Everything You Need to Know about Pin Trading on a Disney Cruise
Pin trading is a fun experience to add on to any Disney vacation. Pin trading is a hobby where people buy and trade pins at Disney parks, properties and cruises. If you are at a Disney property, including a hotel or retailer, ask if they do pin trading. The cast member will either show you to a pin board for trading or direct you to the nearest location.
On our Disney Cruise, the main retail shop was the only Disney sponsored location with a pin board, but LOTS of people had pin boards on their doors.
You can also trade with other pin traders. Just watch for people wearing pins, usually on a lanyard and ask if they would like to trade.
How it works on a Disney Cruise
Cruise guests will hang small pin boards on their doors. Explore different floors of the ship and find the boards. When you find a board, you trade! Pin trading is solely an honor system – take a pin, leave a pin. And don’t think just because you traded on a board once that you shouldn’t go back — you will often find different pins on a board on the same day. You never know what someone will leave you in exchange for a pin they were looking for or just loved.
You can also ask at various service desks and retailers if they do pin trading. You will find that some have boards of pins tucked away, that they only bring out when asked, while others have pin boards on display. We found many at the Disney parks and shops!
Where do you buy pins?
Disney retailers on the ship will sell pins. They run roughly $10-$15 a pin. You can save money by purchasing lots of pins in advance from sites like Amazon and eBay. I spent $100 for $100 pins in advance of our trip, which gave each person 25 pins to keep and trade.
I would HIGHLY recommend buying pins in advance of your trip. I had thought 50 would be enough, but bought 100. It turned out that was the perfect amount for lots of trading for the four of us!
Pin Collections
There is no right way to collect pins. You might collect pins that you like of a certain character or from a certain movie. Or you might collect a certain style of pin (my oldest collects Mickey heads and my youngest collects Disney popsicles).
Displaying a Pin Board
On Disney cruise ships, everything is magnetic – no tape allowed! People typically used magnet hooks + a small bulletin board or these Mickey heads to put the pin boards on their cruise doors. I liked how lightweight the Mickey heads were for packing + my kids each used them when they got home in their rooms.
Pin lanyards
A popular way to display your pins on the go – and trade while on the ship, is to put pins on a lanyard (possibly with your stateroom key). This shows that you are a pin trader to other people on the ship and makes it easy for trading. Usually people will have their favorite pins on their lanyards, plus a few they are willing to trade. It’s a great conversation starter and connector.
That said, because we were in swim suits so much, we ended up storing our fave pins on on our lanyards, but we mostly kept a pin trading pouch with us of pins that we wanted to trade. This made it easy to access our trading pins, while avoiding losing any off lanyards or on water slides – ha!
I was REALLY glad that we did pin trading on our Disney cruise and that I had bought so many pins. It made it a lot of fun to trade throughout the cruise and get exercise exploring the ship.