Thread: Do you carry your passport off the ship in Ports?

Do you carry your passport off the ship in Ports?



No, we make color photo copies of our passports and take them into ports with us and leave the original passports on the ship in the safe.

Not any more!
Learned that lesson when I got my passport WET in one port, and had to dry it out.

No - once we are on the ship the passports go into the safe.

Use driver's license.

We always take ours.. You will find that in most countries a copy is not accepted, as they can be so easily manipulated.. Your drivers license won't work in many places either, as they have no idea, what a (ie. Iowa) drivers license is suppose to look like and drivers licenses can be counterfeited so easy too.. The reason for having a Passport is for Identification.. A Passport is an accepted form of Identification and won't do you any good if it is locked safely in your room safe.. Be wise, keep it with you.. If your worried about it getting wet, as mentioned above, put it in a zip-lock and seal it shut, but take it with you...

Several copies are good to have.. We keep one at home, in our room safe and also carry one with us.. Should you ever lose the original, the copies will speed up the process of replacing it...
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Actually, the ships' crew advise you not to take your passport ashore. These days passports have become more valuable than money in many cases. We make a copy, carry that and the ship's on shore representative's info for contact in case of an emergency. We always leave our passport in the safe when on a cruise. However, when traveling abroad and on our own, we never leave the hotel without our passport but it's always tucked in a very safe place.

We take ours for a couple of reasons. The first is exactly as Bombero described:

Originally Posted by Bombero wrote:

We always take ours.. You will find that in most countries a copy is not accepted, as they can be so easily manipulated.. Your drivers license won't work in many places either, as they have no idea, what a (ie. Iowa) drivers license is suppose to look like and drivers licenses can be counterfeited so easy too.. The reason for having a Passport is for Identification.. A Passport is an accepted form of Identification and won't do you any good if it is locked safely in your room safe.. Be wise, keep it with you.. If your worried about it getting wet, as mentioned above, put it in a zip-lock and seal it shut, but take it with you...

The 2nd reason is if you buy something that allows you to claim a VAT tax refund, you MUST have your passport with you to claim it...now this isn't a big deal if you're seeing several ports in the same country as you can claim them all in one place...but different countries require you claim you tax refund in THEIR country...no passport....no refund.

Depending on the cruise and itenerary, you may not have a choice in the matter. On the Prinsendam Grand World Voyage, passports were collected as part of the embarkation procedure and were held by the office. We already had color copies of ours, but the ship provided a black and white copy which they advised that we carry.

There were two times that the original passports were returned to us and we were told that we MUST have them with us when we left the ship. They were collected again upon return to the ship. Both times, the passports had to be presented to a customs official in the terminal as we left the ship.

You should not need your passport while in port... unless you get in trouble of some sort, or possibly to rent a car. The need for identification comes about when you return to the port. If you are on an organized tour, you might be waived right through. Seldom will you need to show more than your ship ID card. If you are returning to the ship on your own, chances are good that you will have to show a photo ID and your ship card. Driver's licenses are acceped in most places. If a passport is required, the ship will let you know.

We were once on a land tour and a couple had their passports stolen in Amsterdam. They had to stay behind in the Netherlands and it took 3 or 4 days to straighten things out. They had to pay their own expenses and the train costs to catch up with the tour. Don't know if their insurance covered this or not, When we were in Spain, the tour director told us to leave the passports in the hotel's safe.....pick pockets (aka terrorists?) were looking for passports.

Well this certainly has cleared things up! What is the score? Carry Passport 4, Don't carry 4 . I guess it is just a matter of who to listen to.

Originally Posted by ibskinny

Well this certainly has cleared things up! What is the score? Carry Passport 4, Don't carry 4 . I guess it is just a matter of who to listen to.

OK... I'll weigh in again... We did about 45 ports in 30 something countries. We were only ALLOWED to take our passports off the ship twice, and one of those was LA. We were always advised to carry a photo ID. Our photocopy of our passport was acceptable for refund of the VAT in two countries where we had qualifying purchases. So my advice... take a photocopy of your passport and the port agent contact information with you in a waterproof container or small "baggie" that seals tight. Only take the actual passport if you are advised or instructed to by the ship.