Passport Cards?

[mandykaye]

Will they work for a 3 night cruise to the Bahamas? It will be my husband and I and our two girls. We are thinking of getting these instead of passports because of the price difference?

[neg58]

Don't bother. They are no better than just birth certificates and ID when you are cruising. Passport cards are for border crossings. They won't help you if you have to fly home, and you don't need them if you sail home.

Nancy

[PrincessShmoo]

Originally Posted by mandykaye

Will they work for a 3 night cruise to the Bahamas? It will be my husband and I and our two girls. We are thinking of getting these instead of passports because of the price difference?

I agree with PP, they aren't worth the money. Since you have to get the certified BC in order to apply for the Passport card, there's really no reason to pay extra.

There's nothing that having a Passport card does for you that you can't do with just the certified BC and photo ID (for those 16 and over).

[SG101]

In the case of a medical emergency, you or your family cannot fly home from the Bahamas without a regular passport. We bit the bullet and bought our family (2 adults, 2 children) passports in 2010. Thank goodness we did, because we have already will have used them 3 times by the time we go to Alaska/Vancouver in June 2014.

Of course, the childrens' passports are only good for 5 years - but I think it's worth the investment.

[mandykaye]

Originally Posted by neg58

Don't bother. They are no better than just birth certificates and ID when you are cruising. Passport cards are for border crossings. They won't help you if you have to fly home, and you don't need them if you sail home.

Nancy

This is what disneys site says:


NOTE: The card may not be used to travel by air. Otherwise, it carries
the rights and privileges of the U.S. passport book and is adjudicated
to the exact same standards.

[PrincessShmoo]

Originally Posted by mandykaye

This is what disneys site says:


NOTE: The card may not be used to travel by air. Otherwise, it carries
the rights and privileges of the U.S. passport book and is adjudicated
to the exact same standards.

Yes, but those rights and privileges are the same ones you get using just the BC and ID. No need to spend extra money for it.

[tweis]

Passport cards CAN be used for cruises but really they are NO different than carrying a bc and id since they cannot be used for international flights.

[Four Swampers]

I agree with previous posts.

To me, passport cards are in addition to passports. I can leave my passport at home and go to Canada or Mexico via land crossing with my passport card. Then I don't have to worry about losing a passport. In theory, you could cruise with a passport card and leave your passport at home. If you then had an emergency, you could have someone FedEx your passport, assuming the emergency would give you that much time to wait for FedEx!!

[neg58]

Originally Posted by mandykaye

This is what disneys site says:


NOTE: The card may not be used to travel by air. Otherwise, it carries
the rights and privileges of the U.S. passport book and is adjudicated
to the exact same standards.

There really isn't a need for a passport card as you can always just use a passport. They were developed for use by people who cross borders often into Canada or Mexico, by land or sea but not air. They are a little easier to carry than a passport book.

If you want one (or in your case 4) go ahead and get them for the convenience of just having to have a card the size of a driver's license in your wallet. If you need to travel by air, you'll have to get a passport. If you'll only be traveling by land or sea, your BC is good enough.

If I had special circumstances and didn't want to explain a strange BC or something over and over, then yes, it might be worth it. My daughter is a naturalized citizen. Her BC doesn't work alone to prove citizenship, so I'd have to bring her Certificate of Citizenship plus her BC. If I lose the C of C, it's about $500 to replace, plus I don't want it all wrinkled. However, she has a passport so we just use that. If we lived in Vermont or Washington and crossed into Canada all the time, I might have gotten her a passport card. We don't, so I didn't.

Nancy

[TDC Nala]

Passport cards are useful if you are going to make land or sea border crossings on a regular basis - for a closed loop cruise they are no more useful than just bringing a birth certificate and ID. As noted by prior posters, they cannot be used for air travel.

[kstategrad]

We went ahead and bought the cards a few years ago. We find it more convenient to carry them than the BCs, because they are small and fit in a credit card slot in your travel purse.

So, to answer the OP's question, yes, you can use a passportcard for your cruise. It won't be good for air travel, but it will be enough documentation to suffice for the identification requirements of the cruise line.

[jessica29]

I did cards for my kids only as their stuff expires after 5 years and we can use them to cross the canada border ( we are in ohio). Otherwise if kids passports they lasted longer I would have gotten them a real passport. Either way I would not get one as an adult for the cost.