What in the world is a fish extender?

A fish extender is a set of pockets that hang from your brass message hook (which is shaped like a fish) next to each stateroom door. You can make them yourself, or buy them online. Etsy has several talented shops that make and sell them.  You can find all sorts of designs and personalization options.

But, this is very important, you have to join an Fish Extender or ”FE” group to get gifts delivered to your FE pockets. If you’re traveling with a large group, you can create your own FE group — schedule the days for certain people, etc. Or, if traveling with just your family or a couple of friends, join an FE group on the DISboards, the discussion board service. To do this on the DISboards, simply search for the thread for your cruise. Then, search for the Fish Extender organizer on that thread and join. The Fish Extender organizer will send out a list of cabins with names of guests, and each of the children’s age, gender, food allergies (list yours if not asked!), special events being celebrated, and more. Some cruises have large Fish Extender groups, and are broken down into several groups.

Now for the Fish Extender gifts…

You will only be obligated to pass out your Fish Extender gifts on one day. However, you may want to do Pirate Night, Christmas or any other occasion, too.

Fish Extender tips

• Keep them small — remember, people have to pack them to take home.
• Visit the Allergy Free Mouse Pinterest board for more Fish Extender ideas.
• Have fun – get the whole family involved in making them.

Fish Extender Gift ideas

click to enlarge

• Christmas ornaments with ship name and date. We loved ours and hung them on our tree last year, and will forever.
• Pirate coins, eye patches, bandanas
• Magnets for the doors — see examples on Etsy
• Dry erase board and markers
• Personalized highlighters to mark their Navigators
• Cute pads of paper with pencils and crayons for the little ones
• Barrets for little girls
• Door hangers (photo 3236)
• Goodie bags with all sorts of cute items
• Decorated wooden clothespins with magnetic backing
• Gold coins (non-chocolate for those with food allergies) in gold mesh bag with leather tie
• Keychains
• Disney soap favors in ribbon tied bag
• Magic wands
• Glow sticks for pirate night
• Bracelets
• Little packets of hand sanitizer with your a personalized label, like with Mickey Mouse’s hand! (see pinterest)
• Little bottles
• Disney themed  luggage tags
• Miniature shadow box fridge maget
• Post-it note holders
• Disney homemade coasters using maps
• Posit clip boards
• Homemade bookmarks

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 1

  

Disney Cruise – Port Adventures with food allergies

Port Adventures bring a whole new challenge to the food allergy equation. You cannot take dairy, meat, or fruit to other countries. In fact, you may not take food that is not pre-packaged by the manufacturer. I wish I had known this. I was planning to take a lunch prepared by the kitchen, packing a lunch bag to go. But, that was not an option. And it is way too risky and dangerous to even entertain the thought of preparing food for her in unfamiliar restaurants.  She can only eat in a few restaurants near our home — there’s no way I would try something new in a foreign country. So, plan your port adventures and your meals on board, or take allergy free snacks or meals to get you through.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 0

  

Suggestions for the Disney Cruise Line

Here are a few suggestions that we have for DCL after taking a Disney Cruise with a food allergy. Comment below with yours.

• AllergyFree Foods chicken tenders (actually, we spoke to AlleryFree Foods and they are available on all DCL ships now)
• Allergy-free Mickey waffles
• More options for the grilled chicken – sauces would be great, like teriyaki, BBQ, pesto, etc.
• Allergy-free rolls and bread
• Enjoy Life Foods cookies, and allergy-free snacks and candy.

We had a great trip, but adding options like these would have made it just as magical as Disney World for food allergies.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 1

  

More Disney Cruise Restaurant Tips

Palo

Call DCL and find out which night is Pirate night, formal night and semi-formal night. Make reservations at Palo after the 3rd night. You will want to eat at the 1st rotation at each restaurant and you probably don’t want to miss Pirate night away from the kids, while at Palo. You can only book one dinner and one brunch at Palo. Once you board the ship, you may add another reservation.

Wait staff

Make good friends with your waiters. Explain your food allergy in a warm and kind manner. They will be your servers for dinner on the entire cruise. Get to know the head waiter, or maitre d’ — he’s your link to the chefs!  Kindness and appreciation for all they do for us with food allergies should never be taken for granted.

Extra Desserts and Food Snacks

Remember, your food is included in your fare. If your food allergic child finds a dessert or food item they really like, ask for another serving or two to go. The same menu items aren’t served every night and different chefs may prepare something a little different. Having something on-hand will help if you find your child doesn’t care for the options at another meal. Plus, food allergic kids can’t snack all over the boat like other kids can. So having a little treat in the fridge helps with this, too.

Room Service

I would order this through the head waiter ahead of time and, when it’s delivered to your room, clean and keep the silverware in case your need it for later, for leftovers you may have in the fridge. Don’t leave it out in the open, as the housekeeping staff will take it, only doing what others would expect.

