New business Seattle Splash Tours, wants to bring back amphibious bus tours to the city, despite a deadly accident effectively ending land-to-water bus tours. A Ride the Ducks vehicle crashed into a bus in Seattle causing six fatalities and millions paid out to victims’ families.
This new venture is different says owner John Malouf. The Hydra-Terra buses are built specially for tourism rather than the decades-old Ride the Ducks military vehicles, some of which date back to the 1940s and 1950s. "This is a completely different amphibian, built for tours," said Malouf, who has been running Alaska Amphibious Tours in Ketchikan for 20 years.
