Riverboat Cruise Prices in New Orleans (2026): Every Fare in One Table

Ten sailings work the New Orleans riverfront, and the distance between the cheapest ticket and the dearest is $164.75. The floor is a 75-minute sightseeing run aboard the Riverboat CITY of NEW ORLEANS at $25.75. The ceiling is the VIP evening on the Steamboat NATCHEZ at $190.50, which buys early boarding, a reserved seat in front of the band, the buffet, champagne and a private walk through the engine room. Everything else lives between those two numbers, and most of it lives nearer the floor than visitors expect. For scale, the same budget conversation off the river runs $35 for a covered swamp boat up to $115 for a small-group airboat run with downtown pickup, which is worth knowing before you decide the VIP evening is expensive.

I spend a lot of my week within two blocks of the Toulouse Street ticket window, and the most common sentence I overhear is a version of the same complaint: "I thought it was one price." It never is. Each sailing carries a cruise-only fare and a meal-inclusive fare. Children pay on their own scale. One boat prices seniors separately and the others do not. A party of ten knocks ten percent off the whole booking without anyone asking. This page puts all of it in tables so you can stop guessing and start comparing.

What does every Mississippi sailing cost right now?

Ten bookable sailings leave the French Quarter wharves, priced from $25.75 for a 75-minute sightseeing run to $190.50 for the VIP evening aboard the Steamboat NATCHEZ. Six of the ten start under $60. The middle of the ladder falls at $52.50, and a standard two-hour daytime jazz cruise opens at $43.50.

Read that column top to bottom and the riverfront sorts itself into three tiers. Under $50 you find every daytime option: the short sightseeing run, both two-hour daytime jazz sailings, the weekend brunch cruises and the Creole Queen's history sailing down to Chalmette Battlefield. Between $58 and $60 sit the two evening jazz cruises without a meal, which is the tier most visitors actually book. Above $88 you are no longer buying a boat ticket on its own. You are buying a boat ticket bundled with a coach tour, or the VIP treatment on the NATCHEZ.

The review counts tell a second story. Across all ten sailings there are 15,153 reviews, and the highest score on the water belongs to the most expensive ticket: 4.8 on the VIP evening from 893 reviews. That is not a coincidence. The more a ticket costs here, the more of the night the operator controls, from your boarding time to your seat to the glass in your hand. The $58 evening ticket puts you on the same boat with the same Grammy-nominated band, then leaves the rest to timing and elbows.

At the other end, the 75-minute run shows only 53 reviews. That is not a warning. The Riverboat CITY of NEW ORLEANS was built in 1991 at Jennings, Louisiana, and only christened in New Orleans in 2025, so her listing is young rather than unloved. She carries roughly 1,000 passengers across four decks, runs elevators to decks one through three, and has a calliope of her own. For $25.75 she is the cheapest way to stand on a working paddlewheeler in this city.

One number to hold on to is $52.50. That is the midpoint of the ladder. If a price you are quoted sits far above it and the ticket includes no meal, no coach and no reserved seat, check it against the table before you pay. Every fare on this page belongs to the same family of short excursion sailings, the New Orleans river cruises that leave the French Quarter wharves and are back before dinner or shortly after it.

There is one wrinkle worth knowing. The Creole Queen's history sailing starts at $47.00 on the booking page, while the operator's own page for the midday historic cruise shows an adult fare of $36 with children 12 and under free through August, bottomless mimosas for an extra $15 and a packaged lunch bought a la carte on board. Both numbers are real. They are different bundles of the same two-and-a-half hours, so read what each includes rather than assuming the lower figure is always the same product.

How much does adding the meal really cost?

Food adds $21.50 on the daily lunch cruise, $36.50 on the weekend brunch, and $49.50 on the evening dinner sailing. Those gaps come straight from the operator's own price list, comparing the cruise-only fare against the meal-inclusive fare. Seasonal party packages sit higher again at $90.00, $105.00 and $137.50.

Here is the honest verdict from someone who has watched thousands of people come back down the gangway: the buffet is fuel, not the event. It is cooked fresh on board, it leans hard into Creole staples like gumbo, jambalaya and bread pudding, and it does the job. Nobody has ever come off the NATCHEZ telling me the food was the reason they will remember the night. The band, the wheel and the skyline get that credit. The two meanings of the phrase trip up plenty of planners, which is why the excursion-versus-voyage question gets its own plain answer.

