One of the best parts of being a U.S. citizen is the ability to carry a U.S. passport. With rare exceptions and minimal paperwork, these little blue booklets can get you across almost any border in the world. You may need an elusive visa now and again, and some nations are difficult or impossible to enter (Yemen, North Korea), but this document is extremely powerful. Citizens of Pakistan or Bangladesh can only access a few dozen countries without visas; people with a U.S. passport can travel visa-free to many top destinations.
Some sovereign nations don’t even require U.S. citizens to carry passports at all, as long as they arrive by cruise ship. If you travel on a closed-loop cruise, which begins and ends in a U.S. port, you can set foot in the Bahamas without stamping, or even showing, your passport. The same theoretically goes for the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and the island of Bermuda. Instead of a passport, passengers can show improved U.S. identification, such as an Enhanced Driver’s License (or Real ID), to confirm citizenship.
Our advice: bring your passport anyway, especially for Caribbean cruises. You should even make sure it’s still valid for the next six months; if it’s not, now is the perfect time to renew your passport. This may sound like an unnecessary risk or hassle; why take something so valuable if you don’t actually need it? But here’s the thing: What if you do need it? A lot of issues can arise on a cruise, and the last thing you want is to unexpectedly show up in a foreign country without proper documentation.
Why should you bring your passport on a cruise?
