Hey guys, welcome back! It’s Dr. A, and many of you saw that I was able to go to Baja Beach Fest because my friends were able to get their passports in one day. This video will go into the step-by-step process of exactly what we went through and what you need to go through to get your passport in one day.
How to U.S. Passport Fast in 1 day
### Step Number One: Scheduling Your Appointment
As of July 2021, the online service was disabled to ensure that only those who needed urgent travel during COVID-19 could get appointments.
Therefore, you need to call this number to schedule your appointment. They are open Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 10 PM Eastern Time. I recommend calling first thing in the morning. We called in at 7 AM Central Time, 10 days before travel, and waited on hold for about an hour and a half. My friend had a similar experience and waited for about three hours on hold, calling in around the same time.
She mentioned that her aunt called in at 9 AM and had to wait on hold for six hours. So, definitely keep this in mind. Again, I highly recommend calling very first thing in the morning. Also, there is no fee to schedule this appointment, so if they ask for a payment at the time of scheduling, make sure you dialed the right number. I’ll cover costs a little bit more later in this video.
### Step Number Two: Appointment Requirements
To book your appointment, you must call within 14 days of travel, and your appointment must be within 72 hours of travel. For example, we were traveling on a Thursday, and we called in on the Monday of the week before to schedule the appointment. We weren’t able to schedule anything for that week and had to schedule it for the following week, 72 hours prior to our day of travel. We decided to go with it, and as you probably saw in the video, we booked it the morning of our travel. You’ll need to provide proof of travel or documentation of a life-or-death emergency.
They won’t ask you to provide that at the time of the appointment, but I really recommend that you already have this booked. They will ask if you have that booked, and you should answer yes because if not, you risk losing your appointment. In our case, it wasn’t urgent travel, and all they really wanted was to see the Greyhound ticket we purchased from Southern California to Mexico as our proof of international travel, and that seemed to be enough. They didn’t probe or ask anything else specific to our travel information. We did have our festival tickets on hand in case they asked for them.
They did, however, ask one of my friends about her purpose of travel, and she was completely honest. As you’ll see in this message here, she said exactly why she was going, and they still ended up giving it to her. So, definitely don’t feel that you need to lie; just be completely honest and upfront from the beginning.
Again, as I mentioned, there is absolutely no cost to book this appointment. However, they will ask for an email because after the call, you’ll get an email confirmation with all of the appointment information, such as a confirmation number, a unique identifier, the date of the appointment, the time of the appointment, how many people are attending, and the location of the specific appointment.
Make sure you stay on the phone with them until this email goes through, which should be immediately within a minute, and confirm all the details because you will be asked this upon your appointment. They also asked for a zip code to locate the agency office closest to you. There are 26 agencies throughout the US. We were trying to book the appointment in the Chicago office, but at the time, they told us that Chicago wasn’t accepting any appointments for some reason, so the closest option to us happened to be Arkansas.
### Step Number Three: What to Bring to Your Passport Appointment
I won’t go into depth here because it’s essentially what you would take into an in-office appointment.
However, I will say that you should bring at least two forms of ID that have a picture of you. My friend didn’t want to take too much to Mexico, so he only brought one ID, and we almost didn’t get the passport for this reason. They accepted an insurance card, which seemed to suffice as another form of identification, but his birth certificate wouldn’t supplement as such because it needed to have a photograph of him. The second goes without saying: your passport photos. Make sure you bring those.
Go to Walgreens, CVS, or wherever, just get them done because you will not be able to take them at the appointment.
### Step Number Four: Passport Fees
It all depends on whether you’re renewing your passport or if you’re a first-time applicant. First-time applicants are required to pay an additional $35 execution fee, but both have the same cost as far as whether you choose to get the passport book or the passport card. We went with both, and that was about $140. The only other additional cost for the expedited service fee is $60.
So, with the $140 plus the $60 expedited fee and the $35 execution fee because my friend was a first-time applicant, we paid a total of $235. I highly recommend you bring either exact cash or your safest bet is just to bring a cashier’s check because not all agencies will accept debit or credit cards. We were able to use my credit card, but I also needed to have my ID in order to process that payment. In our situation, my friend had cash, but it was not exact, and they did offer to round up to $300, which they would be more than happy to take as change. So, unless you want to be out an additional few bucks, bring exact change.
That pretty much wraps up this video. I hope it helped you guys figure out how you can do this yourself. I’ll make sure to link everything down in the description below. If you have any questions or concerns, please shoot them in my comments. I’d be more than happy to help you navigate through this very stressful time that I know it was for us.
So, that being said, catch you on the next one!
**Read More:** [How to Renew Your US Passport by Mail: A Step-by-Step Guide]