That reframes the maths. At $21.50, the lunch add-on is the best food value on the river, because it turns a two-hour sightseeing ticket into a full midday outing for the price of a po-boy and a drink ashore. At $49.50, the dinner add-on is not really buying dinner. It is buying a seated place in an air-conditioned dining room, a served table, and the right to stop hunting for somewhere to stand while the Dukes of Dixieland play. For a lot of couples that is worth every cent. For a family who ate a big lunch at the French Market, it usually is not.

If you want the sailing without the spend, the evening sightseeing fare is $58.00 on the NATCHEZ and you can check dates and the current price before deciding whether the buffet earns its $49.50. The band plays the same set either way.

Two practical notes on the food. Everything is prepared in a common kitchen, and the operator states plainly that the menu is not recommended for people with gluten-sensitive disorders. Staff will point out items with no meat or animal products for vegan and vegetarian guests, but separate individual meals are not prepared. If someone in your party has a strict requirement, the $58 sightseeing ticket plus a proper dinner ashore is the cleaner plan. For a fuller breakdown of what lands on the buffet at night, the evening dinner sailings page has the detail.

What do children, seniors and groups pay?

Children 2 to 5 sail free on sightseeing tickets and pay $26.75 with dinner. Children 6 to 12 pay $12.75 on the 75-minute run, $29.00 on the evening sightseeing fare and $53.00 with dinner. Seniors 65 and over are priced separately only on the Saturday brunch aboard the CITY of NEW ORLEANS, at $72.00 against an adult $80.00. Any group of ten or more receives ten percent off automatically.

Put real families through that grid and the differences get loud. Two adults and two children aged six to twelve on the 75-minute sightseeing run pay $77.00 for the whole party. The same four people on the evening dinner cruise pay $321.00. That is not a small gap, and it is the single biggest decision on this page. A family with young children who will not sit still for a two-hour seated dinner is usually happier at $77.00 with an ice cream on Decatur Street afterwards.

The under-six rule is generous and often missed. Toddlers aged 2 to 5 ride free on the sightseeing fares, which means a couple with a four-year-old can put three people on the river for $51.50. Bring the same toddler to the dinner sailing and the child fare appears at $26.75, because the buffet is being paid for rather than the seat.

Seniors should read the fine print. Most sailings here do not carry a separate senior rate, so the adult fare applies. The exception is the Saturday jazz brunch aboard the CITY of NEW ORLEANS, where Gray Line's own listing sets adults 13 to 64 at $80.00, children 6 to 12 at $40.00, infants 2 to 5 at $25.00 and seniors 65 and over at $72.00. That $8.00 saving is the only age discount of its kind on the riverfront.

The group discount is the quietest money on this page. Ten or more travellers booking together get ten percent off automatically, per the operator's frequently asked questions. Twelve people on the $58.00 evening sightseeing fare drop from $696.00 to $626.40. Nobody has to negotiate, and a reunion, a bachelorette party or two families travelling together clear the threshold more often than they realise. If your party is close to ten, adding one more person can cost you nothing.

What is the cheapest way onto the Mississippi?

The $25.75 sightseeing run aboard the CITY of NEW ORLEANS is the lowest fare on the riverfront, and free children under six make it cheaper still for families. Measured by cost per hour on the water, though, the Creole Queen's history sailing wins at about $18.80, and the combination tours drop under $15.

Cheapest ticket and best value are not the same question. The $25.75 run is the cheapest, and if all you want is to be on the river, feel the wheel turn and see the French Quarter from the water, it does that in 75 minutes for less than the price of two cocktails on Bourbon Street. Kids under six ride free, elevators reach decks one through three, and there is a bar on every deck.

If you measure by minutes bought per dollar, the answer flips. The history cruise gives you two and a half hours including a full hour ashore at Chalmette Battlefield with a National Park Service ranger, which works out around $18.80 an hour. The two combination tours look expensive at $88.00 and $99.00 until you notice they run six hours or more and include a coach, a cemetery stop, a Garden District walk and the cruise itself. On a per-hour basis they are the best value on this list by a wide margin, which is why the cruise and city tour packages suit anyone with a single free day.

Some of the best parts cost nothing at all. The steam calliope plays from the NATCHEZ before boarding, and you can hear all 32 notes of it from the levee without a ticket. The engine room viewing area is included on every NATCHEZ ticket, not sold as an upgrade, so the cheapest daytime fare still gets you a look at steam engines built in 1925 for a U.S. Steel sternwheeler. I still stop for it when I am on that block before a departure, and the half hour before a sailing at the Toulouse Street Wharf is one of the better free shows in the French Quarter.

