Tiare27

You will be required to provide proof of citizenship (in your case, a US passport) on departure. Your wife should bring both the Colombian passport and the work permit on embarkation, mainly for your return back to the US. We were advised to bring our passports with us during port days - contrary to "leaving it in the safe" as suggested above. This is mainly precautionary since they won't check the passport when you return to the ship.

In port days, you are not technically immigrating into the country - since they know you are leaving on the boat - which is why they don't check in the ports. They will definitely check when you return to the US.

Less is more. Most transportation does not have any way to fasten car seats into the vehicle. A couple of umbrella strollers are your best bets.

I disagree. We have found that most taxis have seat belts and that's all you need to fast a car seat into a vehicle.

Just returned from Carnival Valor, with stops in Cozumel and Progreso. We easily carried our carseat and installed it in a taxi. It was not at all difficult to find a taxi that would "allow" us to do this. It took my husband about 1 min to install it. We have a bag for it that has shoulder straps, and he carried it from the pier to the taxi stand, no problem. We stored it in one of the closets.

Taxis in Cozumel are not going to let you hook up a car seat.

I don't think that is necessarily true. At least according to this thread, where it was easy to hook up the carseat on the first taxi but not on the way back:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?p=56693446#post56693446

Seems like it could go either way.

Here is our experience from last week.

 

We arrived in Cozumel on Tuesday morning. Took our time getting off the boat and walked through the port. We arrived at the taxi area and took the first taxi. No issues at all. Seat belt went through the car seat just like it does in our cars. The taxi driver was super nice, even at one point holding our son while we got everything in the car. She turned on the air conditioning (it was really hot) and drove us to Paradise Beach. Waited for us to unload and drove away. My son is 13 months, just fyi.

 

While at Paradise Beach we talked with another family who had a little trouble. Their cab did not have seat belts, so they were unable to use their harness. She said she just held her daughter. I told her next time just request a different cab. Her daughter was older than our son, probably 4 or 5.

 

On the way back to port was a different story. Our taxi was a van. We couldn't get the car seat to latch with the seat belt. This taxi driver was super unhelpful. We ended up putting our son in the car seat and holding it. Not ideal at all. He was happy as a clam, but I would have preferred to have it belted down. We drove the 15 minutes to the port, unloaded, the taxi driver stood there and waited, then left.

 

Overall, I wouldn't worry to much about reserving a car. It was super easy to get a taxi that morning, just some issues getting back.

 

Did everything go totally as planned, not exactly, but we adapted and never felt our son was in danger.

 

I hope this helps. Have a wonderful cruise. We had a blast.

Thank you so much for posting this! We are going next week, and I was wondering about bringing a carseat.

We took our daughter cruising when she was 14 months old and 3 years old and neither time did we bring a car seat. For transportation in our home port city (Miami), we booked pre-arranged ground transportation that could provide a car seat for us. Worked perfectly! For our port stops during the cruise, we just held her on our laps. We did minimal driving when we could - but one stop in Curacao was a shuttle van tour around the island. She was fine sitting on my lap. In Grand Turk, we walked to Jack's Shack. But I didn't really have any concern with holding her for the short times we needed to be in a vehicle. And it was great to not have to mess with lugging a carseat around and storing it in our cabin.

Yes, we will only be taking a taxi twice - to the beach and back to the port. It is 9 mi each way.

Others have recommended hiring transportation with a carseat - but again this is only for 9 mi each way. We are not doing an all day tour anything like that. So it seems like a lot to hire a private car for literally 15 min each way.

We have car seat bags that southwest airline sales to check your carseat. I throw it back in the bag with a carnival tag and just leave it with the porters and rest of our luggage.

 

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Thank you, JaxsMama! I was hoping to do this. Just didn't know if there would be an issue. I'll tag it and leave it with the porters since this has worked for you.

Thanks, Mary. We were planning on using it in Cozumel. We have a 9 month old and putting her on my lap in a taxi seems irresponsible.

ETA: I wish there were nice beaches near the port terminal, so we wouldn't have to take a taxi.

Thanks, Hoosier. I think so too. Their luggage (checked and carry-on) restrictions say 16x24, any length. I have a bag for it, to protect it. But I'm hoping they can open it an inspect it.

Thanks, Joe. We'll just bring it and hopefully it makes it to our room :p

I'm debating bringing our carseat for our upcoming cruise. Carnival's luggage restrictions say 16"x24" (Width & Height) and any length. The carseat is 19"x18"x34" so I'm thinking it won't fit on the scanner? It's not a large carseat, it's the Evenflo Tribute - pretty standard really.

But I figured lots of folks brought their carseats and stored in shower, etc.

Hoping to avoid having to actually call someone at the cruise line. Does anyone have experience lugging a carseat and did you run into size problems with it? TIA!