To FE or not to FE?
This is my take on the FE experience, at least, my take our OUR FE experience - and I'm sure they're all different.
Read the fine print
So, prior to finding Disboards (which nicely met my need to obsessively research my vacations), I had no idea what an FE exchange was - or even that they existed. I read a fair bit (remember - my need to take breaks from writing all summer), so I knew I wanted nothing to do with any group that involved 40 cabins and 100 people.
Fortunately, a brave soul stepped up to organize the FE, and when I checked, she said the groups would be capped at about 10 cabins - perfect, I figured, we an do this. I assumed it would be something along the lines of "our cabin gives 1 gift to each person in the other cabins", and we had about 40 people.
What I did NOT ask (and I might have missed it being posted - I accept blame here) were what the rules were. I found out the rules in late December, and that was about 3 weeks before we were leaving, and just when I was in my work-a-thon. I nearly fell over ... the rules were:
- Each person gives a gift to each person in the other cabins.
- Each adult in each cabin, gives a "cabin gift" to each cabin.
So... let's round up and pretend there were 40 people other than us (close enough), and 10 other cabins (we agreed to go up to 11 cabins total due to families wanting to stay together).
That's 40 individual gifts * 3 people in our cabin = 120 gifts
AND
That's 10 cabin gifts * 2 adults in our cabin = 20 gifts
(How's that for gratuitous overuse of annoying smilies?)
And, you can bet that Conor and DH weren't contributing (to be fair, I'm the one that signed us up).
Accepting the fine print and moving on
So, I had a bit of a crisis ... but then I remembered (hope you're sitting down) - this is a vacation, this is not a life-altering event, and I was NOT going to stress about this. It wasn't so much the money side of things (though that was part of it), but rather the hassle of it all. In the spirit of Special Agent Oso (whom you either know or you don't), I decided on a 3-step plan:
- I decided that "a gift" is something smaller than I had envisioned, especially from Conor. So - yes, sorry, but a pencil covered in Canadian flags is a gift from Conor to an adult. I still had our "nicer" gifts, and so everyone would get something that was somewhat unique, anyway.
- I decided that we would combine our gifts - so, if Goofy was on our list to give to, he'd be getting a baggie with all the gifts from all 3 of us. Ditto on the room gifts.
- I decided I would top up things a bit with things I bought on the ship or at port (advantages of being assigned Thursday for our distribution day). Not cheap, but I had no time at this point for anything else, nor luggage space!
I also coped in my usual ways ... spreadsheets (really, how did I exist without them before?) and labels. I printed off labels for each baggie ("To Goofy - from all your friends in cabin 9120"), and then just tossed a whole whack (or so I thought) of baggies in the luggage.
As always, the grocery store and the drug stores were my friends
About all I could manage to do before we left was to hit up the drug store (needed to top up our supplies of Advil, etc., anyway) and the grocery store (heck - gotta eat). I found a nice supply of baby spoons of the toss-away variety for the 6 month old on our list because I wanted to make sure whatever I gave her was safe (Conor used to love playing with them in addition to eating with them), and some Canadian candy. Lucked out at the grocery store and found individually wrapped Macintosh Toffees (YUM), so those were added to the mix - mostly as room gifts.
Assembly
On board, I bought some
DCL stickers, some Mickey head post-it notes, and some post-cards. On shore, I got a bunch more post-cards.
Then, I did nothing until Wednesday night of course ... what can I say - it was vacation!
On Wednesday night, I sat on our bed after Conor was asleep, and informed DH that he could either help or get out. He got out.
I assembled everything by cabin - one baggie per person; one room-baggie per cabin, and then I put these in either a tote bag (we got a lot as gifts) or in a big baggie.
I quickly burned through my own baggie stash, and then resorted to peeling labels off the baggies we had received (yes, a high point of the vacation for me) to complete my task -so, sorry if you got your baggie back - I promise I didn't do anything nasty with it!
An hour later (I hope it was only an hour), I looked at what was left, and added it to certain baggies, and then kept some stuff that I figured Conor would like (plastic pirate coins - reviled by the not-so-very-nice person who posted just before we left about how "thoughtless" FE gifts were - including plastic coins, but loved by 4.5 year olds).
I was then, officially, baggied out. I put my bags together, and hit the sack. (Sorry- unintentional but actually quite bad and funny pun there!)
To be clear, I have a very underactive crafting gland - I can't even make the baggies look cute. They were, however, intact, complete, neat, and ready to go on time - and that's as good as you're going to get in my state.
New levels of ridiculousness - Delivery day
So, due to bad planning/luck, I was trying to do both laundry and deliver FE gifts on Thursday morning. It was not as bad as the wretched sail-away party, but it approached it...
I got up at 6:00 a.m. Laundry was ready to go - so I headed there first - the polar opposite end of the ship from where we were - that's far, especially at 6:00 a.m., before coffee. I arrive, and realize I have Conor's card. It won't work, presumably because we didn't set it up to charge, of course. I would have cursed, but there was a very nice man there, so I refrained.
