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If you are like me, that is, a frequent floater, who has many cruises booked over the coming years you pay close attention to the expiration date of your passport. Why? Well right inside the front of your US passport it warns you that:
“If your passport expires within six months of your date of departure, you may be denied entry into some countries”
The same rule applies for cruise lines that they may not let you board the ship if your passport is about to expire and with my, and my wife’s, passport were set to expire by the end of 2025 it was time to think about when I wanted to renew them.
Being frugal by nature (and why I always try to use points vs. cash to travel) I wanted to wait as long as I could to renew my passport because I wanted to extend the 10 years of travel I would get from the date of reissue. In other words, the longer I wait the longer I get.
But with the US government making so many cuts I was concerned that if I waited too long I could run into the situation of a few years back when folks had very long wait times for their passport to be issued or reissued. So much so (back then) that many paid for expedited service to try to get their passport back a little bit faster – something I did not want to do either.
The US government passport renewal page states that you can expect to wait 4-6 weeks for a “regular” passport request to be processed. Would this time be longer if you chose mail-in compared to online applications? Maybe so.
We chose the online option to renew. The price was $130 and to me paying only about $10 per year for a US passport is an outstanding value in 2025. We took a white sheet and used blue tape to put it up against a wall in one of our guest rooms and with strong lights pointed at our faces we started shooting photos with our Samsung Android phones.
It is important to remember you can not be wearing glasses or a hat or even smile for these photos. It did take a while to get a shot that the online passport site “liked” but after a number of shots and tinkering with centering on the website we at last got a green check that the photo was accepted.
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So far so good and after paying we each received an e-mail that we would get an update when the payment was processed. Just how long would that take? It only took a day. Nice.
With payment done just how long would we have to wait? Would it really take 4-6 weeks or longer? In the following days both my wife and I got e-mails that our passports were approved for reissue and were being made and could expect a USPS tracking number soon.
Just Wow right?!
Would you believe that just ONE WEEK after my wife applied she had her new passport in her hands! Amazing. For me it took a few more days but it was under two weeks total. The funny thing is we processed my passport first online and my wife got hers first – go figure.
So while I was really concerned that my passport could maybe take a long time to process right now in 2025 I apparently did not need to be concerned at all. Could that change as the months tick by this year? Maybe. But either way I am still happy that I can now relax as I have until 2035 to worry about renewing my passport again. – René
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Thanks for the update. My wife’s passport expires April 2026 and we have cruises planned for March 30-April 4 2025 and the first week of November 2025. I plan on renewing hers as soon as we get back from next week’s trip! The timing of your post could not have been better. Keep up the great work.
@Dr. Harman – Thank you for your comment and kind words. It really does mean a ton to me and the rest of the authors on EotF!
Anytime, I go back and forth with Chris following many of his Delta posts as I am Platinum for one more year before my travel slows down and he is also a great resource.
I have reminders set for renewing all of our passports, 9 months before they expire, to ensure we don’t get caught by this rule. If our country doesn’t require 6 months (we say we do but then we have an exemption list that covers almost every country), I don’t know why others do.
My passport took several weeks to be processed, so if it’s still 4-6 weeks I’m not concerned about that. I suspect that doing it online will make it quicker. I will say that until the US allowed online applications, applying for a UK passport was much simpler and took much less time than a US passport did for the new one to arrive, and that’s with mailing the old passport to the UK and receiving the new one from the UK. Even now you can’t do online applications for children or new passport applications, which you can with the UK.
I see that for US online renewal you don’t need to mail in your old passport, which you did for the UK last time I did it. That is a much better process. I hope the UK follows suit if they haven’t already with their online process.
@Barry – Correct. We still have our old ones. Neat to keep them for memories and stamps of travel.
My daughters passport was expiring in 6 weeks and a trip had been planned in 6 weeks! She expedited her renewal- 2-3 weeks the website said. One week (Tuesday)before the trip still pending? So she called and got an appointment in local passport office for Friday. Got there went thru super TSA like security. Went up to passport office and again all paperwork checked.. to get into another line to check again then into another queue to wait for a human. Got a human paperwork ok, passport info pulled from outsourced company in Pa. Computer system was down so told to come back on Monday at 3 pm. It is 1.5 hours from her house and after 3 pm it can take 2.5 hours to get back. Got there 1/2 hour before appointment but building closed for lunch. Finally got in and told had to wait for appointment time tho not crowded! Got the passport 16 hours before her flight!,
Cutting it so close. Thanks to government inefficiency!
Mine expires Aug 2026. I am going to Canada in December and then will begin the process as soon as that trip is done. Here’s hoping…!
My passport had three years left but I was running low on available stamp spots and I was very worried about turnaround times with so many government agencies having staff fired so during a two month hiatus from international travel I sent out my application for renewal and paid for expedited service. The cuts haven’t happened yet and that reflected in the fact that I got my new passport today. Oddly the passport card and my old passport weren’t in the envelope but I suspect they’ll be along before long. Two weeks is awesome. I love our functional government.
(Personal attack redacted) Unfortunately as a transgender frequent flier, passport renewal can come with documents being confiscated or the passport can be returned incorrectly (even after 20+ years and several court orders for having the correct sex indicator). The restricting of movement for lawful citizens within and entering/exiting the country is extremely concerning. (Another personal attack redacted).
D – You can still get a passport but it will have the gender you were born with on it.