We have done Fish Extenders twice, the first time in 2011. It was a lot of fun for our little guy to come back to the room and find the surprise some nice people had left in the FE. The family also had fun putting together the little pirate grab bags we made. On the ship, passing out our gifts on Pirate party day was a nice way to explore the ship and admire some of the door decorations people had made.
Many of the fish extenders themselves were handmade out of gift bags and the like. Cute but not fancy. Most of the FE gifts back then were more kid related or family related. We got candy, yo-yos, glow sticks, hometown favorite trinkets and some darling little crafted items. We felt the exchange was like spreading and receiving a little bit of pixie dust. We never even used a list of participanting staterooms, we just roamed each floor dropping our gifts in all the Fish Extenders we found.
By 2015, the whole vibe of the FE seem to have changed. The cruise meet seem to have transferred from the Dis boards to Facebook Most people had fancy embroidered type Fish Extenders and the gifts had become more elaborate. More adult type gifts as well as more expensive items for each person in the stateroom. The FE group was much more organized and specific as to what gifts each room would like - they wanted to know the ages of everyone in the room, their favorite Disney character, etc. the final list contained rooms participating with notes like “no candy”, “adults only” and more remarks that I can’t even remember.
Once onboard, on th first night we got a note in our FE that stateroom 5820 (or whatever) would deliver gifts only to rooms that had already left their gift, so be sure to include your stateroom number on your gift to them. The items gifted were more fancy and expensive.
After that cruise, the Facebook FE group had lots of chatter about how “cheap and tacky” some of the gifts given were. “Oriental Trading crap and Dollar Store ship” remarks were left. Someone had actually made a chart on which they had kept track of which staterooms had or had not given them FE gifts. There was even some nasty remarks about some of the handcrafted items given out. It was so high school like behavior that I swore never to participate in a FE again.
In the beginning, I don’t think FE was about the gifts. It was about the fun of cruising, passing the wait time before the cruise planning your gifts, making your Fish Extender, people giving little candy or items from their hometowns, the excitement checking your FE onboard, the fun of secretly sprinkling Pixie Dust to your fellow cruisers. It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t expensive character or age specific gifts, it wasn’t stressful “is my gift good enough”, it wasn’t elaborate embroidered Fish Extenders - it was just a way to share the joy of the
Disney Cruise experience with others. For us, it doesn’t feel that way anymore, so we no longer participate.
In any event, I can't tell you how much those fat quarters that we purchased years ago that have been sitting in her drawer of "fat quarters that may fit a project some day" which actually did. She literally has DRAWERS of those. The buttons? Yeah, those were inventory - probably cost a few pennies. The thread was immeasurably small.