I trucked back to the room with the laundry (because I worry about these things). Stumbled about until I found my card. Headed back- with laundry. Finally cajole the bleepin' machines to work. Check my phone- note the time, so as to ensure I return in time, or risk the wrath of the laundry etiquette police.
By now, it is, somehow, 6:30 a.m., and I had wanted this done before now. Sigh. Trek back to the room to get the first batch of FE stuff. Fortunately, most of the rooms are "clumped" on certain floors, and I had organized my tote bags accordingly. I started on floor 10 (many cabins). Dropped down to 9 to get my next bags (how such small stuff got so bulky is beyond me). Popped down to 8 - did a few there, then jogged down to 5 - got lost (it's not set up like the other ones - and I was at the wrong end). Got un-lost.
Check phone- still time, I think, to finish this off. Drop down to 2 - sneak about delivering our stuff.
Dash back upstairs (elevator - sorry!) just in time to move the laundry on. I still haven't had coffee at this point. Retaliate by making my husband get out of bed early to go get the coffee.
Managed to stay awake long enough to go get the laundry from the dryer, thus avoiding the laundry etiquette police entirely. (Don't get me wrong - I've used laundromats many times over the years, and I get it - I just don't think that most people leave their laundry lying about intentionally - heck, they could be having a morning like mine!)
And, then, we called the whole FE experience DONE.
Final thoughts - would we FE again?
The friend who talked us into DCL asked me this, as she was getting ready for her next cruise, and she'd never done it. My thoughts...
Yes, it was fun most of the time. I had envisioned delivering the gifts with Conor (he would have loved it) but that would have taken about 20 years or so, and by Thursday on the cruise, that was just not worth it. Also - I have a non-crafty kid - many of the gifts we received were hand-made, and (at least to me), it really seemed like they enjoyed making them (I'm projecting, I realize).
Conor did love getting the gifts, but the majority of them have been abandoned since returning home. (He's still using his small clip-board with the post-it notes on it - weirdo.) We got a couple of picture frames that Conor liked, so they'll end up in his room. Some of the stuff I put aside for the trip home - small Cars colouring book with invisible ink, Jake stickers, etc., and they were useful there.
To be honest, DH and I got very little that we will use again (more on that in a minute), even though much of it was very nice and a lot of thought went into them. We have too much stuff, we think, and we don't like collecting (usually we do 1 or 2 souvenirs, max, from any vacation, and one of them is usually edible). DH did keep his pirate beer cozy thingy though, much to everyone's amusement, and the dad crazy-glue gift was genius.
There is a reasonable amount of work, though, as described somewhat frantically above. And, I didn't even make anything myself- I just bought stuff - and we don't have to worry too much about money, for which we are very, very grateful - 140 gifts add up if you're not making them yourself.
So.... I think I recommend the FE thing if you're crafty or enjoy that type of thing, and maybe they're more the type of kids who could get more into creating the stuff vs. receiving. Without kids? Not in a million years, if you were me. This was all about Conor, who didn't get as much of my attention as I would have liked in the last year, due to work and my thesis. He did love it.
Now... what did we do with the stuff we couldn't use? Note... luggage space was at a premium for us, and Conor was going to bring home most of his stuff, and we hate wasting stuff.
Random acts of FE kindness
This, I actually really enjoyed - I read about it somewhere on Disboards -can't remember if the person got flamed - hope not, because it's brilliant.
Basically, as each batch of FE gifts came in, we sorted them (after Conor went to bed) into "Keep" and "Give away" piles. Most days, we would stick some of the give away stuff in our tote, and if we saw an FE out that seemed to fit the right age/gender/interests mix (surprisingly easy to tell - especially with all the door magnets), we'd add extra FE contributions.
So, all the princess stuff I received (minus a few things that Conor's girl friends would like) went to little girl FEs. Sports-related stuff (mostly given to DH, who isn't too sure what a sport is most days) went to appropriate FEs. Boy stuff that Conor rejected - off to boys. Candy (we had too much and didn't need more), we left for our cabin attendant.
If you were in my FE group, please know that we really appreciated what you gave us - we were blown away by the effort in many cases. We just couldn't pack it all to take home, and we were unlikely to use it, so we honestly tried to find people who would enjoy them!
Yes, I know some people might just have turfed the stuff (or, for all I know they then made the rounds on the ship again) but it was the best I could come up with.
We did have a small stash of things we thought Rosa (cabin attendant) might want for her girls - so we left them for her (2 brand-new boxes of crayons, for example - we have 200,000 at home for some reason).
Final FE words
So, long story short... would we do it again? Well, that would depend on whether we ever do another DCL cruise, wouldn't it? You'll just have to wait.
He was totally content to gaze at them from on high (one floor up was his preferred vantage point) for about 2 minutes, then he was good to go.
