Passports!
We have 5 trips planned this year and based on some published wait times to receive renewed passports, we sent our renewals in early when we had a 3 month window. We mailed 1/17 via priority mail. We did not select expedited service. Received yesterday 2/4! all set for another 10 years. The government is back to work!
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Actually, 9.5 years, with the stupid "you must have 6 months remaining on your passport" rule
Bucketlist, with that luck you ought to apply for Global Entry if you don't already have it.
For anyone else renewing their passport, choose the big one, not the standard one. There's no difference in price. I had to renew my passport years early because I was out of blank pages.
And Claudia is right. If you don't have Global Entry, you should get it. You can do the interview when you return from an international trip (at many airports).
We mailed our passport renewals this past Friday 2/3 via certified mail. We paid the extra fee for expedited service since we need these in May. I have heard horror stories about renewals taking months to process. We will see how fast we get these back and if the extra expedited fee is worth it.
Great timing on this post!! Just yesterday it occurred to me to count the empty pages in my passport! I have about 6-7 totally empty, with an expiration date in 2027. Doing a couple of international trips this year…I will probably need to renew early. Chiming in on Global Entry….definitely worth getting it.
We renewed our passports last October; did not request expedited service.Very pleased with timely email notifications about the status of the application till it was approved.After the pandemic stories about slow renewals ,We we’re pleasantly surprised at how smooth the process was!Yes the government is working.
It's been 9 months and I'm still waiting on my Global Entry renewal. I was told they couldn't expedite until the wait time reached the 9 month period. I'll be calling this week....wish me luck!
Will you be traveling internationally before current GE expires- you can do the interview if needed at most major airports of entry.
If you are pre-approved for Global Entry, the cruise port in Palm Beach does without appointments on Tuesdays and Wednesday (I think) from 2-4pm. Just did mine last month but my husband's pre-approval hasn't come back, so they wouldn't take him. You can check on line for days.
Really hard to get it done if you let it expire, like we did over covid.
Ours were set to expire during covid but we renewed online and neither of us had to go for an interview.
FYI, if you do get a new passport, be sure to update the number with Tauck, Global Entry, and the airlines. It isn't automatic.
We logged on to our on-line, Trusted Traveler Accounts for Global Entry within the renewal period for our passes. We answered the questions on-line, paid the fee, and within a week or two were approved for another 7 or 8 years. There was no follow-on interview beyond the initial one in Windsor Locks a bunch of years ago.
We renewed ours before they expired. We had to do a Zoom appointment. Took maybe 5 minutes. Got an email with approval within minutes. This was the first time we had to do an interview for renewal.