The Wonderful World of a Disney Cruise: Fish Extenders and FE Gifts

Back in February Rob took a job that allowed him to work from home most of the time. He travels about one week a month. The rest of the time he enjoys this office space.

Not bad, right?   Lots of light, a great view and his own gym.  

In additon to the office, he got a nice signing bonus. Since he'd gotten so many benefits from the job, he decided that the entire family should enjoy the bonus.  M9 immediately suggested that a Disney cruise wuld be fun for the whole family.  Everyone quickly agreed to her brilliant plan. We've spent the last few months planning that adventure.

Rob and I have taken a cruise before. You pick your date, buy your tickets, get on the boat ship. Not so with a Disney Cruise. There is planning. Not just planning, strategizing, to be done. There are message boards, websites and books devoted to getting the most out of your cruise. There are Facebook groups dedicated to each and every aspect of the Disney Cruise. You can even "meet" your fellow shipmates before you see the ship.

One of the Disney cruise extras that I learned about are fish extenders (aka FE) and FE gifts. The idea here is similar to that of Christmas stockings. You hang these fish extenders on hooks (shaped like fish on some of the Disney ships) outside your cabin door. Other guests on your cruise bring gifts to put in your fish extenders and you bring gifts to put in their fish extenders. Fun, right?! As with all things Disney, the idea is to add to the magic. The trick is not to add to the stress.

Keeping the magic vs. stress balance in mind, I made our fish extenders and some of our FE gifts. I'm pretty pleased with all of it.

Here are the fish extenders.  Since we'll be occupying two cabins I made two, each with three pockets.  One pocket for each family member.

The FE gifts were a little more challenging to plan.  On our cruise there are three FE groups.  Each group has about 25 cabins included in their exchange.  Our group includes 24 other cabins, 70 people total.  That's a lot of gifting.  I would rather spend my vacation budget on dolphin swims and drinks by the pool.  Sorry fellow FE groupies but it's the truth.  However, I do like to make magic so here's what my creative brain, aided by Amazon, Google and Pinterest came up with for our FE gifts.

Using some super cute Mickey shaped cookie cutters, ribbon, and star covered wire we made Christmas ornaments for each cabin. 

For the kids in our group, we made Mickey hand wands for the boys.  Shane says they are butt slappers.  He's probably right.  That's probably what they are and what they will be used for.  At least, they are Mickey hand butt slappers.  For the girls, we made fairy wands.  There is one teen age boy in our FE group.  He'll be getting a duct tape wallet, complete with a Mickey sticker, of course.

I'll try to remember to share pictures of our door magnets when we get back.  That's another bit of Disney magic that I have enjoyed preparing.