Fish Extenders - Everything You Need to Know
One of the best parts of a Disney Cruise is participating in Fish Extenders! Here is everything you need to know from what fish extenders are, to how you sign up, to what you put inside and everything in between!
Makes 1
Cost 30
Equipment
- Fish Extender
Supplies
- 1 Fish Extender Pouch for Everyone in Your Stateroom
- Gifts to Put in Other Cabins Pouches
Instructions
- Why is it called a fish extender?First things first. One of the most common questions we are asked is why it is called a fish extender! Well it's actually pretty simple. Outside every stateroom on Disney Cruise Line is a fish shaped hook (or sometimes a seahorse) where the cast members leave important mail or announcements. The pouches hang on this hook, thus extending the mail fish!
- A common misconception is that the fish extenders are put on by Disney, or facilitated through them. This is actually not the case! So, if Disney didn't start this fun tradition, who did? How did fish extenders start? Fish extenders were actually started by cruisers on an early DCL sailing (2005 Panama sailing on the Disney Magic), not by Disney Staff! It was a long sailing and people going wanted to get to know each other better, so they decided to use a gift exchange to facilitate that. Enter-- the first ever fish extender group! This Disney sailing tradition spread like wildfire, and is now a common practice on all Disney ships!
- How do you find a fish extender group? Once you are booked for a sailing on a Disney Cruise ship, search facebook for the group for your sailing. There you will be able to connect with other cruisers on your sailing and sign up for fish extender groups! If you are going with a family reunion or other large group, you can also totally form your own group and pixie dust each other! There is nothing official about it, just make sure all parties involved are aware of what the plan is!
- What is pixie dusting? Speaking of pixie dusting... what the heck does that mean? Well, when you drop gifts in someone else's extenders cruisers named that pixie dusting! When you come back from a yummy dinner at the Enchanted Palace to find goodies in your pouches, you've been pixie dusted!
- What do you put in a fish extender? The short answer to this is, anything you want! Gifts can be small or large, homemade or store bought! Most groups will set some guidelines as to roughly what the rules will be for their group that sailing. For example, on the sailing we just went on we decided as a group that if we were going to give nicer (ie: more expensive) gifts, we would just give one during the duration of the cruise. If we were going to give smaller less expensive gifts we could pixie dust multiple times. Some people gave something small every day and some opted for a bigger gift once and it worked out really well! We had a fun mix of nicer things and still a lot of volume, which is what the kids cared more about ;).
Video
Notes
Fish extender gift ideas:
Here are a few things we got in our fish extenders that we loved to get your juices flowing!Where do you get the fish extender pouches?
Many people make their own pouches, but you can also easily buy your own! I made the ones in this post, but here are a few really cute easy options on amazon!- Simple Three Pocket Nautical Fish Extender
- Natural Cotton Four Pocket Fish Extender
- Navy Polka Dotted Four Pocket Fish Extender