juliakays

Trying not to over think it! Thankyou!

Yup, just double checked. $195 for 5 yrs if I got him the expedited passport now and $135 for 10 yrs if we can avoid international travel until he turns 16 in March. Seems like a no brainer to me

That's the kind of thing that I worry about. Thankfully he does have his school id and it looks enough like him now & has his graduation yr.

Thanks, yes. Supposedly we do because they are limited passports since the kids are under the age of 16. It's treated more like a new password altogether then a renewal.

Yesterday I decided to go with just the birth certificates, school ids and expired passports. My husband called an hr ago to make sure he didn't need to come home early so we could go to the evening hrs at the county passport center. I told him we'll be fine. Fast forward 15 minutes later and my friend pointed out to me that my 15 yr old is 6'3" with facial hair and taller than both my husband and I and people might question his age and whether or not he's the kid on the birth certificate ?. Back to stressing. I'll just sit on it for another week until we're in that 2 week emergency window and probably head to the NYC office. Darn puberty?

Will do. Thanks for the tip about bringing and not showing the expired passports. I would have handed everything over but less is more sometimes.

Yes and no. We're actually between Philly and the ny office but they only do passports for travel within 2 weeks and husband is out of town for work for most of that time and I'm pretty sure he would have to come with us. Murphy's law

Thank you DRLPP. The 2 adults have passports, just the kids that expired. No dls yet. RCCL insists that the kids are okay with just official bc' s since they are under 16. I'm just trying to come up with worst case scenario where they would need actual passports

Thanks for the replies. 50/50 so far. I'm starting to lean heavily towards traveling w/ just their birth certificates with the thinking that we have to send in their original birth certificates for the passport renewal. If anything goes wrong, I'm left with no documents and I will have to scramble 2 get raised seal copies. Not terrible for 1 kid but the other was born in NY 2+ hrs away.

I just booked our eastern Caribbean cruise on the Harmony on Friday and we leave the 25th of this month. I thought it was a good idea at the time but I have been driving myself nuts with the planning since. Biggest problem right now is the passports. My husband and I are fine but I just noticed that my kids passports expired 2 weeks ago. They are 13 and 15. I know I can travel with just their birth certificates but I also know that passports are preferred. Does anybody think it would be worth it for us to apply for their passports ASAP, pay the expedited fee and hopefully get them in time for the trip or is it not worth the stress? In my irrational mind, we will get lost at sea during our snuba excursion in st. Maarten, the ship will leave us and when we are saved, my kids will be unable to get home because they don't have passports. I know it's a bit far-fetched but is there really any reason that they would absolutely need their passports besides a medical emergency? Thanks in advance! I'm sure I'll have many questions to come in the next coming weeks. The only Royal Caribbean cruise I've done was a three day about 17 years ago. We did a Disney cruise 5 yrs ago but this is a whole new ballgame.