After months of planning, and more than a few flops on Fish Extender ideas for our Disney Cruise, the big day has finally arrived … packing day!!! Tomorrow we embark on our sailing adventure.
If you’re new to the whole Fish Extender gift exchange and you’re looking for ideas to get you started on DIY gifts, click here. Perhaps the best tip I can give you is to remember at the end of it all, you have to figure out how to pack and transport your gifts. So smaller gifts are definitely beneficial when it comes time to pack your bags.
Question # 1: Should I Wrap My Gifts Before or After I Board the Ship?
We decided it would be easiest to put all of our cabin gifts into individual bags before we embarked so we wouldn’t have to spend time doing it once we were onboard. This proved to make packing them in luggage a bit more difficult because of the “empty space” that each bag took up.
Nonetheless, if you are doing cabin gifts where you have different numbers of gifts in each bag based off of the number of people in each room, I would still recommend pre-wrapping the gifts.
I used Disney Gift Labels to remind me which room I would be delivering the gifts to. Additionally, I included the room number and kid count on the bottom of each bag to ensure the bag could still get delivered, even if the gift tag fell off.
Question #2: Should I pack my gifts in a separate suitcase or carryon?
Even though our gifts were small, packing nine of them meant they would need their own piece of luggage for transportation purposes. Knowing that storage space would be tight on the ship, I opted to pack our gifts in an oversized freezer grocery bag that could double as our beach bag on shore days.
Additionally, since one of the items in the gift bags was a handmade breakable Christmas ornament, and the grocery bag didn’t provide protection from heavier luggage landing on top of it, we decided to carry on our Fish Extender gifts.
The good news is that Disney doesn’t limit the amount of luggage you can bring on the cruise ship. Just remember you will have to lug around your carry on items until your state room is ready on embarkment day. If your gifts are heavy, you might want to opt for a checked bag option.
If you’ve made it to packing day, congratulations! All of your hard work and creativity creating your Fish Extender Gifts is about to be enjoyed by other families who are joining you on your Disney Cruise. Happy sailing!