Drinks

Free iced tea (pre-made by Lipton ) and soft drinks, are available on deck 9 near the pool. If you order them at a bar, they will cost you $1.75 each.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 0

  

Special Order a Food Allergy Free Cake

As we mentioned here, you can pre-purchase a dairy-free, gluten-free, nut-free or sugar-free cake for your Disney Cruise.  Call for more information after visiting this page: http://disneycruise.disney.go.com/planning-center/gifts-and-amenities/

We ordered a dairy-free cake. It wasn’t great at first, but it was better after a day in the fridge! The cake was a dry, chocolate cake with diary-free whipped cream as the frosting. This was absorbed by the cake, making it more moist. Go figure!

Even thought we ordered the “Bon Voyage” cake, but instead we received the Happy Birthday cake, complete with a huge birthday banner draped across our stateroom, plus two birthday cascades and a huge door magnet. We noticed on our Fish Extender list, that a little boy was celebrating his birthday, so we decorated his door with the birthday decorations. He came out as we were finishing up — we must have been loud with laughter — and was so thrilled by the site. It was a great memory.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 3

  

Disney Cruise menus from the Disney Magic

We hope these menus will help you plan your food allergy free meals. Click for a full menu.

Day 1 - Let the Magic Begin

Animator's Palate

Disney Cruise Line

Captain's Gala

Prince & Princess Dinner

Lumiere's

Pirates in the Caribbean

Pirates in the Caribbean Dessert

Room Service

Breakfast

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 0

  

Tipping

This was one area where we had to adjust the suggested tipping amounts we found online and in books. We stayed with the suggestions for the assistant server and the head server, but the maitre d’ (also called the head server) guideline was very small — $14.00. We needed him more than the average diner, so we gave him a $100 tip. He’s the guy to change reservation times, send food to your room, talk to the chefs about problems, and a lot more aspects of dealing with your food allergy free meals. He is the link from your table to the chefs. Our head waiter also did a phenomenal job, but was pre-calculated and $80 (or so) tip.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 0

  

I saw your post about the Disney Magic with food allergies. I just wanted to share with you my experiences with DCL and food allergies. I have Celiac Disease so I’m gluten free and my mom also has Celiac and has a soy allergy.

I sailed on the Wonder (sister ship to the Magic) and I found experiences similar to yours. I’ve also sailed on the Dream three times and on the Fantasy once. I’m going on my second Fantasy cruise in March.

I’ve found the newer ships the Dream and the Fantasy much more accommodating with our special dietary needs. They seemed more willing to customize meals and make things special just for us. Besides pre-ordering our meals, we could also go up on the pool deck and get a safe meal.

They had the gluten-free chicken tenders you were talking about. They had a dedicated fryer so you could get chicken fingers and fries by the pool. They could also do gluten free pizzas (not sure if the crusts were dairy free) I’m extremely sensitive to gluten and I never got sick from eating at the pool deck.

If you ever decide to sail DCL in the future, I’d highly recommend the newer ships over the older ships for the way they accommodate special dietary requests.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 1

  

Food and Safety

Okay — there is food everywhere! Take wipes and be on the lookout. There is food near the pool, as you can see. I simply asked this little girl to be careful, explaining that my daughter was allergic to dairy and asked her to please throw it away when she was finished. She did. Some pools have no lifeguards and some have a low ratio of lifeguards to swimmers. So, food, running and horseplay is common at the pool.

The pools all have some sort of food service nearby; Goofy’s Gallery (hamburgers, tacos, chicken strips, fries), Pinocchio’s Pizzeria, soft-serve ice cream, and Pluto’s Dog House. My daughter couldn’t eat any of the food offerings, but was okay in the pool. I was on HIGH ALERT, but she was fine. However, the pool water is pretty murky.  By the end of the cruise, you can no longer see Goofy’s face painted on the bottom. That’s when we opted not to swim!

As with Disney World, the staff is trained with food allergy protocols. My daughter didn’t once have hives or symptoms of anaphylaxis. That alone was worth the trip! She had so much fun at sea, and it was safe with my watchful eye!

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 0

  

Ordering food allergy-free meals on a Disney Cruise

I wish that I had more options for our dairy & beef allergic child, it seems that she had so much chicken, I was starting to worry that she would get burned out on it! It would be better if the chicken had different sauces, maybe. She was served a plain roasted chicken. Teriyaki, BBQ sauce, basil pesto — anything could have helped! All of the bread was made with dairy.  I wish that I had brought a loaf of Rudi’s bread or Ener-G Rolls with us. Also, there are no allergy-free chicken tenders available, like those found all over Disney World. With the bread, I could have made her chicken-bacon-guacamole sandwiches, teriyaki chicken sandwiches and more.

Update: We spoke to AllergyFree Foods about this. It was a distribution oversite affecting Texas-based Disney Cruises. They should be available now.

I inquired about and found that gluten-free pizzas can be found, however, I was told to speak with the head server to order one. They also had gluten-free rolls available.

How to special order

After each dinner, I was provided menues for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the following day. I chose her meals, wrote them down and gave them to our waiter. See the menus posted for ideas!! This may help you pack for your trip.

For the next cruise, we will pack a loaf of Rudi’s bread, Ener-G rolls, Daiya cheese, Earth Balance butter, BBQ Sauce, French Meadow brownies and her favorite salad dressing.

If you enjoyed this, give it a thumbs up! 0