Budget for the walk as well as the boat. The NATCHEZ leaves from the Toulouse Street Wharf at 400 Toulouse Street, behind Jax Brewery, and the CITY of NEW ORLEANS uses the wharf at 101 St Louis Street a single block away. Both sit inside the French Quarter, so most visitors staying near Canal or Royal can walk. The Creole Queen is different: she leaves from the Spanish Plaza dock at 1 Poydras Street by the Riverwalk, which is a solid ten to fifteen minutes further along the levee. If you are driving, there are paid lots on Decatur Street near the Steamboat Company docks, and the Creole Queen offers a discount at the World Trade Center lot at 100 Poydras Street, though you have to present the printed parking ticket at her ticket booth to get it. That is a small saving people leave on the table constantly because nobody tells them at the gate.

One habit that saves money: pick the sailing by time of day first, then choose the meal. People do it the other way around, book the dinner cruise because it sounds like the headline event, and then find themselves paying $107.50 for a night they would have enjoyed just as much at $58.00. The two-hour daytime sailings exist for exactly that reason.

Why do some Mississippi cruises cost thousands instead of fifty dollars?

Two entirely different products share the same search results. The boats on this page are excursion vessels that sail a couple of hours and return to a French Quarter wharf, priced from $25.75 to $190.50. The multi-day river lines are floating hotels that sail for a week or more between cities, priced in the thousands per person, and they leave from the port terminals instead.

This confusion costs people real money, and it happens because the port is busy. New Orleans logged 1,067,407 cruise passenger movements in calendar year 2025, with a record month of more than 165,000 in March 2025. Those are ocean and river lines using the port terminals. None of them are the boats moored beside Jackson Square. When you type a question about a Mississippi cruise into a search box, the algorithm cheerfully mixes both, and someone budgeting $60 for an evening on the water suddenly sees a five-figure suite.

The practical difference matters more than the price. A multi-day line sells you a cabin, a route and a schedule of shore stops, and that schedule is at the mercy of the river. Low water on the Lower Mississippi has forced several lines into route changes and cancelled stops because docks became unreachable. The excursion boats have no such problem. They leave from and return to permanent city wharves in the middle of New Orleans, which is why they kept sailing right through the same low-water stretches.

So if your plan is to see New Orleans from the water for an afternoon, none of the thousand-dollar results apply to you. If your plan is to travel from New Orleans to Memphis by boat, nothing on this page applies to you. Two different holidays, one shared keyword. The month by month calendar covers when each of them runs into trouble, and the difference is stark.

There is a middle case worth naming. Some visitors arrive in New Orleans a day or two before boarding a multi-day line and want a taste of the river first. A $25.75 sightseeing ticket or a $43.50 daytime jazz cruise is a good use of that spare afternoon, and it departs a short walk from the French Quarter hotels rather than out at a terminal.

Which discounts and promotions are running right now?

Four real offers are live. Dining guests aged 21 and over get 75-cent mimosas on Saturday jazz brunch cruises aboard the CITY of NEW ORLEANS through September 30, 2026. Children 12 and under sail free on the Creole Queen's midday historic cruise through August. Groups of ten or more take ten percent off automatically. Children 2 to 5 ride free on sightseeing fares year round.

The mimosa promotion is the one people miss, because it only applies to Saturday brunch aboard the CITY of NEW ORLEANS and only to guests who booked the dining option. At 75 cents a glass it is the closest thing to free alcohol on the New Orleans waterfront, and it makes the $80.00 brunch ticket look very different against the $43.50 sightseeing-only fare. Two mimosas and the gap has already narrowed. The weekend brunch sailings run on both boats, so check which vessel your booking puts you on.

Special-occasion sailings work the other way and cost more, not less. The Creole Queen's Mother's Day river cruise in 2026 was priced at $110 for adults and $49 for children aged 3 to 12, well above her normal fares. The NATCHEZ runs a Valentine's Party Package from February 13 to 15, 2026 and a Christmas Eve jazz cruise boarding at 6pm on December 24. Holiday dates are the one time of year when booking early is about availability rather than price.

What changes prices through the year?

Base fares hold steady across the calendar. What moves is which package is on sale: the operator rotates six seasonal party packages through the year, each with its own date window, and the meal-inclusive evening version runs $137.50. Festival weeks change availability rather than the price, and the good sailings sell out first.

The party packages are priced at $90.00 on the lunch cruise, $105.00 on the weekend brunch and $137.50 in the evening. They bundle the meal with seasonal drinks and extras, so they sit above the standard meal-inclusive fare rather than replacing it. If you are travelling in one of those windows and were going to buy drinks anyway, run the numbers. If you were planning a quiet $58.00 sightseeing ticket, the package is not aimed at you.

