Any way to do fish extenders, or get to know people pre-cruise other than FB groups?

[MarkLT1]

Our family is taking a 7-night cruise, setting sail on April 4th. This will be our second Disney cruise, and we are incredibly excited (well, my wife and I are... the kiddos wont know until we arrive at the ship).

I was interested in possibly participating in the fish extender, and various groups that get to know each other a bit, pre-cruise. I noticed that there is a group board here, however our particular cruise has no thread (and so I assume no one from these boards going on it). The only other option I have found, are various Facebook groups. I am not a big fan of FB, and will not be registering a FB account. Does anyone know of any other groups that are non-facebook, where I might find other's going on our cruise? My googling hasn't yielded any good results.

 

[mousefan73]

Unfortunately the answer is no, Out of curiousity i checked cruise critic and disney cruises have basically no roll calls either. even here not too much actions. Our cruise has no members and our FB groups have about 800 in total, but its the Hawiian one so its large... The FB groups I usuallyh are about 200-300 members and a blast. FB is just the perfect platform with tools and communication.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Our family is taking a 7-night cruise, setting sail on April 2nd. This will be our second Disney cruise, and we are incredibly excited (well, my wife and I are... the kiddos wont know until we arrive at the ship).

I was interested in possibly participating in the fish extender, and various groups that get to know each other a bit, pre-cruise. I noticed that there is a group board here, however our particular cruise has no thread (and so I assume no one from these boards going on it). The only other option I have found, are various Facebook groups. I am not a big fan of FB, and will not be registering a FB account. Does anyone know of any other groups that are non-facebook, where I might find other's going on our cruise? My googling hasn't yielded any good results.

The Cruise Meets threads are where such activities are set up. If your cruise has no meet thread started, you could start it and see if anyone here is interested in things.

Directing others here on DISboards to other sites for groups isn't allowed.

What ship are you on?

 

[MarkLT1]

Oops! sorry, didn't know that was a rule breaker. My bad.

We are sailing on the Fantasy on April 4th (leaving for the trip on the 2nd.. I'll correct that in my original post).

Edit: also just saw mousefan73's message. I agree that FB is a good communications platform. Unfortunately, part of my day-to-day work is information security/privacy, and knowing what I know, no matter how good of a communication platform FB is, I cant bring myself to use the service. The various FB groups I have seen, also require that you have your real name, photo, etc.. attached to your FB profile, which unfortunately isn't something I'm willing to bend on.

 

[tidefan]

Our family is taking a 7-night cruise, setting sail on April 4th. This will be our second Disney cruise, and we are incredibly excited (well, my wife and I are... the kiddos wont know until we arrive at the ship).

I was interested in possibly participating in the fish extender, and various groups that get to know each other a bit, pre-cruise. I noticed that there is a group board here, however our particular cruise has no thread (and so I assume no one from these boards going on it). The only other option I have found, are various Facebook groups. I am not a big fan of FB, and will not be registering a FB account. Does anyone know of any other groups that are non-facebook, where I might find other's going on our cruise? My googling hasn't yielded any good results.

I agree. I tried FB and it is terrible. Very hard to follow discussion threads. I much prefer the discussion forums here.

If your cruise doesn't have a meet thread, you can start one here...

 

[gallaj0]

I had to start the thread for our cruise in June here. Seems like years ago there was a lot more activity on these Disboard threads; people planning meetups, fish extenders, everything was here that's over on FB now. That said, I did join the one on FB reluctantly, but I also have a profile with as little information as you could add back at the beginning.

 

[BadPinkTink]

I started the cruise meet up thread here on Dis for my cruise. I'm making sure to keep it active, posting all my cruise planning as I go along. I have found some cruisemates and my thread has some other cruises join in, due to the information that I'm posting.

Basically whats happened is that a certain group of travel agents and their friends have become the self proclaimed Fish Extender Official over on the dark side, on the book of phases. They ban all mention of Disboards and don't want people to know that the whole fish extender concept was started by a Disboard member and Disboards are the original fish extender groups.

There are threads here on Dis if you search which actually name the person on the book of phases who is the self styled head honcho and its her way or the no way. Its all because Disboards is owned by Dreams Unlimited, a large Disney specialist travel agency and these other travel agents don't like that. The groups actually state in their rules that any mention of Disboards is banned and they remove people from groups and are so controlling of what can and can't be posted.

 

[mousefan73]

I started the cruise meet up thread here on Dis for my cruise. I'm making sure to keep it active, posting all my cruise planning as I go along. I have found some cruisemates and my thread has some other cruises join in, due to the information that I'm posting.

