Recent Non-US Citizens cruising out of FLL - Passport ?

[Redsgj]

I am trying to find out which cruise lines take non-US citizens passports for the length of the cruise. I really don't like the idea of giving up my passport! I know Princess doesn't and I'm pretty sure that RCI and NCL do. My question is does HAL?

Thanks!

[wander]

I have read where people say cruise lines took the passports of non-US citizens, but when I do not know.

However, I DO know that some lines collect ALL the passports, which is dependent on what countries you are visiting. I have had this occur on two PRINCESS cruises, several HAL cruises, and on an ORIENT Line cruise.

It depends on the itinerary and not the cruise line nor where the ship leaves from for US citizen passports. I do know that when US passports are collected, so are all others.

In case you do not know why they are collected - it depends on the review requirements for the countries visitied. Some have their immigration folks personally look at each passport. Others just want a copy of the ship's manifest. By collecting the passports, passengers can sleep, have breakfast and/or shipboard fun while they are being reviewed. This sure beats, in my opinion, getting in a line at 5:30 AM to personally hand the passport to the officials, particularly on longer cruises. I have had to do this as well on some cruises where either the passports were not collected OR the country required a personal view of each passenger with passport in hand.

Now, we do tend to take longer (over 21 days) cruises and go to many widespread countries, so our experiences certainly would be different than folks who can only go on 7- 10 day cruises and stick around the Caribbean, Mexico and Alaska. I feel so very fortunate to be able to take the cruises we do and visit the places we have visited.

[Bramcruiser]

I agree with Wander.

I had two different situations on the two cruises I went on and I believe it has to do with ports visited and nothing to do with cruise lines.

On my last trip - a repo from Vancouver to San Diego - us Canadians held onto our passports and only non-Canadians and non-Americans had to show up on deck early on the last morning for special immigration procedures. We got off the ship easily along with the Americans in San Diego and only had to show our passport to the guy in the arrivals hall.

However, on my Caribbean cruise previous to the above our Canadian passports were collected and held until the last day of the voyage and we had to show up on deck on the last day to go through the screening procedures and collect our passports.

[MeOhMy]

Every cruise I have ever been on my passport was collected. That includes Cunard, NCL, RCI and Crystal. The RCI trip was out of Galveston to the western Carribbean.

The NCL collected our passports, returned them for St. Petersburg then recollected them for the other ports.

[sail7seas]

I'm not sure what the concern is about. You will be given a 'receipt' for your passport and everyone's is returned efficiently at the end of the cruise. It is a common need for them to collect and hold them.

Many times when we checked into hotels in Europe our passports were taken and sometimes held overnight. That made me a lot more nervous than handing it in on the ship.

[earl_m]

I am from Canada, on my last cruise april2 on the ryndam.
I was able to keep my passport with me. They do not keep
them antmore.





WESTERDAM NOV 12 2006

[laminar]

I'm not sure what the concern is about. You will be given a 'receipt' for your passport and everyone's is returned efficiently at the end of the cruise. It is a common need for them to collect and hold them.

Many times when we checked into hotels in Europe our passports were taken and sometimes held overnight. That made me a lot more nervous than handing it in on the ship.


They can give you a receipt but they CAN get your passport lost.
HAL lost my passport once with my us visa printed in it. They did apologize but the hassle that i had to go through was HUGE. I was detained and sent back to my country like a criminal.
Every time that i give my passport to any cruise line i get so nervous and i tell them that once it got lost on board one cruise ship. They now put a huge note in front of mi document and that way they wont mess with it!

[Aussie Gal]

On most of our cruises the ship's office have taken our passports and we have been given a receipt. Sometimes we have to take the passports to the office and other times they have been taken when we boarded.

I have never worried about them, as we always carry copies with us in case we ever lose them.

Jennie

[aaerobear]

Most of the time it depends on the countries you will be cruising through. They deterkine when passports need to be collected. We have had them collected on Princess, Orient Lines and NCL. That was because of of the "exotic" itineraries we were sailing. It sure saves time and hassle when they do that, you do not need to be at this place or that at a special time. The officials do the work while you do the fun stuff.

When I first started flying as a purser we had to collect ALL of the passports of ALL the passengers on the aircraft and turn them into immigration officials at intermediate stops in asia, they returned them just as they closed the door to leave. Now that was scarry, I can't tell you how many times I thought I was going to be short one or more passports (It NEVER happenned though)

Ed

[CoconutFish]

On a Buenos Aires to Seattle cruise HAL took our passports on embarkation in Buenos Aires (with receipt given) and handed them back (in a wait-in-line-for-a-longish-time manner) once in American waters.

The only drawback is that if you do not take an extra photo ID ( driver's license), you need a good photocopy of the photo and information page of the passport in order to have the required photo ID in addition to your HAL room card. HAL graciously made very good photocopies of our passports for us.