Does X take your passport?

[rocketman03]

I'm busy reading and enjoying everyone's posts as I prepare for my Med cruise on the Summit in July. I thought I read on another post [but as always, can't find right now] that X took your passports during embarkation. Is this true?

[C 2 C]

I'm busy reading and enjoying everyone's posts as I prepare for my Med cruise on the Summit in July. I thought I read on another post [but as always, can't find right now] that X took your passports during embarkation. Is this true?

 

Yes. We just returned from the Mediterranean and our passports were collected.

[kb4683]

Yes. We just returned from the Mediterranean and our passports were collected.

 

Doesn't it depend on your country of citizenship? As U.S. citizens, we've never had our passports collected on Celebrity.

[cruiserJay]

We have only had our passports held once, on our most recent cruise on Infinity from Santiago to FLL. As I understand it, it depends upon the countries you are visiting. Some require the cruise line to produce the passports for the ship to clear customs.

[CoralReef]

Our passports were collected on the 5/19/08 Galaxy Eastern Med cruise. We are U.S. citizens. They gave us photocopies to carry in port, and told us we could borrow the passports at Guest Services if we needed them for any reason, such as to cash travelers' checks.

[hajekfam]

We had our passports (US) collected before we stopped at Athens on our Med cruise. We were told that the Greek immigration needed to see them because our stop before and after were in non European Union countries - we left from Venice and stopped in Dubrovnik, Croatia before our Athens stop and our next port was Kusadasi, Turkey. When we were going for our Athens tour, we did see them carrying our passports off the ship in boxes. When we got them back, they were stamped.

[ChevyCruiser]

What? You are asked to surrender your passport? Sounds risky to me. Is this proper? Wonder what the State Department has to say on this?

[concour]

It has been common practice when in other countries to surrender your passport at times. Once in 1982 the DW and I were taking an overnight train from the Netherlands to Denmark passing through then West Germany and our passports were collected before we left the Netherlands and given back to us the next morning.

[hajekfam]

We were given a receipt for our passport. I guess if we refused, we would probably have to go with the Celebrity rep to have our passport checked and wasted our one day in port.

[PurpleCow]

It's not that you're "surrendering" your passport, but that you're entrusting it to Celebrity so that disembarkation in the various ports can be expedited. When the ship arrives in port an imigtation officer, or several, comes on board and stamps all the passports into that country. The alternative would be for everyone to have to go through passport control as they leave the ship. When we were on our Med cruise on Oceania, the first time I'd been on any cruise except to the Caribbean, and back then all we needed was a drivers license, not even a birth certificate, I didn't question it when my passport was taken, as I didn't know any different. When I got the passport back on the last day of the cruise it had an exit stamp from Turkey, entrance and exit stamps from Croatia and an entrance stamp from Greece. As I passed through passport control on the way out of Greece I was glad I hadn't had to stand in that line before disembarking in our first Greek port.

[Ardy53]

What? You are asked to surrender your passport? Sounds risky to me. Is this proper? Wonder what the State Department has to say on this?

 

Chevy

 

In my experience it is common practice to surrender your passport from check-in to check-out when staying in a hotel in a foreign country - surely no different on your floating hotel.

 

Roy

[ChevyCruiser]

My foreign experience is limited - Caribbean, Austrailia, New Zealand, the UK, France, Azores, Bermuda, Panama. I've never been asked to turn over my passport to anyone and it seems fundamentaly wrong to me for some reason.

 

I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it, and even though it may be common practice - so was making some folks ride in the back of the bus. Just because it's common practice doesn't make it right.

[librarycin]

I just got back from a cruise that went to Scotland, Ireland, Channel Islands and France. They did collect our passports on embarkation (I didn't like it, but what do you do?), but we were able to pick them up a few days into the cruise. As a few people mentioned, it seems to depend which country(ies) you are in. So, on ours, the first few places needed it, but later I guess they didn't.

[Schplinky]

My foreign experience is limited - Caribbean, Austrailia, New Zealand, the UK, France, Azores, Bermuda, Panama. I've never been asked to turn over my passport to anyone and it seems fundamentaly wrong to me for some reason.

 

I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it, and even though it may be common practice - so was making some folks ride in the back of the bus. Just because it's common practice doesn't make it right.