Demand is the real seasonal force. Mardi Gras falls on February 17 in 2026, French Quarter Festival runs April 16 to 19 and Jazz Fest runs April 23 to May 3. In those weeks the riverfront fills, evening sailings go first, and the sightseeing tier holds availability longest because it carries the most seats. Reservations are recommended for the dinner and Sunday brunch sailings even in a quiet month, so during a festival week they are close to mandatory. The evening jazz cruise is the one that goes earliest, and you can see which dates still have space without committing to anything.

Weather does not change the price at all, which surprises people. The boats sail rain or shine and cruises are cancelled only when the Coast Guard calls severe weather along the river. If a sailing cannot go, the operator arranges a dockside event and notifies you by email. Refunds are not issued for weather, breakdowns or river closures, and the company reserves the right to substitute the CITY of NEW ORLEANS for the NATCHEZ or the other way round with no refund due. That policy is worth reading before you buy a peak-season ticket, and it is a reason to book the sailing you actually want rather than gambling on a specific vessel.

One more lever most visitors never pull: the VIP tier is capacity-limited rather than seasonal. Early boarding, front-row band seats, the buffet, champagne and a private engine room tour come to $190.50, and it holds the highest rating on the river across 893 reviews. On a festival weekend when everything else feels like a scrum, that is the ticket that reliably still feels calm, and you can compare it against the standard evening fare side by side. If you want the two operators weighed against each other instead, the NATCHEZ and Creole Queen compared breakdown does that job, and the short answer on ticket costs covers the same ground in three minutes.

What is not included in the ticket price?

Drinks are extra everywhere. Both Steamboat Company boats keep bars on every deck and the Creole Queen runs a cash bar, and Louisiana's drinking age of 21 is enforced with photo identification. The photograph taken in front of the boat as you board is sold separately by the photo team rather than bundled in. Both riverboats carry a gift shop. Parking is not included on any ticket. On the Creole Queen's history sailing, lunch is bought a la carte on board rather than being part of the fare, and bottomless mimosas run $15 on top. None of these are large sums individually, but a couple who buy two drinks each, a photograph and four hours of parking can add more to the day than the difference between two fare tiers.

Is the buffet worth the extra money?

On the lunch cruise, usually yes. At $21.50 the food add-on is cheaper than a sit-down meal almost anywhere in the Quarter, and it converts a sightseeing ticket into a proper midday outing. On the evening sailing, at $49.50, treat it as buying a seat rather than buying dinner. The buffet is decent Creole cooking done at volume, not a destination restaurant. Couples who want a table, air conditioning and no scramble for a view will find it worth the money. Anyone who has already eaten well that day should take the $58.00 fare and spend the difference ashore.

Do children really sail free?

Children aged 2 to 5 ride free on sightseeing fares, including the 75-minute run and the evening sightseeing ticket. On the dinner cruise the same age band pays $26.75 because the meal is being charged, not the seat. Children 6 to 12 pay $12.75 on the 75-minute run, $29.00 on evening sightseeing and $53.00 with dinner. The Creole Queen goes further on her midday historic cruise, listing children 12 and under free through August. Families comparing options will find more detail on the sailing with kids page.

Can I buy a ticket at the wharf on the day?

Often, yes. Tickets can be bought up until departure time depending on availability, and the operator only recommends advance reservations for the dinner jazz cruise, Sunday brunch, and holiday or special event cruises. In practice that means a weekday daytime sailing is usually walk-up friendly, while a Saturday evening in festival season is not. Boarding opens at least thirty minutes before departure. The NATCHEZ boards at 11:00am, 2:00pm and 6:00pm for sailings at 11:30am, 2:30pm and 7:00pm, and she leaves very close to on time.

Do prices change if it rains?

No. The fare is the fare, and the boats sail rain or shine. There is indoor seating as well as covered deck space on both vessels, and only a Coast Guard severe-weather determination stops a cruise. When that happens the operator runs a dockside event instead and emails ticket holders, but refunds are not issued for weather, river closures or breakdowns. The same policy covers vessel substitution between the NATCHEZ and the CITY of NEW ORLEANS. Book the time slot you want, pack a light layer, and expect to sail.

Is the $190.50 VIP evening ticket worth it?

For a milestone occasion, it is the strongest ticket on the river, and the ratings back that up: 4.8 across 893 reviews, higher than anything else in the fleet. You board early, sit in front of the Dukes of Dixieland rather than behind three rows of shoulders, eat the buffet with champagne included, and get a private tour of an engine room whose steam engines were built in 1925. For an ordinary night out it is a lot of money against a $58.00 ticket that hears the same band. The gap of $132.50 buys certainty, not a different river.