Airboat Adventures offers swamp tours through alligator filled waters just 45 minutes outside of the French Quarter and is a fun excursion on a New Orleans visit.
We booked our Airboat Adventure tour through another site called Trip Shock due to them offering a 10% off code using promo code SWAMP43 which was cheaper than booking directly with Airboat Adventures. There are other tour companies that you can book through as well, so be sure to search to see if any others are offering discounts, so you can save a few dollars.
When it comes to pricing, there are small boats and large boats. We did the large boat, however for the price difference I would recommend spending extra money and booking a small boat which offers a more intimate experience.
Regular prices for the small boats are $75 per person; large boats are $55 per person and transportation to/from your hotel in New Orleans if an additional $20 per person if you don’t have a car, which is cheaper than Ubering to/from here. However if you do have a car, you can drive here and they offer free parking.
Boat times are the same for the small or large boat and depart daily at 9:45am, 12pm; 2pm; and 4pm everyday of the week. If you’re looking to get picked up from New Orleans, plan to leave 1:15 minutes prior to when your boat reservation is for. The actual airboat tour lasts for 90 minutes.
On our large boat, there was close around 30 passengers onboard, whereas the small boats have 6-9 people. It does get noisy when you get out in the swamp, but they do provide earplugs for everyone to wear. When we went it was rainy most of the morning, but these operate rain or shine, with the exception of lightning.
The highlight of our airboat adventure tour was seeing alligators. We saw a total of 4 alligators and the boat was stopped for about 15 minutes, where our boat guide got out and started feeding the alligators marshmallows.
Airboat Adventures explains when the best time of year is to go:Â
Again, there’s no bad time to go. Our favorite times are April, late October and early November. Winter can be a great because the summer grass that is typically six feet tall is now only inches high. This means you’ll see more nutria and deer, and the migratory birds such as waterfowl and the bald eagles.
Alligators are tough to find when temps drop below 70 degrees, no matter what time of year, but they can be found throughout the winter on warmer days. Plus, there is so much more to the tour than just seeing alligators, that any time of year is a great time to visit. Just take a look the wintertime comments in our guestbook, and you’ll see that all of these folks had a whale of a good time!
Have you done an Airboat Adventure before? Feel free to share your comments in the section below.
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I did this same tour just a couple of weeks ago and also did the large boat. We lucked out in that it was only about half full. Our captain had a 2-year-old gator in an ice chest (with water) and about halfway through pulled him out. A little over two feet long he was actually quite cute and docile enough that we were able to pass him around the boat. Our captain had plans to release him in the next few months.
While it should be obvious based on the photos, there’s no covering on the boat so you’ll want a hat, sunglasses and sunscreen. The earplugs are actually over-the-ear models like you see airport ramp workers using so you can put them on over your hat to keep it from flying off. There is a pontoon tour for a larger group and it did have a cover over it.
One more note: one family on our boat had used Uber to get to Airboat Adventures as I’m sure it was cheaper than paying the $20 apiece for the ride for a family of 4. But there’s no cell service (at least from AT&T and T-Mobile) at the dock and they were having trouble contacting Uber for a ride back. There is cell service out in parts of the swamp though of course it’s only practical to use when the boat is stopped.
I also did the tour about an year back. Frankly I don’t like these creepy creators ( alligators ) but what to say our whole gang just dragged me into this.But i would have missed a lot if I would have skipped this trilling ride.
Being a contri ride the expenses were hardly an issue. What I experienced is a life time experience for me.The boats being opened from all the ends allows us to shoot photos from every angle. We captured more than 1000 images in this adventure trip.
The only sad part of the trip is the network connectivity issues there. We were unable to share those awesome moments with our family at that time.
But any ways this is the most adventerous ride of my life. Even I captured some snaps with those creepy alligators. I am never going to forget this unplanned ride till I am alive