When you cruise to a different country, do you get your passport stamped?

[thermal]

I know this may seem trivial, but I love getting my passport stamped on the rare occasions I travel to different countries. 

 

Q: When you take a cruise to a different country, do you get your passport stamped like you would when flying in?  

 

Thank you kindly. 

[lenquixote66]

My passport has been stamped by every country I heve been to.

[navybankerteacher]

Usually not.  You can, of course, probably find some government agency - perhaps just a post office - to stamp your passport, but you can spend a lot of your in port time doing that - so you might come back with an official souvenir - but fewer real memories.  This is especially true in the Caribbean

[Flatbush Flyer]

Flying or cruising, lots of countries have abandoned stamps and now use scanning of chipped passports for ETAs

[Honolulu Blue]

9 hours ago, lenquixote66 said:

My passport has been stamped by every country I heve been to.

My experience has been the opposite for cruises I've been on.  I've NEVER had my passport stamped while on a cruise or in port.

[TheOldBear]

My old passport got its first stamps in 2017 [UK onboard QM2, entering and leaving LeHavre, back home in Brooklyn]

For 2019 & 2022 the new passport received no stamps - all electronic - and was not even presented in Norway or Belgium [stayed in the safe].

[Markanddonna]

Almost never, esp in Israel where they give you an ID card to carry so your passport is not tracked by other countries who hate Israel.

[Dancer Bob]

In the UK, at least at LHR, US/Can have electronic gates, no passport stamp. In Paris, last month they were experimenting with using the EU electronic gates (s-l-o-w!) but you still had to get a Schengen entry stamp.

[hallux]

I renewed my passport last year, the only stamp in it was from 2015 when I went to Mexico City for work.  One cruise in 2014, one in 2018 and two in 2019 and none got me stamps in the book.

[Flatbush Flyer]

3 hours ago, Honolulu Blue said:

My experience has been the opposite for cruises I've been on.  I've NEVER had my passport stamped while on a cruise or in port.

For example, try cruising SYD to PPT. Before getting to Polynesia, two customs agents board the ship at an earlier port, enjoy a sea day aboard and then do a ”face-to-face”  (including a stamp) prior to arrival at a FP island.

Though not a cruise nor military ship (rather, California’s Golden Bear), had Australian authorities come aboard at HMAS Kuttabul to clear us on board for both entry and exit.  

[Honolulu Blue]

3 minutes ago, Flatbush Flyer said:

For example, try cruising SYD to PPT. Before getting to Polynesia, two customs agents board the ship at an earlier port, enjoy a sea day aboard and then do a ”face-to-face”  (including a stamp) prior to arrival at a FP island.

Though not a cruise nor military ship (rather, California’s Golden Bear), had Australian authorities come aboard at HMAS Kuttabul to clear us on board for both entry and exit.  

Noted.  Thanks.  Good to know.  I'm thinking about visiting both French Polynesia and Australia next year on a cruise, though I've obviously never been there before.

[Flatbush Flyer]

Just now, Honolulu Blue said:

Noted.  Thanks.  Good to know.  I'm thinking about visiting both French Polynesia and Australia next year on a cruise, though I've obviously never been there before.

Our most recent FP visit involved two segments earlier this year: SYD-SYD (incl. OZ) and SYD-PPT. Land stays in SYD before and PPT after. We really wanted to add PPT-LAX (or SFO). But Regatta would be doing several short segments around FP and, as enticing as a few weeks in FP sounded, it was not a Plan A for us.

That said, among our favorite cruises are TransPacifics. And it only takes one to eliminate the Caribbean from future cruise considerations.

[lenquixote66]

4 hours ago, Honolulu Blue said:

My experience has been the opposite for cruises I've been on.  I've NEVER had my passport stamped while on a cruise or in port.

My father was born in Poland ,lived in the UK and came to America.He described to me the wonders of traveling .

[mammajamma2013]

In the fifteen years I've had a passport, I've had zero stamps on the first one and two on the second. Cuba and Falkland Islands; two out of twelve cruises.

