Passport for 17 month old?

[Piperhigh13]

Will my child, who will be 17 months old at time of cruising, need a passport? If not what type of identifying documents will I need?

[NHL Philly Fan]

https://www.ncl.com/about/required-travel-documentation

 

https://www.ncl.com/faq#documentation

[blackwing]

If it's a cruise departing from a U.S. port and returning to a U.S. port, then you just need a birth certificate.

 

If it's a Europe cruise, yes, your child will need a passport.

[SuiteTraveler]

In the Caribbean, US citizens can travel with a birth certificate. Here is the thing though, if you travel with only your child's birth certificate and something goes wrong - say you or your child gets injured or sick or you miss the ship somehow and you need to fly back to the US or another island, then you will have the problem of obtaining a passport for your child first before you can fly back as you would need the passport for re-entering the US. Not every island has a US Embassy or Consulate, so you might have to travel to a different island to get a passport. If your child were in the hospital at your port stop and there's no way to get a US passport on that island, then you or your husband would have to fly or go by ferry to the closest island where you can get a passport. Probably you would have no choice but to spend the night on the other island as you wait for the passport. Then you would have to go back to where your child is the next day. Want to go through all that rigamarole? You don't mention where you are cruising, but if it is the Caribbean, some islands don't have the best hospitals. You would be OK in the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, but some of the other ones, not so much.

Edited July 20, 2016 by SuiteTraveler

[Jezo]

Why not just get one for the baby? For our first cruise with a 6 month old we got his at around 3 months old. They last 5 years.

[jmcookiemonster25]

Why not just get one for the baby? For our first cruise with a 6 month old we got his at around 3 months old. They last 5 years.

 

It's gonna be funny when you need to show your child's passport when they are 5, it'll be a picture of them when they're 3 months old! Could totally do a bate-and-switch with another kid, they'd never know! Lol.

[ollienbertsmum]

It's gonna be funny when you need to show your child's passport when they are 5, it'll be a picture of them when they're 3 months old! Could totally do a bate-and-switch with another kid, they'd never know! Lol.

 

In Gibraltar, travel into Spain requires a passport so almost everyone gets one within the first month of their life. Children do change so much, but I trust the experienced passport control to spot inconsistencies.

[sparks1093]

For a US citizen that is under 16 years old on a closed loop cruise a birth certificate is sufficient. With that being said personally if I were traveling with a 17 month old on a 7 day or longer cruise I would have to give serious consideration to getting a passport because children that age can get sick so quickly.