fish extender gift giving etiquette

[Anal Annie]

Have you ever been dissapointed with a FE gift you have received???

I spent a decent amount of money on our FE gifts..they are personalized.
But because of this I can only give two per stateroom on the list.

I am afraid people will be upset that there were only two and not one for each person in the cabin. I know if I post this on our meets thread everyone will say that of course they would not be upset...but I would like to hear more opinions.

(sorry I can't say exactly what they are but my thread peeps are *everywhere*!)

No - it was always a neat surprise whatever it was! I also put a lot of thought and a little bit of money into a couple of my gifts and personalized things to the extent of the cruise dates & such. I tried to keep to $1 on a couple of things, but for example, I designed luggage tags and ordered them from Shutterfly - those were several dollars each. But that was my choice and not everybody chooses to spend more than they have to. But that's OK. I agree with others that if you sign up to participate you should give as well. That IS the point.

I came up with 6 things to give 'cuz at first I wasn't sure if I'd do just my assigned day or dribble stuff a little bit every day. In the end I decided to get clear plastic gift bags which I decorated with scrapbooking items and used rub down letters to personalize them with our thread name etc. and then I just went around once on my assigned day. Our organizer PM'd us the deck plans with everybody's cabin marked and laid out on them. We were a small group of only 11 cabins and I think it took me about 30 min. to go around. We had people on decks 8, 7, 6, 5 and 2, from one end of the ship to the other. I had put everybody's screen names and cabin numbers on the backs of the bags too since I'd personalized things to an extent so I had to be sure I was dropping off the right bag into the right FE - that may have slowed me down a little bit to be so methodical about it. All of my bags contained the same items and I just did one bag per cabin. I had one item that I put that was more for kids so I put one for each kid. I think most of the things we received were done in the same manner. It was not directed to individuals so much as the cabin.

 

[Miscoehill]

Would love to see a close up pic of a fish extender. I'd like to try and make one for our upcoming cruise! Can pm me with it if you want.

Thank you!

 

[wallyb]

Any particular Store you had
good luck finding things at?

 

[Disneyelf10]

I have just come back from the 5 night special cruise on the Magic and I delivered to all of the 127 cabins on the roster. I did decks 6, 7 and 8 in the afternoon of the Castaway Cay Day and then 2 and 5 on Friday. It took forever.

dolphingirl47

I was on this cruise too (9/1) and I passed out my gifts one night- to all the cabins and I think it took about 1.5-2 hours making sure everyone on the list was found. I had my cousin with me who also was passing out her gifts too so it didnt seem like it was that long. Plus we counted it was exercise- walking up and down each deck!
I loved the handmade items or the ones from someone's hometown, the time and thought that people put into their gifts was great and the other items were great too! It didnt need to be a lot or expensive, jut a thought and it was fun to join in. To who ever made the marble magnets- I think those were my favorite! I may "steal" your idea and make some more at home-ok? And the lanyards- my DH loved his and used it all week! I would still do it in the future.

 

[lauraguags]

when do I get infromation of how much I need to bring - or ship down there....

 

[Im_A_Princess]

Our enjoyment was mostly in the giving of the FE gifts (on the EB we gave the magnet below).
I really enjoyed seeing what had been left for us and seeing what other people thought up but really...the kids/we loved the smaller gifts like candy pieces as much as we loved the "bigger" gifts.
It REALLY is the thought that counts to us.
We also gave our FE gifts to people that were not on the FE List if we saw they were DIS members, we thought had really cute doors, they looked like they got on board and wanted to decorate their door but did not know they could a head of time, were celebrating a special occassion,... I did not want to take the magnets back home again-LOL
AND yes it does take some time but we were glad it did. It helpled walk off all the food we were eatting - LOL

 

[lbgraves]

WOW - thats a lot of cabins - I thought we had a lot with 37 staterooms participating! We have also decided to split up our FE exchange into 3 groups of 12 / 13 to make it more manageable. Did you actually deliver to 136 staterooms or did you split them up!

