For Everyone
Cathy Keefe, spokesperson for the Travel Industry Association (TIA), has good advice for all U.S. citizens:

1. Apply for a passport early.

2. Everyone should have a passport. Even if you don't think you're going to be traveling out of the country in the near future, it's an excellent idea to have a passport just to be prepared. The cost over the time the passport is valid (five years for children under age 14, 10 years for adults) is minimal.

Keefe notes that the State Department didn't realize the full impact of the new rules regarding travel to Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda. "They were very proactive in adding staff but no one could have foreseen how much demand there would be for passports under these new regulations," Keefe says. "The volume has increased by 40 percent, and it's not only people who are traveling this summer, but those who are planning to travel in the fall and are trying to be proactive. It just all hit at once."

For Children
Barbara Campbell of Edgewood, Pa., has the following advice: Apply for a passport as a family activity. She and her husband, Jim, and daughter, Molly, 11, are traveling to Ireland this summer.

"I looked at the affidavit that one of us would have been required to fill out for just one parent to apply and it was a process," Campbell says. "Then I started worrying, what if something were to be 'off' while we were actually applying. I decided it was easier for us to just all go together and it worked out great."

Campbell notes that most post offices have Saturday morning hours, so they didn't even have to take time from work.

For Procrastinators
Often it's not just procrastinators, but regular people who find themselves in an unusual or emergency situation who need a passport in hurry. In that case, passport expediting services are available, as discussed in the above section "Where to Apply."

However, Steve Royster, the spokesman for consular affairs at the State Department, says that none of these services can provide anything that any U.S. citizen cannot do themselves. All the citizen needs to do is visit one of the 13 regional passport agencies.

"These are offices around the country that are set up to review and print passports and receive customer requests for short-term travel needs," Royster says. "These customer agencies are for those urgent-need travelers. Fortunately, most people are able to apply through the postal service or other acceptance facilities and don't have to worry about emergency situations."