We were so excited to go on our first Disney Magic Cruise and so I did a ton of research about what to expect and was thankful to find out about decorating your state room door and Fish Extenders.
Not everyone knows about the door decorating. In fact, less then half on our ship decorated theirs. It was something that my family found to be fun to look at and a way that we could feel a little at “home” on our vacation. The state room doors are magnetic and so you can make and take personalized items to hang. We saw so many cute ideas, and every character/shape…etc on the decorated doors. Our travel agent was so sweet to send us a few things for our door and one of them included a magnetic dry erase board. (Make sure the magnets are STRONG if you want them to stay up!)
Also outside your stateroom door is a fish shape that extends from the wall. I am not 100% what Disney intended these to be for, but people have created a fun way to shower each other with small gifts and it’s truly something I encourage you to do if you book a cruise with Disney. These are what you will see me refer to as “Fish Extenders.” A Fish Extender is a small gift that you give to another family. You can give one gift that is for everyone, or you can get one gift to each person. (or for kids only!) I researched and found a “Fish Extender Group” that was specific to my ship and cruise dates and I joined in on the conversations and we set up and closed the group once it reached 20 kids. So the other families and I all knew a month in advance that we were buying 1 gift for each of the 20 kids. What the gift would be was left up to each person. We didn’t talk about what we were bringing, but we did assign each person a day to deliver their gifts. To collect your Fish Extender gifts, you will need to make or buy a hanging pocket’d item. I made ours in less then 1 hour and it cost less then $5 from items I bought at Walmart. I saw one person had used duck tape to make theres. So the sky is the limit on how fancy (or plain) you want yours to be.
As far as the gifts, you can pick up Disney items at the Dollar Tree for $1 each, or you can get creative and make them. You can see a few of the homemade ones in the photos above, and I will be posting an easy tutorial to ones that I made soon. Some left candy, some left bubbles, glow bracelets, lip balm, luggage tags, personalized tumblers, journals, stickers, and more. It was so fun to come back to our room and find items in our pockets.
Being a part of a Fish Extender group is a great way to save on souvenirs as well. You will come home with many Disney items from the exchange and will not have spent a fortune. I have friended a few of the families on Facebook and we have shared pictures from our cruise. It’s a great way to have fun and teach your kids how to give back to others. We enjoyed meeting the families on Deck 7 before the ship sailed, then bumping into them thru out the cruise.
Let me know if you have any questions that I can help with by leaving them in the comments of this post.
Just finished a Disney Cruise and saw the cute Mickey/Minnie door decoration where the “face” is the room number. Do you know where I can find one of these for our next cruise (already booked!)?
The fish are used for DCL to communicate with you. They leave spa and restaurant reservations there,
I am making my FE pockets for a family of 7. What is the longest it should be without touching the floor?
I am going on the Disney Wonder on 2/2015. I wanted to know where to sign up for a group.
Vivian, Go to disboards.com and go under the Disney cruise line threads. They should have a link for your specific cruise date and just link up with the people on there to organize a FE group.
I am making my FE pockets. What is the longest it should be without touching the floor?
Leonora
We were just on the Wonder and saw those decorated fish extenders. Do all the Disney ship have fish extender? Is this something we can just do with our family. If we were traveling with just anothanother family. Do we have to join the FE group?
There are groups on FB as well. Let me know if you need help finding them.
What a great post!! Be sure to discuss with your FE group how much the spending limit is per room. There are people on the FB FE page that is spending $20 per room. Most averaged $6-8/room.
We are going on a cruise this summer. How did you get in touch with the other families before the cruise? Or how do families find out about it…this is such a wonderful idea and good for the kids to meet friends.
You can find groups at DISBoards.com to join for the Fish Extender groups!
This was a great post. We learned on the last cruise that the magnets have to be super strong. Luckily I had one of the 3M tape hooks that we used and sticky tape came off clean before we left.
Could not figure what the fish were for but did see a a few items hang on them. Will have to see about participating in this on a future cruise.
Thanks Again,
Paul
The fish is for the cruise line to leave messages or invitations to events. Example gold members are invited to a meet and greet with other gold or platinum members. Not sure they use it for these things any more. Last cruise I was on they left these items in our cabin with Navigator.
Hi that sounds like fun. Were going In August. Where can I find a group at.