As you may have realized, if you scrolled through this website any, my family and I REALLY enjoy going on cruises. We’ve sailed out of Port Canaveral a ton, we’ve sailed out of Vancouver once (ah-MAY-zing) and we tried to sail out of Miami (darn you virus for having one of us test positive at the port!) but I can say, with absolute certainty, the COOLEST departure day experience award goes to sailing down the Mississippi out of New Orleans.
When we booked the cruise, I thought it would be a neat experience to depart from a new to us port, and a great opportunity to visit with family and friends in the New Orleans area. Little did I realize just HOW cool it would be.
What’s different about New Orleans?
Did you realize that once a cruise ship departs the Port of New Orleans, it takes about 7-8 hours to travel down the Mississippi River before getting into the Gulf of Mexico and sailing in international waters?
In the back of my mind I realized this, but I didn’t quite grasp how cool that would be until we were actually underway.
From a technology standpoint, for basically the entire first day of the cruise, we still had access to our cell phones with no extra fees or roaming charges. One less day of having to buy an internet package to stay connected? Thank you very much, I will take you up on that!
From a taking cool picture standpoint, you get to see the St. Louis Cathedral from the river! This is the oldest continually active Roman Catholic Church in the United States having been built in 1727!
This departure also ended up being extra cool for us because my brother-in-law was still in his office downtown when our ship departed and he took pictures of our ship as we left the port! The kids really enjoyed standing on the top decks waving at his office building while he was inside with binoculars watching them do it.
How did you handle parking?
One thing that did perplex me about this sailing was the decision of where to park. For some reason, this year, they did not allow Disney Cruise Line guests to park in the attached garage to the Estero Terminal.
This was really frustrating because the option provided by the Port Authority was a fenced in gravel lot a shuttle ride away from the terminal, but still cost as much as anyone who was allowed to park in the attached onsite garage.
Because of these facts, I started doing research to find a better offsite option. Since we were going to have to take a transportation no matter what, might as well find something that was covered and may even be less expensive than port parking.
We ended up leaving the car at the Fulton Street Garage which was about $15 cheaper than port parking AND it was a fully covered and secured garage with only one entrance and one exit to the structure. We could have saved more money by doing the rooftop parking, but I prefer to keep my car out of the elements.
How was everything when you returned at the end of the cruise?
Because our ship returned on a weekday, and we wanted to hit the road before any bad weather hit (there was a major storm moving West to East that day and we were hoping to get out of dodge before it clogged the roads) we decided to do Express Walk Off when the ship returned to New Orleans.
When you do this, that means you are responsible for taking all your luggage with you from the ship and through customs. In Port Canaveral, we always park at the attached garage and utilize a porter to lug our junk from the baggage area direct to the trunk of our car. With the smaller ports like Vancouver or New Orleans, they don’t have the huge luggage areas to store everything, so you are only allowed to depart the ship when your luggage tag is called.
Since we wanted to hit the road efficiently, and our experience in Vancouver had us realizing it could EASILY be an hour before our luggage tag was called, we consolidated all our bags, thought energetic thoughts, and skipped breakfast to leave as soon as we were allowed.
I was really surprised at how many people did this option! The line to disembark the ship was down a hall, around a corner, looped back and went all the way to the elevators!
Obviously it moved quickly once the ship got the all clear to let guests leave, I mean, it was only as slow as the person walking in front of you…and for us, that was SLOW as we had someone with a walker and a bag who didn’t have family willing to help her out!
But once we cleared that bottleneck, we were able to go straight to an open customs agent, walk to the shuttle that would take us to our parking garage and head to the car. We were on the road by 8 am, at Starbucks outside New Orleans by 8:40 am, and visiting the NASA Infinity Science Center in Mississippi shortly after 9 am with full tummies and no sign of rain.
Would you sail out of New Orleans again?
All in all, we had a VERY great experience sailing out of New Orleans and I would happily sail from there again. It for sure would need to be a shorter sailing where we didn’t pack a ton of luggage so that I knew I could do express walk off (I HATE waiting in line for things, especially when I know I have a long drive ahead of time) and I would put my stateroom on the other side of the ship so that I could watch the views from the chair on my private balcony instead of having to stand on a different deck. (But that’s totally just me being lazy.)
I loved that my husband was able to point out sites and tell us when things were built, and what they used to be used for. The kids loved seeing the bridge to the grandparents house, and we all had a blast with the family member serving as paparazzi from his office building as we sailed down the river.
So yes we would TOTALLY sail out of New Orleans again, and I’d love to help you sail from there as well. There are plenty of cruise lines that offer itineraries of various lengths from this port year round. Disney only sails out of New Orleans a few months of the year, but we can find a date and itinerary that meets your needs on that cruise line or a different one, just reach out today and we’ll start the planning process!
Prefer to sail out of one of the Florida Ports instead? No worries, there are plenty of amazing experiences from these departure destinations too. Themed cruises like Pixar Day at Sea, Marvel Day at Sea, Halloween on the High Seas and Very Merrytime cruises are offered at select times throughout the year. There’s something for everyone on the Disney Cruise Line.
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