Don't be me ...

[MaryMendes]

Wow! A real horror story. I will get DH to check ours now.

[kadiekaismummi]

I’m so sorry to here your awful story, but glad to here you did manage your cruise even though it did end up more costly,& was such a nightmare for you both, but this will make me & most of us check & double check, print out all your info (which I always do anyway) before we travel on our holibobs, mines not even booked yet! But hope you enjoyed & finally got a fab holiday xx

[coggie]

I didn't know you could renew an ESTA every year...I thought the minute you put your passport details in it would flag up a valid ESTA

[metalguru]

Originally Posted by coggie

I didn't know you could renew an ESTA every year...I thought the minute you put your passport details in it would flag up a valid ESTA

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It did for me this year, but I only had a couple of months left and going back in September so completed new ESTA's

[coggie]

Originally Posted by metalguru

It did for me this year, but I only had a couple of months left and going back in September so completed new ESTA's

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I've always renewed with a few months left too.

[akhurstf1]

After reading this I've just been to check our estas our in date for our November trip and they expire on 22nd November. All is good.

We did have a nervous moment with our estas back in 2013. As we were getting married, my wife got her passport in her married name. This then turned out we couldn't apply for estas until the night before our wedding. We were flying out 2 days later. I applied the night before and phew it all went well and was approved within minutes.

[dx4100]

When we was checking in for our TC flight last year some stressed guy was registering for his at check in - don't know what the story was but the checkin in people where clearly helping him out / going to let him fly if it came back approved.

[jaccuziman]

Glad it all worked out for you !
I made a silly mistake in Oct 2018 regarding my esta.
We were doing a transatlantic cruise from Southampton to Miami.
I got the family's Estas from a Disneyworld trip the year before, so we're still valid.
But, I had only 3-4 months after cruise on my passport, oh well I will renew it now.
So I did, it came well in advance of holiday, sorted, or so I thought !

Got to front of line to get on ship, "oh dear sir you have no Esta !)

Silly me didn't realise the valid esta i did have was for my old passport. It didn't even enter my head, I had one, I thought it was my Esta, but it wasn't, it was my Esta for that old passport !
The Esta is only for you on the passport it was issued for. What an idiot.
So thankfully the wonderful staff at Southampton immediately got on the phone to U.S.A immigration, I paid again and was issued a new Esta.
It was the longest 90 minutes i have ever had.
The rest of family could go, but what if they declined my application !
Wife and 2 young children wouldn't have gone without me.
So after what was a an incredibly stressful wait, my Esta came through, and we boarded, and had a wonderful cruise.

So the warning is there, don't be stupid like me, and assume you have an Esta, just because you were granted one a few months before.
It is not you that has an Esta, it's you and the passport you applied for it with !

[Rachv38]

I've just double checked ours. I applied after booking last April. We don't travel until Aug but I wanted to make sure we were all approved before we paid large amounts of money off the holiday. Ours are valid until end of April next year and passports got a few years left on them. I remember feeling stressed out when doing them for the 4 of us. It's our first trip to USA so didn't want to make a mistake.

[Unforgiven]

Thanks for your comments, holiday was great, 2 weeks around the caribbean on Celebrity Equinox

We weren't the only ones stuck with no ESTA at the same time, there were another 3 people in a similar position, (renewed passport but didn't know you also had to renew ESTA) one lady was running the Boston marathon and she said she would fly out later on or the next day, another couple I think took the option of flying the same flight the next day, I think it cost them about £50 each so not too bad.

If it wasn't for the cruise we'd have taken the option of flying out the next morning as Virgin only wanted £30 each to change.

If the cruise was going in the other direction we'd also have flown out the next day and met the ship in Key West but unfortunately the first stop on the first week was Puerto Rico so not so easy to do.

Just hoping Virgin come through with refunding the taxes or miles, the guy I spoke to yesterday was confident they could help me out.