Passports

Can someone tell me what happens about passports on a Silversea cruise in the Mediterranean? We will be coming from England and have UK passports. We are starting our cruise in Italy, going on to Corfu, Croatia and Montenegro. I assume we will be asked to produce a passport before boarding the ship, but what happens after that? Do the ship's personnel keep our passports or are they handed back to us? What happens in each port? Will we have to produce a passport when we go ashore and come back on board each time?

Any help would be much appreciated.

The crew will keep your passports when you board the cruise on day one. You will get them back a few days later. You don't need your passports in each port. You simply show your ship pass to get back on ship.

In my experience passports are retained at reception until the end of your voyage...you will be asked to collect them before disembarkation.

There are however some port authorities who insist guests show passports...your cruise director will advise if this is necessary.

There are also some ports who require photo ID and for this l always carry my driving licence with me. Other than that your ships pass card will suffice.

Sophia [emoji4]

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.... another reason why ships like to keep hold of all passengers passports is that in many or most portsafter arrival immigration may board and then clear the ship before passengers may disembark and during that process they may wish to see specific passports.

Jeff

You won't normally get it back at the end of the cruise until you have paid your bill, if there is anything to pay.

You won't normally get it back at the end of the cruise until you have paid your bill, if there is anything to pay.

lol... or done all the dishwashing instead!

I think the only port I asked for my passport was in Monaco and thought it was needed for the Casino.

Funnily, last August, Carnival would insist you took your passport - but in reality, it wasn't needed and I left in my safe. SS kept the passports. Just take a photocopy of your passport and always leave on the ship unless there's a good reason you need it.

You can get your passport back whenever you like. Depending on the ship they may chase you to return the passport or they may not care and let you keep you passport, this all is depending on the hotel manager (or some other officer).

We picked up our passports in December on the Spirit so we could buy some watches in Aruba and Curacao and there was no problem in getting them back from the ship.

Funny thing was that we did not need to show our passports when buying the watches (Rolex/Tag), but did when using the same CC for buying an under $400 camera in one store and $35 of sun tan lotion in another store.

The whole 'we need you passport for clearing the ship in port' is utter nonsense. The big mega ships do not collect passports and get cleared just as fast by the port authorities. Somehow these luxury lines get a kick out of collecting passports. I don't get it but decided not to care anymore.

Yeah well it really depends on the port and country requirements

Personally I would rather have authorities come on board and just stamp passports than queue up for immigration face to face

When leaving SA in December we had to do face to face.. then arrival and departure for Namibia.. it was much nicer on arrival back in SA to just have the authorities come on board and stamp

On another line a few years back some pax decided not to hand back the passport and the entire ship had to wait at a new country and wait while the people went back from the tender point and got theirs from the safe.... the ship wasn't cleared because they wouldn't hand over...

A family member was on a mega ship last month and the ship kept passports for several days due to the countries they were visiting.... imagine 5000 people lining up...

You'reright, I should have mentioned that in the Caribbean the passport collection isnonsense. The rest of the world I do not know.

(Yes, I'vebeen to virtually every Caribbean Island/country by ship except Haiti and Cuba and never got a stamp in my passport, except the US where you need to line up anyway).