What LSLGuy said then
Looks like there aren’t. All the ones I can find go to Vancouver.
I read somewhere (probably somewhere on SDMB) that foreign-flagged vessels (i .e., pretty much all of them) are not allowed to cruise between two US ports without a foreign stop. So, yeah, a passport-less cruise is probably not an option.
Oh yes, I quite agree with you. I would not presume to go on a travel by any mode anywhere hoping that the traditional fairly relaxed ID rules between USA, Canada, and Mexico would actually be in effect on the day in question.
We now live in a country ruled by Calvinball as played by hate-filled ADHD-afflicted toddlers. That is not a situation amenable to prior planning.
Didn’t you use to be able to travel by freighter?
Sorta. There were freighters that advertised passenger travel aboard. The experience was no-frills high solitude transport at sea.
It was not a matter of being able to jump any freighter leaving here going to there.
I cannot say whether such services still exist. I do know the last time I heard of it I was in high school. I’m drawing social security now. So that was awhile ago.
Princess Cruises have a bunch along the California coast, but most seem to go to Vancouver instead of Seattle. The two that go to Seattle don’t go to LA.
https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/results/?resType=C
It looks like Virgin Voyages has some similar cruises.
It looks like what I want isn’t available by freighter. https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/
For a mere $95,000.
How much for a three hour tour?
Data point: my wife and I did a cruise about 2 1/2 years ago from Whittier, AK to Vancouver, BC. We most definitely needed passports.
This is the problem, and this is why you aren’t likely to find what you are looking for.
Every foreign-flagged ship (which includes virtually all of vessels operated by the major cruise lines) that travels between different U.S. ports stops at a foreign port midway to comply with this law. I’ve even run into this with U.S. territories, like when I sailed on a repositioning cruise from Galveston, Texas to San Juan, Puerto Rico. We stopped at the British Virgin Islands along the way.
Similarly, cruises that travel between southern California and Hawaii invariably make a stop in Mexico. And cruises that go north from San Diego will never stop in Seattle unless they first stop at a port in Mexico or Canada along the way.
Right, the only exception I’m aware of are closed-loop cruises that start and end at the same U.S. port and only stop in Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean. They will sometimes allow you to travel with an original birth certificate and government ID instead of a passport. But they always say a passport is strongly recommended.
Exactly, as has been mentioned. Any ship that goes from SoCal to the Pacific Northwest has to stop in either Victoria or Vancouver. So they’re not going to also stop in Seattle, just a stones throw away.
Thanks for the great cite.
Damned shame. I wonder why rather suddenly this has become practically unavailable, as opposed to just sorta hard to find?
Let’s say you cruise from Seattle to some place in Alaska (as I did some years ago). You will stop in Victoria for reasons explained above. You do not have to get off the boat, so you won’t need a passport there* but when you get to Juneau or when you get back to Seattle, you will need a passport to clear US immigration since you will be perceived as having left the US.
*It has been some years since you could travel between the US and Canada without a travel document.
Princess Cruise line has a 3-day cruise to Los Angeles but the closest is starts to Seattle is Vancouver (which is really close but you’d need a passport):
I have read that Holland America and Celebrity Cruises can fit this itinerary but usually only for re-positioning cruises as they move north in April to do Alaska tours and then back south in September to winter in the Caribbean. You’d have to check with them.
Norwegian Cruise line has one that will do it but it is part of a much longer cruise. I really do not know if they will let people embark and disembark in the middle of such a cruise or if everyone has to do the whole thing.
Cost. Based on that law, any ship that qualifies for US to US travel as is being asked for here has to hire mostly Americans to crew the ship, and that drives up the costs so much that essentially no one will pay to take such cruises. Why pay double or triple, if a stop in Vancouver saves you that much money?
That wasn’t the issue I was talking about at all. Sorry to be unclear.
The OP & I were having a sidebar about “cruising” on freighters. Regardless of destination (setting aside purely intra-US itineraries), that used to be an available option all over the world, albeit a small fraction of the “love boat” cruises.
@Czarcasm’s cite was to a travel agency site specializing in freighter passage. Which more or less had replaced their front page with “This product doesn’t exist any more for us to sell to you. Sorry Charlie.”
I replied directly to his cite post asking / wondering why that product (international freighter cruising) evaporated fairly completely on rather short notice.
Wise man.
It’s not cheap but you’d get to meet the Harlem Globetrotters.