade tents was located on the edge of the fairgrounds where Mama was sitting, so Samborski and the other duck handlers were able to get her patched up and ready to migrate. 

Deflating Mama takes half an hour, after which the duck handlers roll her up (“like a long burrito,” according to Samborski) and put her in a cargo trailer with their other equipment. This process allows Mama to travel across the country. Samborski enjoys bringing Mama to new and returning audiences, since Mama and her wranglers “have a very friendly audience.” Samborski pointed out, “Anybody that’s going to see a giant yellow rubber duck is generally a happy person.” The duck’s fans include Elon Musk, who invited Mama Duck and Timmy to attend the grand opening of Tesla Gigafactory in Texas in 2022.

Outside of traveling with Mama, Samborski produces festivals, which he has done professionally for the past three decades. It was when he was producing a festival in Los Angeles in 2014 that the idea for Mama first came to be. “I was out drinking with a colleague one night,” Samborski recalled, “and we had enough to drink that he dared me to do it. So I did it. I don’t drink anymore, for fear that if I do, something like that will happen again.”

Mama Duck and Timmy are migrating from Ohio now and are expected to land safely for their second annual Playland visit this Friday, August 16th; Saturday, August 17th and Sunday, August 18th. Mama Duck should be nested on Playland Beach just off the boardwalk, and Timmy should be somewhere under her watchful eye. After Mama and Timmy get rolled back into burritos Sunday evening, they hit the flyway and flap their wings while headed to their next event in Tulsa, Oklahoma.