If you have further concerns, a quick email or phone call to the local passport office would probably be best. In theory, they should have all the up to date answers to your questions. If nothing else, you'll have someone's name to put on the blame line.

Sight unseen, they are likely to say, "yes, you need to replace." CYA will rule their response.

My old passport became quite tattered, but I never had a problem until I went to Sweden a couple years back and the immigration agent gave me quite the hard time about "taking better care of my passport". I just stood mutely and took it until he wound down, stamped the passport and let me enter the country ^

I believe that the U.S. now required that all passports be machine readable, so if the dunk in your washing machine has ruined the information you might experience problems on check-in. I would check with the U.S. embassy along with your airline to prevent any surprises at the last minute.

Stimpy,

Could you please post the results of asking to have additional pages added to your passport for the second time?
I tried for my second set of additional pages, but was told that only one additional set was allowed, due to possible damage to the passport's spine from the extra pages. I accepted this at face value, but wonder if your experience might be different, or might vary from place to place. I'm about 8 yars from renewal, so would hate to buy another if the extra pages are indeed possible.
Thanks in advance for the clarification

At the consulate in Shanghai, they first told me they could add the pages and it would take about 20 minutes. 5 minutes later they said no dice due to the stain. It's going to be a couple of weeks before I have a chance to try again at another embassy.

The first time I added pages in this passport, they added double the normal amount when they saw how much travel I did. That was at the Federal building in LA.

I got extra pages at the consulate in Amsterdam. This is at least the 3rd time I've added pages and I'm up over 100 now.

Handwritten Passports
 

I may be wandering beyond the scope of the thread, but does anyone know the state of hand-written, non-machine readable passports outside the US? My non-US passport is low-tech and totally hand-written (a consulate issued it). It's clear that US CBP wouldn't accept it for the VWP, but that doesn't affect me since I'm a US citizen, too. I'm just curious about other parts of the world. While the US passport provides pretty good access around the world, it can also involve higher visa fees and other inconveniences. I suspect this issue may get worse as CBP cracks down and requires biometric passports, etc. of foreign visitors. And yet I'd rather pay a higher visa fee than get detained for having a questionable document.

While hand-written passports are accepted most everywhere outside of the US, the reality is that the citizens of most countries that have hand-written passports require visas anyways to visit EU and most other "first-world" countries. Those visas are usually machine readable.

I've noted more issue with handwritten visas than handwritten passports. But it's a case of YMMV.

Irish consulates still issue hand-written passports, although they'll send your information back to Dublin and get a very high-tech passport for you instead if you don't mind the wait. I got the feeling this was mostly for the purpose of accommodating the US VWP. I'm not sure whether Norway still issues the hand-written variety, but I remember seeing a friend's that was like that not too long ago. There must be other examples, even among first-world places that don't require visas to travel most places. I think there are some hand-written French passports still validly in circulation (maybe from DOM-TOM prefectures). My impression is that it's not too big of a deal outside the US, but I'm curious to hear if anyone has experiences.