Our gift was actually one per family so I crossed off the staterooms that were linked. It ended up being around 124 and yes DS and I walked the halls delivering to everyone. There were always people out delivering. I don't think any of us knew what we were getting into. LOL!

 

[lbgraves]

Well that's not good.

LOL! It just seemed to but in actuality it probably took 1 1/2 - 2 hours to deliver all of the gifts. You figure walking both sides of the ship minding a printed list because there were lots of FEs on rooms not in our group but it was fun seeing everyone's FE and decorated doors.

 

[lbgraves]

Have you ever been dissapointed with a FE gift you have received???

I spent a decent amount of money on our FE gifts..they are personalized.
But because of this I can only give two per stateroom on the list.

I am afraid people will be upset that there were only two and not one for each person in the cabin. I know if I post this on our meets thread everyone will say that of course they would not be upset...but I would like to hear more opinions.

(sorry I can't say exactly what they are but my thread peeps are *everywhere*!)

I don't think anyone would complain. It is obvious the gifts that cost more than others with the personalization. Those are the ones that my kids do NOT get. There is absolutely no way that we could have made up enough maracas for everyone in the staterooms...that would have been over 500 easily. It was not the cost issue but the time needed to decorate the items. Personally, I wouldn't worry.

 

[BibbidyBobbidyBoo]

Sometimes we had just one gift per family, other times one per person. Some were packaged others were not.

We were never disappointed in what was left. It was always fun to see and I appreciated the time that people took to put things together and deliver them.

I am sure everyone will be happy with whatever you have put together for them!

-Kay

I think the norm is probably one per stateroom or sometimes one per family regardless of how many staterooms they have. But sometimes the gifts are one per person too.

Ditto- never disappointed in what was left- how can anyone be disappointed in getting anything that is FREE? hehe

Our enjoyment was mostly in the giving of the FE gifts (on the EB we gave the magnet below).
I really enjoyed seeing what had been left for us and seeing what other people thought up but really...the kids/we loved the smaller gifts like candy pieces as much as we loved the "bigger" gifts.
It REALLY is the thought that counts to us.
We also gave our FE gifts to people that were not on the FE List if we saw they were DIS members, we thought had really cute doors, they looked like they got on board and wanted to decorate their door but did not know they could a head of time, were celebrating a special occassion,... I did not want to take the magnets back home again-LOL
AND yes it does take some time but we were glad it did. It helpled walk off all the food we were eatting - LOL

I agree- thought that counts. And I also started putting out magnets on various other doors- DIS'ers who weren't on the deck map, other people I know from another board if I recognized their username on their door, and then eventually random people who had nothing on their board and were probably wondering who in the world was putting a magnet(s) on their door. LOL
I also didn't want to take any home- but I still had some left over and then forgot and left them in a drawer in the stateroom! LOL I guess I really REALLY didn't want to take the leftovers home....

 

[TotallyAngelic]

We have decided to split our main fish extender group of 37 staterooms into 3groups, but I think I will be giving out more than one gift per stateroom. I have one "home area" gift per stateroom which I will making, and then specific things for Halloween and for Pirate night and specific things for the children also. I may even make extra things for staterooms not on my list if I happen to pass any on my travels. We are also having a trick or treat so I will be taking things for that too! It's all very exciting and I am really looking forward to the Fish Extender exchange, especially as it is my first cruise! Now all I need to do is get on with making the fish extenders and the gifts!

 

[RRBB]

WOW - thats a lot of cabins - I thought we had a lot with 37 staterooms participating! We have also decided to split up our FE exchange into 3 groups of 12 / 13 to make it more manageable. Did you actually deliver to 136 staterooms or did you split them up!

We designed and had pins - similar to Disney trading pins - made that we distributed. We gave 1 package of 2 pins per family. So if a family had more than one stateroom listed in the FE exchange, we only left at one of them. (There were occassional exceptions to this rule, but we just didn't have enough made for 1/person.)