Basically whats happened is that a certain group of travel agents and their friends have become the self proclaimed Fish Extender Official over on the dark side, on the book of phases. They ban all mention of Disboards and don't want people to know that the whole fish extender concept was started by a Disboard member and Disboards are the original fish extender groups.

There are threads here on Dis if you search which actually name the person on the book of phases who is the self styled head honcho and its her way or the no way. Its all because Disboards is owned by Dreams Unlimited, a large Disney specialist travel agency and these other travel agents don't like that. The groups actually state in their rules that any mention of Disboards is banned and they remove people from groups and are so controlling of what can and can't be posted.

But not all groups are run by this person. None of mine were actually. Some cruises also have more than one. My experience was always super positive. I also have no issue with my online life. I am on all platforms active and am open to who I am with the limited amount of personal info I give out.

 

[KVH]

FB is good for one thing in this aspect. If you pay attention to who is posting what, how they behave, and how they interact with others in the group month's before the sailing, you can get a REALLY good feel for what those people will be like, especially when they get on board.

Just sayin' . . .

 

[Chemist]

I only use that place FOR fish extenders. I did not give the site any actual information other than my email. The rest is semi-fictitious.

 

[MarkLT1]

Thanks for the thoughts/tips everyone. I'll definitely make a thread for my cruise date, and see if I get any bites. Even if we don't end up finding people beforehand, we'll still have an incredible time, and I'm sure we'll make some friends onboard.

FB is good for one thing in this aspect. If you pay attention to who is posting what, how they behave, and how they interact with others in the group month's before the sailing, you can get a REALLY good feel for what those people will be like, especially when they get on board.

Just sayin' . . .

From my (now distant) memories of how people behaved on FB before I purged it from my life, I probably would end up actively avoiding everyone onboard my cruise..

 

[Mainsail Minnie]

But not all groups are run by this person. None of mine were actually. Some cruises also have more than one. My experience was always super positive. I also have no issue with my online life. I am on all platforms active and am open to who I am with the limited amount of personal info I give out.

I also have only had nice experiences, and we've been in FE's for 5 different cruises. Everything was positive and laid-back, every time.

 

[GatorMomInNC]

My first DCL cruise was a WBTA in 2011 and I joined this board and met so many great fellow cruisers. On subsequent cruises I also met so many, and we did meet ups on board, especially on longer (Panama Canal, TA cruises).

But over the years the DISboards cruise meets have dramatically shrunk as people have migrated to That Social Network Site Which Shall Not Be Named (TSNSWSNBN). I hate TSNSWSNBN. I am not a member. I think the premise and execution are both ridiculously intrusive and flawed.

But I love to geek out over planning and preparing when I go on a DCL cruise. So, I go on my husband's TSNSWSNBN under his name. I explain to everyone that I am not DH, but DH's wife. But, I vastly prefer what used to go on here at the DIS and I wish we could get it back.

As far as FEs, I will say that I prefer a VERY small group - even just 3-4 other cabins would be PERFECT. The reason why is that I don't want to spend half of one of my cruise days running all over the ship doing FEs, but still want the fun and surprise of getting gifts in the FE. But it is a "responsibility" I don't want to overwhelm my vacation or to be too much work, ESPECIALLY on short cruises. So if you can meet up with even 2-4 cabins here on the DIS, I think that would be great.

Another option is to hang up your FE and buy your kids their own gifts - a little something every day. They will still get the surprise, but you don't have to deal with the stress of exchanging with others. They will be happy, your vacation will be easier, and you will be able to get them things you (as their parent) will know they love.

 

[KashasMom]

But not all groups are run by this person. None of mine were actually. Some cruises also have more than one. My experience was always super positive. I also have no issue with my online life. I am on all platforms active and am open to who I am with the limited amount of personal info I give out.

We've always had positive experiences as well and none of ours were run by that person.

 

[tidefan]

My problem over there is that it's so dang hard to find anything. People start a thread and 400 people reply and there is no order to anything. At least here, all threads are titled and you can look through what you want. I have also found that at least DVC Member Cruises still do very well on the meet threads here at the DIS, however other ones do tend to be hit or miss.

When we did our last DVC member cruise, I organized the FE list here and there was another on the site not to be named. I had a few people come up to me when I was outside our room and say "hey, your not on the FE list, but we saw your FE on your door and couldn't find it on our list, so we are confused" (paraphrasing...). I told at least 5 different sets of people about DISboards and they had no idea. Since then, they've all gotten accounts and a couple of them have told me that they were so glad to find the site (due to the navigation issues I mentioned above). I don't really do FB because I don't agree with their selling all of the information they collect as well as their facial recognition.