New Orleans Group Transportation: French Quarter Limits, Parade Routes, and an Airport in Kenner

Quotes we have sent in New Orleans start around $275–$410 an hour, which puts a typical four-hour night at $1,100–$1,625. Your price depends on the date, the city, how many hours you need, the bus and your group size.

Usually not. French Quarter streets are narrow and one-way, parts of Bourbon Street close to vehicles at night, and hotels there typically direct larger vehicles to perimeter curbs on Canal Street, North Rampart Street, or Decatur Street. Ask the hotel for its current commercial-vehicle instructions, agree on a specific corner, and give passengers a walking landmark before the trip.

Parades roll along St. Charles Avenue, Canal Street, and Mid-City routes for roughly two weeks before Mardi Gras in February or March, closing cross streets for hours and isolating the Uptown and Garden District blocks along the route. Check the parade schedule for your date, keep pickups on one side of the route, and confirm how the provider prices detours and waiting on parade days.

French Quarter Festival fills the Quarter with free stages in April, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival runs at the Fair Grounds Race Course in Mid-City from the last weekend of April into the first weekend of May. Both weekends tighten vehicle supply and slow Mid-City and Quarter-perimeter streets, so request quotes early and plan a pickup landmark several blocks from the festival gates.

No. Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport is in Kenner, about 11 miles west of downtown, reached by I-10 or Airline Drive. A transfer needs the airline, flight, bag count, and a terminal meeting point under the airport’s commercial ground-transportation rules, and the return leg should allow for I-10 congestion, especially during Carnival and Jazz Fest.

The city’s Master Event Application covers streets, parades, and city-managed spaces, but City Park, Audubon Park, and NORDC recreation facilities are governed separately and require their own permits or reservations. A street permit does not reserve a park pavilion, and a park reservation does not authorize a bus to stop on a closed street, so match each document to the stop it covers.

Birthdays are the most common reason groups around New Orleans come to us — about 37% of the requests we see — and bachelor parties are next at about 17%, going by our inquiry history. That's what other New Orleans planners asked for — your own headcount is what decides it. Count everyone who is actually getting on, then add room for luggage, coolers, instruments or formalwear. Ask each company for the legal seated capacity of the exact vehicle they're offering. Most New Orleans requests are for weddings, bachelor parties, and bachelorette parties, and those nights want different amounts of floor space for the same headcount. A bus rated for twenty seats is not twenty comfortable seats in formalwear.

Not necessarily. The images here are representative renderings of a vehicle class, not photos of a bus parked in New Orleans. The company covering your route names the assigned vehicle in writing when you book. Before you pay, make sure that writing gives the specific vehicle, its legal seated capacity, the features you're counting on, and what happens if it's unavailable on the day — including whether a replacement could be a different size or class.