SophieM

No, you can order anything you want from the bar. Waiters were also circulating with trays of red and white wines and champagne.

Make sure the file is < 1 MB. Our original from FedEx had to be resized.

Finally!!!!😎

I think that will be done when she goes to dry dock this spring.

For those of you still trying to get the Brazilian visa, I recommend not trying to do the passport photo yourself. We went to our local FedEx store. Their cameras are set up to produce a 2” x 2” photo. The worker was also kind enough to resize our photos to < 1MB and give them to us on a thumb drive, instead of a printed photo. Someplace else may be able to do the same thing, but we thought FedEx might be a little more tech savvy. When you take a photo of your passport, make sure you only take the bottom page with your picture, the code at the bottom, and passport #. If you are on a cruise, make sure your submitted itinerary shows your name(s) on the same page. I included that in the question that allowed other information. I also included a second page there with a detailed explanation that, for us anyway, explained that we were arriving in Brazil, only there for six days, and departing from Brazil on a cruise and not returning—on this trip, anyway. It truly is a ridiculous and poorly implemented process. I guess I should feel better that it is much more onerous for Brazilians trying to get a U.S. visa? We got so frustrated before we finally had success that we booked an Amazon cruise for next year just to be able to use the visa. Well, there was a little more to it than that, but it certainly pushed us over the line. 🙂 Good luck!

Our flight doesn’t leave SCL until midnight. Do any of the lounges accept AA passengers? We are One World Emerald. Thanks!

Hi, Steve. Our Brazil visas are actually in process, as we were supposed to need them for a cruise in a couple of weeks, and we certainly share your frustration. We are thankful the Brazilian government came to its senses and postponed the requirement until after our upcoming cruise. Now, we just need for them to be approved before next January.

Crikey, folks, my bad entirely. I have no recollection of posting last April. I offer my most humble apologies and appreciate my attention being called to this grievous mistake. Thanks to those of you who replied, especially mnocket and basor, for your words of encouragement. Jane

I am not aware of anyone from our roll call or on FB who sailed through without rejections. I’m pretty sure they are at least doing away with the financial information requirement. It was a particular bugaboo. Good luck!

If you are an AT&T customer, depending on your cell plan, you will have free calls, texts, and data in South America on your phone and should be able to hotspot other devices to it. Just need to make sure you have the right plan and turn data roaming on on your phone. Be sure to switch back to airplane mode on sea days.

We are thinking of booking an Oceania cruise that includes the Amazon next January. If you have done an O cruise that includes the Amazon, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Cruise Critic moderator, please do not move this post to the South America board. I am specifically interested in hearing from those who have cruised the Amazon on Oceania. Thanks!

You might want to wait a bit. I think the requirements are being revised to make them more user friendly.

Congrats?!

Silly putty. 🤣

If you are flying into Brazil from the U.S., you probably won’t even be allowed to board. We are on AA and have received email from them requiring the visa to be able to fly.

Hope it will help! All files were sent PNG. And no ears showing on the passport photo they accepted of me! 🙂

I submitted our applications 12/21 and 12/22. I originally included a complete November statement and a 12/1-12/19 statement. They didn’t like that. Not really sure why now. So, I had my bank do 11/28 to 12/28. They rejected that, too. I contacted the help line by phone from the link on the VFS website. He said 11/15-12/15 and submit all answers in PNG format. Bless my bank, they have been super helpful. They created that statement and sent it to me in PNG format. I used my IPad for the application, so I saved it to “Files” and uploaded it from there. I am not familiar with Mac, but it may have something similar. I saved all of the items I needed to upload to Files, which has “convert image” that I used to make all my files PNG. I hope that clears it up a bit. If not, I’ll take another stab at it. Good luck!

Complicated may be an understatement, but it looks like a fabulous trip!

Just read back through my other posts and wanted to clarify that VFS did accept a bank statement with more than $2000. I ended up not having to send one with just $2000. Evidently the problem was it didn’t show the ending balance where they expected it to be, even though it was on the page. Hence my comment about sending one a 4th grader could understand.

Congrats!!! When is your cruise?

I’m cautiously optimistic there is hope. I just submitted my last week. Just yesterday, I had three quick turnaround requests and responses from VFS.

Wooooohoooooo! I have finally passed quality control and moved on to recommended by VFS. Here’s what I think finally worked for me: -all files were PNG -bank statement showed 11/15-12/15 with the ending balance stated after/with the last transaction. I had also submitted 11/28-12/28, and that was rejected. I spoke with someone on the Help Line who said 11/15-12/15. If you haven’t started the process, it may be different dates. I would check with the Help Line.

But, wait, there’s more, she said laughing hysterically and a bit unhinged. Now I just got another email back asking me to please re-upload Financial Proof with “please provide bank statement with ending balance $2000,” even though what I sent showed comfortably more than $2000. So, once again, my bank has come to the rescue, and I will send a 12/15 statement with a balance of #*&)-( $2000. it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

And another update, I submitted 11/28-12/28 in PNG format. Guess what. I got another email request from VFS pretty quickly (scary, I know) saying kindly provide (oh, if they only knew my unkind thoughts) a bank statement til the 15th of December. What the what??

So, here is the latest. I just got off the phone with VFS Help Line. I’m pretty sure that’s an oxymoron, but if I understood him correctly, they want the last 30 days of activity in PNG format, not PDF. Bless my bank, they are doing that for me right now. I asked about the NCL affadavit, and he was clueless. And so it goes….