Visas, ESTAs and other travel documents from UK

[Ian]

Hi all,

So we've finally booked a holiday to Florida. Our first ever one as adults and we have some questions for other UK visitors who are fimilair with the rules.

I DO NOT have a machine readable passport so I would require a VISA? Or getting a new passport for £77.50 could be more worthwhile?
My partner DOES have a machine readable passport, so that should be okay?


Also,
We both require an ESTA (https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/) to enter the US and this will cost us $14 each?

They are our questions now, so I think its time to start planning the ADRs
Thank you,
Ian and Vicky

[malt]

Hiya,

You do both need an ESTA, we did ours and got the reply very fast. As for the passport, my wife has a readable one and mine isn't, didn't cause any problems. Oh, we went October just gone.

You'll love it there, i've been 10 times now!!!

[Ian]

Hiya Malt,

Thank you for the reply, it has put our mind at ease!
I bet October last year was brilliant with the Food & Wine Festival, and also the Halloween party

Ian&Vicky

[shelly]

Different from the above answer but from the Directgov site:

Travelling to the USA on a non-biometric passport
You can use your non-biometric British passport to travel to the USA.
If your British passport is machine readable, you can travel to the USA without a visa for certain types of trips. This is under the US Visa Waiver Programme (US VWP).
If your passport is not machine readable, you will need to apply for a visa if you want visit the USA.
You can easily check if your passport is machine readable. If it is, the bottom of the personal details page will have:
two lines of characters (numbers and letters)
chevrons (which look like this ‘>’ or this ‘<’)

You will need an ESTA too, takes minutes to get. Have a fab holiday!