Have you ever been dissapointed with a FE gift you have received???

I spent a decent amount of money on our FE gifts..they are personalized.
But because of this I can only give two per stateroom on the list.

I am afraid people will be upset that there were only two and not one for each person in the cabin. I know if I post this on our meets thread everyone will say that of course they would not be upset...but I would like to hear more opinions.

(sorry I can't say exactly what they are but my thread peeps are *everywhere*!)

No, we loved opening our door to leave or coming back to the room and seeing new things in our FE. The fun was in the giving and the finding new surprises more than what we received.

 

[Stepht5]

We designed and had pins - similar to Disney trading pins - made that we distributed. We gave 1 package of 2 pins per family. So if a family had more than one stateroom listed in the FE exchange, we only left at one of them. (There were occassional exceptions to this rule, but we just didn't have enough made for 1/person.)


No, we loved opening our door to leave or coming back to the room and seeing new things in our FE. The fun was in the giving and the finding new surprises more than what we received.

Were yours the Black flags???

There were several gifts that I told dh we needed to find out where they had them made! LOL! Just in case I need *bulk* stuff again!

 

[RRBB]

Were yours the Black flags???

There were several gifts that I told dh we needed to find out where they had them made! LOL! Just in case I need *bulk* stuff again!

Yes. I'll send you a PM with the link where we had them made. It was a lot of fun deciding what to do and designing them for the FE.

 

[mdhkitten]

BTW, about the FE that was shown earlier...........I got the same one for my cruise in May, but it was in pink. I got it off of eBay. Here is a link to the seller. It looks like they only have blue available right now, but usually have others (if you want a different color, I'd suggest contacting them):

http://cgi.ebay.com/Disney-Mickey-M...oryZ1345QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


Here is a link to a pink one (different seller):

http://cgi.ebay.com/Disney-Mickey-M...oryZ1345QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


BTW, these don't pull up if you're searching for "fish extenders". I've had to enter "Mickey Mouse hanging storage" to find these guys.

 

[mdhkitten]

Any particular Store you had
good luck finding things at?

I had seen on other FE posts that people suggested checking out www.orientaltrading.com to find gifts for the exchange. I used them on both my last cruise and my upcoming one. They work out well because you can buy things in bulk, there's all sorts of neat things (too many to choose from!), and it's fairly inexpensive. BTW, they have all sorts of neat pirate stuff!

 

[nenner1]

there were lots of FEs on rooms not in our group but it was fun seeing everyone's FE and decorated doors.

Now that's interesting.

I thought the FE was a DIS-exclusive kind of thing.

 

[robsmom]

We had 54 cabins participating on our first cruise. i made the mistake of thinking at first that all FE's were ours. i quickly realized i would run out and had to go back and retrieve some from doors not on the list. I had about 60 bags and i gave 2 to a couple of rooms that i knew had a bunch of kids, but somehow i did run out. i must have given to some not on the list. i felt bad because i had to skip one room at the end!!

Some things i enjoyed - day one a survival bag with bandaids, rubber bands, 2 clothing pins, q-tips, and a few other things. came in handy

we loved the candy - nice treats and do not have to be packed to go home.

we loved the magnets added to our doors as the trip went on

we loved the pens/pads - again useful.

pirate stuff was great for pirate night

We really were not disappointed in anything as it is really about the fun of finding things each time you come back to your room. the above things stand out. pretty sure i am doing candy this time.

 

[amwhitaker]

Anyone have any good ideas where I can find an inexpensive FE? I sure wish the Dollar Store would sell them!

 

[wallyb]

I had seen on other FE posts that people suggested checking out www.orientaltrading.com to find gifts for the exchange. I used them on both my last cruise and my upcoming one. They work out well because you can buy things in bulk, there's all sorts of neat things (too many to choose from!), and it's fairly inexpensive. BTW, they have all sorts of neat pirate stuff!

Wow Great Idea.
THANKS!
I already get their catalogue.