So, after 17 cruises over the last 10 years, including trips to Europe, i consider myself to be the most organized, streamlined packer in my family. I'm the one who gathers all the "important" documentation, while my husband frets over how many bathing suits he needs and does he really want to take a sport coat or just go casual?! I am always packed and waiting at the door while he finishes all his last minute checks (and of course i make fun of him for being so obsessive).
Our last cruise (December 3rd on Symphony out of Miami): same process as always. We flew to Miami the night before, stayed in a local Hyatt, then got up and called Uber to take us to the port. On the way, we had him stop for our usual supply run (wine and a few other misc essentials). Then, cruise port here we come!!!
At this point, i am excited as usual to be boarding a ship, and have not a care in the world.
We pull up and as i'm stepping out of the car and looking around at all the excited people about to start their vacation, a thought suddenly hits me: I DIDN'T PACK OUR PASSPORTS. I don't even know what to think, i'm just sort of shocked.....I tell my husband. he says "what does that mean???" I'm not sure. I know we have photos of passports in our phones. Surely we'll be able to work this out. Lets not panic. I've read nightmare stories before of people being denied boarding because they don't have proper paperwork, but we have photos. This will all be ok.
The porters take our luggage and we hurry inside. We're in a suite, so we go thru the suite entry (no lines) upstairs and the person greets us ready to check us in. I explain that i forgot our passports....she immediately takes us to a "special" desk (read: problem passengers) where the very nice employee explains to us that photos of passports are not acceptable. Only the originals will suffice. But, if you have a copy (why can THIS be a copy??) of your birth certificate, you're fine. Well, we don't have copies of our birth certificates. We have copies of our passports. We have our global entry cards. We have our vaccination cards. We have all sorts of proof that we're American citizens and we've sailed with RC about 10 times already. You guys KNOW who we are! Come on!!! In a very calm but firm manner she reiterates to me that without either our original passports OR a copy of a birth certificate we will not be able to board.
I remain calm (panicking will do me no good at this point). We call our neighbor friend and have her go to our house to look for our birth certificates. Of course, since i'm the organizer, i know exactly where they are in the file cabinet. All she has to do is take a photo and send it to me and off we'll go. So, she starts looking thru the files, and finds my husbands bc. Yea, there's one! She sends a photo of it, we show the RC employee, she approves it. Easy, one down. Now, she keeps going but can't find mine. I keep directing her to another folder, then another folder, then a lockbox, then a 3-ring binder - all the possible places that i know could contain my bc, but nothing. It is not there.
At some point during this search, my husband suggests that we call my mother to see if maybe she has a copy of it. My 95 year old mother who lives in a retirement community and has purged most of her lifetime of "stuff" into a small apartment. I scoff at him, there's no way she'll have it. But, he calls her anyway. And of course, he confuses her with his panicky voice, and she's not sure WHY we need it but she promises to look around. They hang up and i have little faith that she will be any help at all. (spoiler alert - you can ALWAYS count on your mother). 🙂
We've now been sitting in this special (read: problem) area for almost 2 hours. I have sent my neighbor home. I am coming to grips with the fact that i am NOT going on a cruise today. I'm trying to convince my husband that he should board with our friends (our new to cruising friends that we brought on this cruise with us and THEY of course have their passports), and that I'll fly home, get our passports, then fly to St. Maarten in 3 days and join them there. They all say no way, we're not going without you. We'll just all go to Key West for a few days instead. I'm fighting back tears.
And then my phone rings. It's my mother. She says "I found it". She has a family photo album with all 3 of her "children's" bc's (we're all in our 60's....) She takes a photo, sends it to me, i show the employee, they accept it, here's your boarding pass and off you go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am in shock, it's almost unbelievable but we're getting on the ship! I can't describe the feeling i had walking up that gangway and onto the Symphony. It's always a great feeling but this time - well, this time it was truly awesome!!!
From there on, we had a GREAT cruise! Everything was perfect. The food, the drinks (lots of those), the ports, the entertainment.
The moral of this story is....well, i promise that i will NEVER forget passports again! I also will be ordering passport cards so we always have those in our wallets. And, never doubt your mother. She still is sort of confused about what exactly happened, but she understands that SHE SAVED THE DAY!
