Crazy Documents Guy Strikes Again! Read this if new to boards!

[Four Swampers]

With the Disney Magic headed to Europe, I am playing this broken record again.

Check your travel documents!

Hasn't happened to me, yet, but the boards are full of stories of people who discovered their passport was expired or missing. Or locked in a safe deposit box at the bank, and they could not get it because the vault is time locked: it can't be opened even if the president of the bank is your best friend.

For everyone who is new here: go check your identification documents now! If using a passport, make sure it is where you think it is and that it is not expired. If using a birth certificate (bc) and driver's license (dl), make sure they are where you think they are and that your driver's license will not expire before the cruise.

For everyone going to EUROPE: make sure your passport is where you think it is, and make sure it does not expire until six months after the date of entry to Europe. When you fly into a country, including most of Europe and most of the world, that country wants your passport to be valid for six months from your entry. That six month cushion helps the foreign country: if you get ill or your plans change and you end up staying several months, it will still be easy for you to go home, because you will have a valid passport. They don't want to be stuck dealing with you and an invalid passport, so they make it easy on themselves and require it to be valid for six months. I believe we do the same thing in the USA when foreigners visit us.

This is not a task for tomorrow, nor the next day. Check your documents today. I checked mine this morning. To make sure that I'm not asking too much, I'll go check them again right now . . .

. . . I'm back. Took two and a half minutes. All four passports in place, all valid until 2020. Sentry brand fire resistant safe locked back up.

To those of you who have seen me post this a dozen times, my apologies for putting you through it again. For those of you who are new to the boards or new to European cruising, I hope this is useful.

See you in Copenhagen!

 

[bumbershoot]

All great ideas.

But...for those who want to be more exact, look up the countries you're going to before worrying about passport expiration. Of course, go with the longest-out option.

You say "see you in Copenhagen"...for Denmark, the State Dept says "Must be valid for at least three months beyond your planned date of departure from the Schengen area.".

Italy: "Must be valid for at least three months beyond your planned date of departure from the Schengen area. (Six months recommended.)"

For the UK our State Dept says: "Must be valid for duration of your stay"

and so on.


Italy is interesting because a few years ago when DH went to Italy for work, it was definitely 6 months. And now it's just recommended.

 

[FunluvinJ23]

Yeah FYI: Russia requires your passport to be valid 6 months after debarkation. We found that out the hard way when we tried online check-in last week. She is now waiting for her passport to be expedited.

 

[rachelsmom97]

When you do on-line check in I believe DCL will default to whatever is the longest time needed for Passports. For our Dover to Barcelona and then 5 night Med cruises, because we stop in France it defaults to 6 months on the DCL site.