 

 

It used to be that Canadians had to surrender our passports on US ships. Our first cruise was like that. We didn't get them back until the middle of the cruise, which seemed odd.

 

I'm not thrilled with handing mine over but as long as everyone is, that's fine with me. On a trip out of Florida, the person taking a look at our passports removed my partner's work visa from his, which she said was not negotiable if we planned to sail. We asked on the third day when we would get it back and they had no idea what we were talking about. The woman, being contact by the land-side folks, said she didn't do it.

 

Lots of calls back and forth and it was "found" in the papers and I truly hope that the employee got some corrective training.

[j!m]

we have often had our passports collected. our understanding is it is to facilitate immigration in various countries. for example in europe and south america. i believe when travelling in the usa and caribbean this is not the normal practice. it did not happpen on our recent alaska or panama canal cruise(lax-fll). we are canadians and i dont think that has anything to do with it. i think it has to do with immigration rules in the countries being visited.

[brazilgirl]

I just back from the Summit-(Barcelona-Venice-May 11th-stopped in Athens and Dubrovnik).

 

Not once did they collect or hold our passports...My children and I have American passports and my husband´s is Brazilian. (Actually , my kids´have both kinds of passports). Our passport were scanned during the check-in

process and given back to us immediately.

 

In Dubrovnik , we were told we needed to carry our original passports with us at all time (requirement of that country) and in all other ports we just needed our seapasses and a photo i.d.

 

There was an announcement asking a group of people to gather in the Celebrity Theater before we got off in Dubrovnik-these people were of different nationalities -I believe perhaps they needed visas to enter Europe (whereas this is not the case of the U.S and Brazilian citizens).

 

This was all less than a month ago.

 

Kim

[caliber35]

The policy on collection of passports is more a matter of what countries you are visiting. Where Visas are required, the ship will collect and hold your passport so that the immigration officers who board the ship can inspect them en mass, rather than one at a time. On my recent World Cruise with Crystal, passports were held by security for entry into countries such as Viet Nam, India and Egypt. Once we entered the Med and cleared the first port, they were returned to us. This is standard operating procedure, regardless of what line or ship you are sailing.

[flashdog_1]

In the old days you certainly had to give your passport to the hotel front desk in Europe. They had to report each and every foreigner staying with them. Think about it. If a criminal Interpol is tracking is known to be staying in X hotel one night, if they are at the arresting point, they can nab him in the morning. He can't move to another country without his passport. If he is just being investigated, they watch for where he is staying the next night etc.

[chairwomanandjuicerman]

Yes, Passports were collected as we got on ship in Amsterdam, returned after Scotland (Century 5/29-6/10/08)

[tcocktail]

I just returned from the Galaxy and they took our passports and gave us acopy to have with us. THe passports were returned the last day of travel.

[smelkin]

We have had passports collected on ships in the Mediterranean, Baltic, Far East (Osaka->Beijing). Also in hotels in France, Portugal, Spain.

In some cases I think it was to make stamping the batch easier (as, e.g., on cruises). In others, I was told that the police either get a copy or inspect them (this was true in Spain in 1969, Portugal on 2 occasions, and France). So We always make color copies of the picture page and others to have with us (I have mine and my wife's, she likewise) as well as extra copies in the cabin on the ship. A scanner and color printer work wonders and that way at least we have something with us -- sort of as a security picture!

 

steve

[candbgirl]

We were just in the Baltics and kept possession of our passports the whole time. We were encouraged to carry them when we got of the ship and of course in Russia we had to carry them. In fact when we got off the first time in Russia we had to give the Russian immigration a copy of our passport to keep. Celebrity was glad to make copies for those that didn't have one.

[SISer]

tcocktail and CoralReef, I am thinking of taking a Eastern med cruise on the Galaxy, could you please let me know if you passports were stamped in Greece or Turkey?

 

Thanks.

[tcocktail]

tcocktail and CoralReef, I am thinking of taking a Eastern med cruise on the Galaxy, could you please let me know if you passports were stamped in Greece or Turkey?

 

Thanks.

 

Mine was only stamped in Santorini, Greece.

[SISer]

thanks, tcocktail.