I’m lucky that the hubby keeps up with passport and international travel news. We’ve had a Nexus card forever and it’s saved us hours going back and forth to see family in Canada. Recently he heard of the Global Entry program and it sounded like a great program to reduce time in airport lines when we travel internationally so we signed up. And on one especially magical day, he took the kids to get their fingerprints, while I spent a morning getting my nails done. (So I may already be biased about Global Entry because it was already my ticket to a lovely day.)
The Global Entry program is truly gold, especially when you travel a lot and even more so if you travel with kids. We used it for the first time in Atlanta when we were coming home from Mexico and it brought us to the front of a line that looked like it would take hours to go through. I was surprised at how few people were using this program, especially in a major hub like Atlanta. I was relieved because we only had a short time to connect between our flights and we even had time to grab food. This is definitely a great thing for family travelers.
(PS. It’s now 2018 and we’ve been using Global Entry for years and it’s been AMAZING! It’s saved us from missing flights and from spending hours in airport lines. If you are traveling with kids, I can’t recommend getting your Nexus and Global Entry more. We recently we nearly had a passport fiasco when we forgot to renew our kids’ passports before an international trip to Italy. If you are ever in the same situation, this is how we handled expediting our passport renewal in Seattle.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
My parents have this (and use it all the time in Atlanta!) and we have talked about getting it. I had something similar when I lived in the UK and the machines were always broken!
Atlanta is an amazing airport! I can’t believe how huge it is!
I’ve not heard of this. Of course, we just applied to get our passports yesterday. Until this point we’ve only traveled out of the country via cruise and passports weren’t needed. Anything that saves time in the line at the airport has to be handy.
You should definitely check it out:) It’s pretty awesome!