Weird Document Trend - Parents Bring Birth Certificates for Kids, but just DLs for Adults

[Ferry_Watcher]

Seattle is seeing families arriving to board their cruise to Alaska, and for some reason, the parents/adults will have made sure to have brought their kids birth certificates, but the parents/adults will only have their Driver's License with them.  It seems that these passengers are still confusing their Real ID Driver's License with the WHTI approved Enhanced Driver's License - which are only available in MI,MN, NY, VT & WA State. These special Enhanced Driver Licenses are very clearly marked "Enhanced", and the 5 states that offer them all are along the Canadian border..

 

Just as a reminder, if you are on a cruise to Alaska you will be stopping in Canada.  All passengers need a gov't issued document that proves citizenship - it does not matter if you don't plan to get off the ship at the Canadian port - you still need the required documents at embarkation.  This would include Passport, Passport Card, US issued Birth Certificate, Enhanced DL (MI, MN, NY, VT & WA only), or NEXUS card). Passengers who are unable to show proof of citizenship will be denied boarding (and the cruise lines are under no obligation to refund your cruise fare).

 

Your TN, OH, AZ CA, FL, etc,  Real ID driver's License is not enough to get you on a cruise ship sailing to Alaska - at the very least you need a US gov't issued birth certificate.  I can't tell you how many of the Real ID DL holder passengers try to explain that the 'star' of their DL is all that they need.  Sadly, no.  For passengers arriving at the pier with just their Real ID driver's license or a regular driver's license, their only option is to call home and try to have a copy of their US gov't issued birth certificate sent electronically to the pier so it can printed it out.  Luckily, we have great success in helping passengers get a copy of their birth certificate, but It's not a great way to start a cruise.

 

So please remember, bring your passport or your birth certificate if you plan to sail to Alaska.

 

 

[Aquahound]

Oof.  I know your Fridays are busy with both Ovation and Edge turning over.  I take it some people learned a tough lesson yesterday?  I can't even imagine having to tell these people they can't board the ship. 

[Flatbush Flyer]

Traveling to ANY foreign country without a valid passport (just to save $$) is the poster child for “pennywise and pound foolish.” 
And if some folks who do (or want to) cruise/travel a lot aren’t preparing for unexpected emergencies that might include unplanned international flights, it’s a good bet that they’re not buying travel insurance either.

 

Passports and Travel Insurance? 
Not necessary…..   

……until it’s needed.😳

[Charles4515]

16 minutes ago, Ferry_Watcher said:

seeing families arriving to board their cruise to Alaska, and for some reason, the parents/adults will have made sure to have brought their kids birth certificates, but the parents/adults will only have their Driver's License with them.  It seems that these passengers are still confusing their Real ID Driver's License with the WHTI approved Enhanced Driver's License - which are only available in MI,MN, NY, VT & WA State. These special Enhanced Driver Licenses are very clearly marked "Enhanced", and the 5 states that offer them all are along the Canadian border..

I am not surprised. I predicted a few years ago that people would confuse REAL ID with Enhanced Drivers licenses. That was confirmed when a bunch of threads here on Cruise Critic contained that confusion. When Real ID actually becomes required, it looks like the May 7, 2025 deadline might be real this time to fly I expect another wave of confusion.  

[Ferry_Watcher]

11 minutes ago, Aquahound said:

Oof.  I know your Fridays are busy with both Ovation and Edge turning over.  I take it some people learned a tough lesson yesterday?  I can't even imagine having to tell these people they can't board the ship. 

 

Most folks are able to get a copy of their US birth certificate, but there have been times that only one parent is successful, and the other parent can't sail.  Lots of tears as the kids and the one parent says good-bye to the unfortunate parent who couldn't get a copy of their birth certificate.

 

 

[Ferry_Watcher]

5 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

When Real ID actually becomes required, it looks like the May 7, 2025 deadline might be real this time to fly I expect another wave of confusion.  

 

Even travel agents seem confused, or just worst - clueless.  There was a small group from a Southern state who were reportedly told by their travel agent that all they needed was their DLs.  Half the group were able to get copies of their birth certificates, half could not and didn't sail.  I always wonder what happens when those who were given incorrect info by travel agents contact their TA's.  Can the TA compensate the travelers?  Do the travelers take the TA's to small claims court?  

[1025cruise]

Hopefully those unlucky people have what their TA said in writing. 

But, IMHO, any trip leaving the country requires a passport. Period. End of story.

[Charles4515]

1 hour ago, Ferry_Watcher said:

 

Even travel agents seem confused, or just worst - clueless.  There was a small group from a Southern state who were reportedly told by their travel agent that all they needed was their DLs.  Half the group were able to get copies of their birth certificates, half could not and didn't sail.  I always wonder what happens when those who were given incorrect info by travel agents contact their TA's.  Can the TA compensate the travelers?  Do the travelers take the TA's to small claims court?  

