Passport/custom question

You will make any and all declarations at AMS. When you land in Venice, you are on an intra-EU flight and will not pass through any further controls.

Yes, but just exit through the nothing to declare passage at VCE unless you have something to declare.

Assuming DTW is outside Europe (I am not familiar with that abbreviation)

Yes, Immigration (passport stamping) In Amsterdam.

Assuming you are through booked to Venice, that is where you retrieve your bags and then go through customs. There is no "declaration discussion", you walk through the green "nothing to declare" exit door, walking through that door counts legally as a declaration, they random check < 1% of people.
See photo: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fAP53.jpg

Chris, DTW is Detroit Wayne County airport (my home airport). It is a hub for Delta.

Lauren, there will probably not be a discussion, you will just walk through the door at the "nothing to declare" line.

Actually the photo posted by Chris is in London at Heathrow.

The photo below is from Amsterdam Schipol airport.

http://www.enjoy-europe.com/hte/chap25/images/SchipholAmsterdamCustons-0262.jpg

Thanks, everyone! Simply looking for the sign and going through the "nothing to declare" lane is even easier than a discussion. :-)

And correct, I have nothing to declare. I'm also booked through to VCE. My actual full flight is MSN-VCE with layovers in DTW and AMS.

I am just not clear from the posts thus whether I'm expecting the "nothing to declare" lane in AMS or VCE? I see responses in this thread that are indicating both of those locations?

Thanks!

Lauren, The "nothing to declare" lane will be in Venice, after you pick up your bags.
if you are booked to Venice, your luggage will be labelled through to Venice, and you will reclaim it only in Venice.
In Amsterdam you will only go through immigration (passport control), not customs.

At Venice, after picking up your luggage, you (or pedantically your luggage) will go through customs. Luggage labels used in the EU are different from those used in the rest of the world, so customs can distinguish bags from outside the EU from those loaded in Amsterdam. So don't try and sneak out the blue "arrivals from the EU" exit.

Making a legally-binding declaration by virtue of walking through one door or another saves an lot of paper!

Thank you for asking this question. I was going to ask a very similar one, but now I have the answer. Thank you too to those who replied to Lauren, it is great when people share their knowledge.

There is one wrinkle. Is your MSN-DTW-AMS-VCE routing all on one ticket, and/or is the AMS-VCE flight on an airline that's a Delta partner airline?

If not, Delta will only check your bags as far as Amsterdam, and you'll have to go through customs in Amsterdam and re-check the bags.

Melissa: Yep, the flights are all one ticket, and one of the legs is KLM, which is Delta's partner company!

Our legs/airlines are:
MSN-DTW: Delta
DTW-AMS: Delta
AMS-VCE: KLM

We also plan to just share 1 carry-on suitcase and each carry backpacks. So we will not be dealing with checking bags.

Lauren,

Double check your carry-on size against the KLM size limits as they're a bit smaller than Delta's and luggage manufacturers are notoriously inaccurate with their published dimensions. It's been my experience that European airlines are much more steadfast when applying their size-limit rules.

BTW - have you decided how your going to get from VCE into Venice (assuming you're going straight to the lagoon)? We took the Alilaguna and while we found it every bit as novel as we expected, it didn't live up to the romantic expectations. You sit rather deeply in the bow of the boat and can't see much through the rather short (vertically narrow) windows above you. But, where else can you fly in and depart the airport by boat?

Work2Travel, I just checked online, and it looks as though KLM's size limits are a 1/2 inch smaller than Delta's. ???

Here is what I found for Delta: http://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/traveling-with-us/baggage/during-your-trip/carry-on.html

And KLM: https://www.klm.com/travel/us_en/prepare_for_travel/baggage/baggage_allowance/index.htm

In any event, I am going to pack our carry-on suitcase this weekend to make sure everything fits! If we have to think about checking the suitcase instead, I'm sure we can do that, although we don't really want to. I believe that our checked bag would still make it all the way to Venice, and it would get transferred from our DTW-AMS Delta airplane to our AMS-VCE KLM plane? (We're flying all on one ticket.)

As far as VCE to the lagoon, I'm actually thinking that we should purchase tickets for the ATVO airport bus at the airport and then take the bus to Piazzale Roma. I only say that because we are staying at Palazzo Odoni, which is just a few minutes from Piazzale Roma. Considering our hotel location, I think the bus would be easier than the waterbus as far as getting to the hotel from the airport!