passport help needed

[casperbks]

My passport has expired and I am taking a cruise out of Tampa Fl on Dec 2nd for 14 days and it does go to foreign countries but I board the ship in Tampa and return to Tampa to disembark.. do I need to have a passport or can I just use a birth certificate and drivers license??? thank you so very much:)

Edited February 12, 2018 by casperbks
spelling error

[teknoge3k]

Birth certificate and drivers license is fine.

[Kamloops50]

Long term your better with a passport. If you have to make an emergency flight home. A passport is required.

[sparks1093]

My passport has expired and I am taking a cruise out of Tampa Fl on Dec 2nd for 14 days and it does go to foreign countries but I board the ship in Tampa and return to Tampa to disembark.. do I need to have a passport or can I just use a birth certificate and drivers license??? thank you so very much:)

 

As long as none of the ports you are visiting doesn't require passports you may use the birth certificate and government id.

[Keys2Heaven]

My passport has expired and I am taking a cruise out of Tampa Fl on Dec 2nd for 14 days and it does go to foreign countries but I board the ship in Tampa and return to Tampa to disembark.. do I need to have a passport or can I just use a birth certificate and drivers license??? thank you so very much:)

 

This link at Carnival explains it all:

https://help.carnival.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3409/~/travel-documentation%3A-u.s.-citizens

 

But, you already had a passport and you have plenty of time before the cruise. If I were you, I'd just renew the passport.

[summersigh]

This link at Carnival explains it all:

https://help.carnival.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3409/~/travel-documentation%3A-u.s.-citizens

 

But, you already had a passport and you have plenty of time before the cruise. If I were you, I'd just renew the passport.

I agree :) then you have no worries.

[lcpagejr]

OP asked a question.... As Teknoge3K replied "Birth Certificate and DL is fine". It's obvious OP had done some research because he told us he was leaving and returning to same US port. Just wanted some reassurance. Which was given. No need to preach the Passport scenario!!

[mapsmith]

Remember that the price of Passports is going up April 1. Might want to renew NOW, since they are good for 10 years

[sparks1093]

Remember that the price of Passports is going up April 1. Might want to renew NOW, since they are good for 10 years

 

Actually it's the acceptance fee that is going up and it's going up a whopping $10. Not sure when OP's passport expired but they will likely be able to renew by mail which doesn't have an acceptance fee.

[Keys2Heaven]

OP asked a question.... As Teknoge3K replied "Birth Certificate and DL is fine". It's obvious OP had done some research because he told us he was leaving and returning to same US port. Just wanted some reassurance. Which was given. No need to preach the Passport scenario!!

 

The beauty of an public internet forum is that when a question is asked, you're going to get a variety of responses. Nobody is being preachy but rather stating what they feel would be the prudent thing to do, given that the OP has already had a passport.

 

We used to carry BC with us in a binder, but since we obtained passports a couple of years ago, travel and check in has been so much simpler.

 

As I have been told more than once in these forums...if you don't like what you read, you can just skip the thread and move on to something else.

[salty dingo]

DW renewed her passport recently, and the turnaround time was amazingly fast, without any sort of expediting.

 

I would do so sooner rather than later. With all the report of government shutdowns lately, processing a passport is one of those things they can temporarily stop if they want to.

[ewenix]

As already mentioned the birth cert and DL work, however unless that was a typo you have about 10 months to renew.

[ProgRockCruiser]

The cruise you are taking is to the Panama Canal, stopping in Cost Rica.

 

Based on what I have read here: You will need a passport, because Costa Rica requires it. Maybe Panama too. So I would get it renewed.

 

However, I have run across this on a non-Carnival website, regarding a closed-loop cruise on Carnival:

 

https://www.passportsandvisas.com/cruise/lines/carnival-cruises

 

U.S. citizens calling on ports in Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica and Belize will also be exempt from the passport requirement.

So maybe it isn't needed, but I would grab one anyway, due to the nature of such "waivers" - they can be cancelled at any time, and then suddenly you are scrambling for a passport...

[Bookworm1985]

I just got mine back in two weeks with no expediting. Personally, I would never travel internationally without a passport in case something happened and you had to disembark in a foreign country. Its up to you to determine if you are willing to take that potential risk. Many do and have no issues.

 

 

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[slawrence]

We just renewed our passports and got them back in 2-3 weeks. That was regular service, not expedited.

[jsglow]

There a pretty famous Carnival story when the Splendor made her initial sail from Florida to Long Beach back in the days of the old Panama Canal. That year, both she and the RCCL new build did very economical cruises all the way around the tip of South America. Several of the ports required visas and no doubt Carnival and RCCL provided numerous warnings and guidance so folks would get their travel paperwork in order. Still, hundreds showed up at the two docks without the proper paperwork and were denied boarding. Lesson learned.

[Athankfulheart]

 

I would do so sooner rather than later. With all the report of government shutdowns lately, processing a passport is one of those things they can temporarily stop if they want to.

 

I actually did some looking into this because we had 2 passport apps in process during a shutdown. As it turns out, because passport admin is funded by passport fees themselves, a government shut down won't ordinarily affect operations. Sure enough, those 2 passports got here in the same amount of time as the ones we did about a month before. Grandma did her PP in January because she is sailing with us in a few weeks and it turned around in exactly 3 weeks.

[Knights Templar]

Sent mine in without any type of expedited fees and got it delivered in 2 weeks

[evandbob]

The OP is about 10 months away from their December 2 cruise date, so renewing a passport can easily be done within that time frame. If the OP does not wish to renew, then his question about just using an enhanced driver's license is valid.

 

Me, I don't leave home without my Passport and Global Entry Card.

[summersigh]

The cruise you are taking is to the Panama Canal, stopping in Cost Rica.

 

Based on what I have read here: You will need a passport, because Costa Rica requires it. Maybe Panama too. So I would get it renewed.

In Dec 2016 we did a HAL partial transit Panama Canal cruise that also stopped in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. We received at least 3 emails from Holland America (part of the Carnival umbrella) telling us that we had to have a passport to even board the ship on embarkation day.

 

Don't know more than that - and don't care to argue about what the Costa Rican government does or does not require - but we made sure that our passports were up to date.

[Purvis1231]

For a cruise, a passport purchase is a personal choice. Some people know they will not be traveling overseas by plane so to them a passport is an unnecessary expense. I am sure they recognize the risk of something happening that normally require a passport.

[Keys2Heaven]

Hey, I am one of the converted. Prior to having one, I vowed I wouldn't spend the money to get one and just use the BC. But, with the passport being good for 10 years and knowing that the passport would be accepted ID more than that of a BC (especially in an emergency), we got passports. Now, I would't travel with anything else.

[ProgRockCruiser]

I have had a passport for most of my life - my family moved a lot across borders/oceans when I was younger. The longest time I didn't have one was when I was first working as an "adult", my first real post-college professional job, and I simply didn't need one - travel between Canada and the US could be done on a Driver's License at the time. It wasn't until I had to travel off-continent (for work) that I got a passport - and since it was for work, they picked up the expense.

 

My wife and I travel a lot internationally, both for work and pleasure, so we'll probably always have a passport now.