Take that claim with a grain of salt. I suspect they are trying to save face by claiming they were told that by their travel agent to save face or they thought if they told you that you could make an exception. 

Edited Saturday at 07:40 PM by Charles4515

[Charles4515]

34 minutes ago, 1025cruise said:

Hopefully those unlucky people have what their TA said in writing. 

But, IMHO, any trip leaving the country requires a passport. Period. End of story.

But that is not true. However that is another reason I don’t believe those people were told by their TA that all they need was a DL. Every TA I ever dealt with told me I needed a passport period even on any itinerary though I could have used a birth certificate on many of them. They would say that because they knew there could be an emergency and their customers might have to fly home. 

[ontheweb]

I don't suppose the kids who can legally check in but have parents who can't, can sale. I'm sure they would have a great time without them. 😉

[Ferry_Watcher]

15 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

I don't suppose the kids who can legally check in but have parents who can't, can sale. I'm sure they would have a great time without them. 😉

LOL.  There is a reason that check-in agents are trained to check-in adults first, then the kids.

[ontheweb]

2 minutes ago, Ferry_Watcher said:

LOL.  There is a reason that check-in agents are trained to check-in adults first, then the kids.

How old would a kid have to be to be able to cruise without a parent? I imagine some of these cruises might be graduation presents and the child could be say 18. 

[ontheweb]

26 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

I don't suppose the kids who can legally check in but have parents who can't, can sale. I'm sure they would have a great time without them. 😉

too late to edit, but can SALE should of course be can SAIL.

[Ferry_Watcher]

21 yrs old is the industry standard.  Carnival allows youngers age passengers to cruise (18 or older) only if they are legally married or active duty military.  We rarely see this scenario in Seattle.

[cruiseryyc]

21 hours ago, 1025cruise said:

Hopefully those unlucky people have what their TA said in writing. 

But, IMHO, any trip leaving the country requires a passport. Period. End of story.

BINGO!!  Unfortunately its almost always your fellow Americans who for some reason don't want to get passports.

[Aquahound]

23 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

Take that claim with a grain of salt. I suspect they are trying to save face by claiming they were told that by their travel agent to save face or they thought if they told you that you could make an exception. 

 

Yeah, I think that is very likely.  I find it hard to believe that a TA doesn't know what documents are needed to travel.  Besides, the docs from the cruise line spell out what is needed.  

[klfrodo]

I don't doubt the claims of the possibility that the TA's may have told them their documents were good enough board the ship.

While the TAs on this board may be some of the best, my money is that they are in the minority. I would guess that too many people who consider themselves TAs probably couldn't tell you what WHTI means much less be able to identify all WHTI compliant documents.

Very few TAs, while offering to sell travel insurance, couldn't tell their clients the difference between Trip Delay and Trip Interruption, along with the other limitations of the policy they sell.

[Host Kat]

10 hours ago, Aquahound said:

... I find it hard to believe that a TA doesn't know what documents are needed to travel...

 

Years ago, I worked as a Pier Agent with the outsource company RCI used in Galveston. I had a group of family & friends that had driven down overnight from a small town waaaay up in the Texas panhandle checking in for a closed loop cruise. One friend in the group had only their Canadian birth certificate and a Texas driver's license. All their friends were in the group and there was no one "back home" to locate the correct papers & get them to the terminal in time. And so they did not cruise with the group. Now the group's TA was also in the group. They admitted they had told everyone in the group to just bring their birth certificate & driver's license. They then said they just assumed all in the group were US citizens since they were family & friends. Hope they never made that mistake again!

 

And for me, I had a friend that was a TA. Years ago, they booked a cruise for me. And this was back in the olden days when the Internet was just a baby. However, they used my nickname on the booking since that name was all they knew. (I am a person that prefers being called by a nickname on my middle name. Therefore, no friends know me by my real first or middle name & I forgot to tell this one.) I noticed the error when I was in the middle of doing the old "doc dance" when my docs were received by mail in their cute package. Eventually the name correction was made, and the cruise was delightful. And for years after until they passed, my friend would call me by my real first name as my penance.

 

[Mary229]

16 hours ago, cruiseryyc said:

BINGO!!  Unfortunately its almost always your fellow Americans who for some reason don't want to get passports.

Yet there are long threads on Cruise Critic concluding that one can get by without a passport.  I consider it like a tip in a good restaurant, if you can’t afford the tip you can’t afford the meal, likewise if you can’t afford the passport, you can’t afford to travel.  

