It does not have to be drama-- I'm glad I never knew there was a larger social media page about FE.
Focus on your small group if you still want to do it. I made a few good friends from the cruise-specific Fb group and am happy I participated in that way.
We didn't do FE on our first
DCL cruise-- a) I don't even know if I knew what it was, b) it was just a 4 night cruise, and c) we were on our honeymoon.
Second cruise was this year to Alaska-- we enjoyed participating in the FE, though it was a bit of work on my part, as I made our gifts, but it was fun work. We had relatively small groups-- from our social media page, we ended up with I think 3 family groups and 2 adult groups, the organizer did a great job and kept it at about 12 cabins per group. We did the adult only group, as it's just DH and myself.
I planned to bring relatively small things, so did not take up a whole suitcase for this-- esp with needing more than our usual luggage for the length of this trip and needing warm clothes. I was not going to check an extra bag or ship stuff just for this little extra activity.
It was nice on the longer cruise, esp since we started with a sea day, so time to drop off many of the items.
We got several cute things, and will use most of them. I do hope that the people who we gifted at least appreciated them, and if not, no skin off my back--I tried!
Whether or not we participate on future cruises will just depend on the length of the cruise and whether or not I feel like it.