Passport or Other Documents?

I bring my passport on every trip, regardless of where I'm going. That way, there's no issues going through Customs.

My personal rule is that, anytime I leave the country, I have my passport with me. I also always get travel insurance when taking a cruise. (But, I also travel weekly for work, and have seen just about every manner of thing that can go wrong.) Your level of risk aversion/acceptance may be different from mine.

In your case, though, where both your passport has expired AND your name has changed, IMHO it is much easier and less-stressful to deal with those changes as part of the passport renewal process, rather than revisiting it (with DL, birth certificate, marriage license) at the airport, cruise embarkation, and potentially every cruise port.

Just get a renewed passport with your current name, make sure the cruise booking reflects the name change, and then enjoy your cruise, stress- and worry-free.

I'd get the passport renewed. For a little more you can have it expedited and be ready to go with no worries.

Kennicott That sounds like a nightmare!!!

Great advise. And definitely wait to do your online checkin until you have the new passport. You might be able to start it but you will need the number from the new passport in order to do the checkin. Good luck, Bon voyage, and welcome to cruising and the welcome aboard.

I understand this is my first cruise so just trying to weight out all my options. I just don't want to get there and have the hassle of missing or incorrect documents. Thank u for your advice.

Sorry, didn't mean to go overboard, but all you need to fix this is calm down and go to work on it. You have the time. Being stressed leads to mistakes, oftentimes putting off the process to fix the problem for a variety of reasons (which usually leads to it getting worse and certainly not going away), and then getting into arguments with the people you encounter who have the skills to fix it. Just get going! you and skeighty-eight gazillion people have had and are having the same exact problems you describe...…. good luck! and enjoy your cruise!!

I really appreciate all your advice. I will be ordering a new passport this week..Thanks again

By all means, get your passport renewed. Passports are one of the most discussed topics on this forum. Here is a link to a recent thread---https://cruiseline.com/forum/post/passports-77173?page=2#answers

I said then "If I'm in a country where things could get dicey if authorities challenged us for some reason or another, I always carry my passport.

I previously mentioned that situation in Singapore. We got off the vessel after being checked in and all, but decided to go back into the terminal to do some more shopping. Basically, we had to reenter the country to do that, then when getting back on board had to leave the country again.

Trying to get back on the ship was where the problem began. They would not let us do that, instead took us to a small immigrations office near the port for questioning. We had one officer question us then the top dog stepped in. We weren't sure what was going on, they appeared to believe we were making a story up as to even being on a ship. Turned out, that when we entered Singapore at the airport three days before we were suppose to receive a coupon or something that we should have turned in when leaving. The cruise line went ahead and put us on board and somehow missed asking us for the so called coupon. What Singapore immigrations was running into was that their records showed us as having exited the country illegally. They were actually pretty nice about it all when they eventually got it straightened out. They told us we could go ahead and shop and then get back on board. I said, you know, you have just scared the h__l out of us, no thanks.

I'm sure glad we had our passports on us when this happened. I hate to imagine how hard it would have been to get back on board if we had left our passports in the cabin in our safe."

I agree with all that has been said. If you check in for the cruise using you DL and birth certificate (you have that for sure) you can always edit and change it to you passport when it arrives. Don't print your boarding pass until your final edit. Good luck!