[sparks1093]

On 6/22/2024 at 1:37 PM, Flatbush Flyer said:

Traveling to ANY foreign country without a valid passport (just to save $$) is the poster child for “pennywise and pound foolish.” 
And if some folks who do (or want to) cruise/travel a lot aren’t preparing for unexpected emergencies that might include unplanned international flights, it’s a good bet that they’re not buying travel insurance either.

 

Passports and Travel Insurance? 
Not necessary…..   

……until it’s needed.😳

So I should spend the money to buy a passport just to cross the land border that is 8 miles from my house even though there are less expensive options available? Here is the definition of "pennywise and pound foolish": careful about small amounts of money but not about large amounts 

 

—used especially to describe something that is done to save a small amount of money now but that will cost a large amount of money in the future.

(Emphasis added.)

 

Someone forgoing the expense of getting a passport for a closed loop cruise are not necessarily trying to save a small amount of money now, and it won't cost them a large amount of money in the future if they decide to get a passport later. Sure, there might be some expenses incurred if something goes wrong and they have to leave the ship, but many of those expenses will still be incurred even if one has a passport. There will be a delay in returning home if one travels with out a passport on a closed loop cruise, but then there will likely be a delay in returning home even if one has a passport (albeit possibly less of a delay). But all of this presupposes that something goes wrong that requires someone to leave the ship early in the first place, something that certainly might happen but most likely won't. 

 

[sparks1093]

17 hours ago, cruiseryyc said:

BINGO!!  Unfortunately its almost always your fellow Americans who for some reason don't want to get passports.

Because for US citizens we are given choices for what travel documents to use. I can travel to your country with my Enhanced Drivers License, properly issued by my state. Why would I want to incur the expense of a passport if I didn't need it? 

 

49 minutes ago, Mary229 said:

Yet there are long threads on Cruise Critic concluding that one can get by without a passport.  I consider it like a tip in a good restaurant, if you can’t afford the tip you can’t afford the meal, likewise if you can’t afford the passport, you can’t afford to travel.  

Yes, there are long threads on Cruise Critic because US citizens who travel have a choice to make regarding what documentation they use for their travel. Affordability can certainly be a driving factor, but so what? It's not your choice or your money. When we started cruising it would have set us back around $850 for passports for a 4 day cruise. We knew that we wanted to travel internationally by air at some point (and would absolutely need passports for that) but we didn't know when that day would be. We did the research and determined that while passports might be a nice thing to have they weren't actually necessary for the travel we were taking so we decided to wait to get them until we actually needed them for the travel we were undertaking. So, whether you like it or not, yes, US citizens can absolutely get by without a passport.

 

The take away from the OPs post is to make 100% sure that you have the documents you need to board the ship. It doesn't matter what a TA might tell you, it's still the traveler's responsibility to possess the correct document(s) to board. 

[Ferry_Watcher]

1 hour ago, sparks1093 said:

The take away from the OPs post is to make 100% sure that you have the documents you need to board the ship. It doesn't matter what a TA might tell you, it's still the traveler's responsibility to possess the correct document(s) to board. 

 

@sparks1093, Thank you my friend.

[Keksie]

To all the people choosing not to get passports.  That is your choice however, don't come on here to cry when something goes wrong.  Don't blame the cruise company for not letting you on.  Don't cry to the national news media how poorly you were treated, how you were abandoned in a foreign port and couldn't catch a plane back home immediately.  Just suck it up an realize that maybe you should have gone ahead and gotten that passport.

[sparks1093]

4 minutes ago, Keksie said:

To all the people choosing not to get passports.  That is your choice however, don't come on here to cry when something goes wrong.  Don't blame the cruise company for not letting you on.  Don't cry to the national news media how poorly you were treated, how you were abandoned in a foreign port and couldn't catch a plane back home immediately.  Just suck it up an realize that maybe you should have gone ahead and gotten that passport.

Since the regulations were enacted in 2009 I don't believe that I've read one post even close to someone doing any of this. Millions of people every year decide to use something other than a passport for a closed loop cruise and do so without any issue at all. 

Edited Monday at 12:23 PM by sparks1093

[Keksie]

9 minutes ago, sparks1093 said:

Since the regulations were enacted in 2009 I don't believe that I've read one post even close to someone doing any of this. Millions of people every year decide to use something other than a passport for a closed loop cruise and do so without any issue at all. 

I thought the first post was about people showing up and being denied boarding due to not having proper documentation or having to scramble to get the proper documentation. Over the years people have posted all kinds of stories about not having a certified birth certificate and having to scramble.  On our train trip out of Ketchikan the border official gave one poor guy a really hard time for just having a birth certificate.  I tend to err on the side of being prepared since I don't want to be the one in a million that has an issue.  I get that you are a big cheerleader for no passport, while I am of the opinion of just get one and you are all set - they really don't cost that much.