[CruiserBruce]

Oddly, a couple of times a ship held our passports to speed clearance into a country,  we have received stamps from those countries. But otherwise,  no stamps from most countries we have sailed in and stopped there. Probably way under 10% of the countries we have sailed into have stamped our passports. 

[mom says]

My current passport is 8 years old and only has a few empty pages left. But the vast majority of stamps have been entry/exits at airports. Haven't had a stamp going into or out of the US in years- it's all electronic now. I've got no stamps at all from cruises in the Caribbean, or from our last cruise  from LA to French Polynesia and back. The last cruise  related stamps are from our 2019 cruises from the UAE to Singapore and on to Shanghai. The ship held our passports and gave them back (with entry/exit stamps from every country we stopped at) at the end of each cruise. So I guess it very much depends on where you are porting. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by mom says

[Hlitner]

To the OPs question we would answer, maybe yes and maybe no :).  It depends where, in the world, you go.  For example, when we were just in Asia (Japan, Korea, and Taiwan), all those country stamp Passports every time you enter (in the case of Japan they also stamp when you depart).  On a Caribbean cruise, it is rare to ever get a Passport stamped.  In Europe, your Passport will be stamped when you enter a Schengen country.  But you can move between Schengen countries without getting any additional stamps.  If you enter the UK you will again have your Passport stamped.  

 

The funny thing is that sometimes countries do not bother to do anything.  This happened to us in April 2022, when we cruised to Monte Carlo on the Seabourn Ovation.  When we arrived in Monte Carlo, there were no formalities and we just walked off the ship onto the pier and were met by our car/driver.  Nobody from Monaco was at the port to stamp anything.  A few weeks later this caused us some problems when we entered Germany (from the Czech Republic).  The Germans are one of the few Schegen countries that have everyone go through Passport control (even when on domestic flights).  The Germans were very unhappy because we had no entry stamp for a Schengen country!  Fortunately, we had plenty of backup documents including our cruise tickets, airline tickets, etc. to prove that our itinerary.

 

Hank

[whogo]

On 6/13/2023 at 9:00 PM, navybankerteacher said:

Usually not.  You can, of course, probably find some government agency - perhaps just a post office - to stamp your passport, but you can spend a lot of your in port time doing that - so you might come back with an official souvenir - but fewer real memories.  This is especially true in the Caribbean

I advise against this. You do not want a postmark stamp instead of an immigration stamp on your passport, it might be considered defacement of your passport.

 

We cruised from Chile to Buenos Aires in 2020, received stamps from Chile and the Falkland Islands, nothing from Uruguay or Argentina.

[navybankerteacher]

I was not suggesting a postmark - a number of countries have different functions performed by their post offices.

[Hlitner]

On 6/13/2023 at 10:00 PM, navybankerteacher said:

Usually not.  You can, of course, probably find some government agency - perhaps just a post office - to stamp your passport, but you can spend a lot of your in port time doing that - so you might come back with an official souvenir - but fewer real memories.  This is especially true in the Caribbean

A very bad idea that might get you more than you expect.  A nice postal worker might just put a stamp in your Passport and than you might have some real problems:

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/souvenir-passport-stamps

 

Keep in mind that Passports are expensive documents and have a real purpose.  

 

Hank

[whogo]

If you want passport stamps go to Africa. A world cruiser reported that he filled up his passport by crossing back and forth between Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and Namibia and having his passport stamped at each entry and exit after waiting in line for the formalities.

 

I ordered the fifty page passport in the hope that I could have similar experiences.

[sullaRaffaello]

I was on the 2015 and 2016 Crystal world cruises. We had to leave the passport with the ship. At the end of both cruises, there were quite a few stamps in the passport.

[Gwendy]

Be careful if you travel a lot, you can fill your passport up with useless stamps and not have enough empty pages to meet a country’s requirements.

 

Buy a small notebook and get the unofficial stamps in there.

[SbbquilterUT]

Only have had it stamped at international airports.  Be careful about getting a stamp that is meant as a souvenir as I recently read of someone's passport deemed unacceptable due to a non-official stamp.

[hallux]

50 minutes ago, SbbquilterUT said:

as I recently read of someone's passport deemed unacceptable due to a non-official stamp.

We all did, it was mentioned in post 20...