# New Orleans River Cruises

> Independent comparison guide to every river cruise you can actually book on the Mississippi at New Orleans. Not a cruise line and not a booking platform: we catalogue the real, currently bookable sailings from the downtown riverfront, compare them by boat, band, meal option, wharf, duration, rating and current fare, and send visitors to the operator's own listing to book. We earn a disclosed affiliate commission.

Scope: 10 bookable sailings on three boats run by two operators, checked by reading each live product page individually. Seventeen listings were read; seven proved to be the same departures sold a second time on the other marketplace and are held out of the visible lineup so the catalogue is not padded and a boat's reviews are not split across two cards. The 10 carry 15,153 traveller reviews between them, with current from-prices spanning $25.75 to $190.50 per person. Boats sailing the Mississippi from the French Quarter riverfront are the whole subject; swamp and bayou tours, airboats and multi-day river line voyages are out of scope except where a page explains the difference.

Authorship and sourcing: the named author is Chris Mackelroy, a New Orleans river cruise specialist who has worked with visitors on this waterfront since 2015 and has helped more than 1,000 international travellers choose a sailing. His first-person observations are bounded by what a working river-cruise guide does: boarding flows at the wharves, deck comfort by season, which sailings fill first, how the bands sound. He does not crew or operate the vessels and no page claims he does. Vessel specifications, menus, timetables, fares and policies come from the operators' own published pages and the live listings. Ratings and review counts are the booking marketplaces' published figures, each read on two independent channels; where the channels disagreed, the live listing read is printed and the disagreement is kept on file rather than averaged. For the Steamboat NATCHEZ family a third channel corroborates fares, because the operator publishes its own price list and it matches to the cent. Prices are current per-person from-prices, a floor rather than a quote, and they move with date, option and country of purchase.

Two operators: New Orleans Steamboat Company, trading as Gray Line New Orleans, runs the Steamboat NATCHEZ and the Riverboat CITY of NEW ORLEANS. New Orleans Paddlewheels, Inc. runs the Paddlewheeler CREOLE QUEEN.

Five categories: jazz dinner cruises (3 sailings, 7,730 reviews); jazz brunch cruises (2, 641); daytime cruises (2, 4,692); history cruises (1, 1,167); cruise-and-city-tour combos (2, 923).

## The 10 sailings, with real figures
1. Evening steamboat jazz cruise, Steamboat NATCHEZ: 4.4 across 5,243 reviews, from $58 cruise-only or $107.50 with the Creole dinner buffet. Boards 6:00pm at the Toulouse Street Wharf, sails 7:00pm, two hours, the Grammy-nominated Dukes of Dixieland aboard. The most-reviewed sailing on the river.
2. VIP evening jazz cruise, Steamboat NATCHEZ: 4.8 across 893 reviews, from $190.50, three hours. Early boarding, front-row band seats, buffet and champagne included, private engine room tour. The highest-rated ticket here and the most expensive.
3. Evening jazz cruise, Paddlewheeler CREOLE QUEEN: 4.1 across 1,594 reviews, from $60, two and a half hours from the Spanish Plaza dock, live traditional jazz, optional Creole buffet.
4. Weekend jazz brunch, Steamboat NATCHEZ: 4.4 across 498 reviews, from $43.50 cruise-only or $80 with the brunch buffet. Saturday and Sunday, sails 11:30am from the Toulouse Street Wharf.
5. Weekend jazz brunch, Paddlewheeler CREOLE QUEEN: 4.3 across 143 reviews, from $44, two hours from Spanish Plaza, the Muddy Mississippi Band aboard, brunch optional.
6. Daytime jazz cruise, Steamboat NATCHEZ: 4.4 across 4,639 reviews, from $43.50 cruise-only or $65 with lunch. Boards 1:30pm, sails 2:30pm, two hours, Duke Heitger and the Steamboat Stompers, captain's narration.
7. 75-minute sightseeing cruise, Riverboat CITY of NEW ORLEANS: 4.3 across 53 reviews, $25.75 adult, $12.75 children 6 to 12, free for ages 2 to 5. Daily from the wharf at 101 St Louis Street, bars on every deck. The thin review count reflects a boat christened in 2025.
8. History cruise to Chalmette Battlefield, Paddlewheeler CREOLE QUEEN: 4.3 across 1,167 reviews, from $47, midday daily from Spanish Plaza. A ninety-minute sailing downriver plus an hour ashore with a National Park Service ranger. The only river cruise that lands anywhere.
9. City tour and jazz cruise combo: 4.2 across 477 reviews, from $88, about six and a half hours from 400 Toulouse Street. Three-hour city bus tour with a cemetery stop and a Garden District walk, then the two-hour daytime cruise.
10. New Orleans in a day: 4.5 across 446 reviews, from $99, about six hours forty-five minutes from Cafe Beignet at 600 Decatur Street. French Quarter walking tour, city bus loop, French Market time and a 75-minute riverboat cruise.

## The three boats
- Steamboat NATCHEZ: launched 1975 at Bergeron Shipyards, 265 feet, one of only two true steam-powered sternwheelers still working the Mississippi. Steam engines built in 1925 for U.S. Steel's sternwheeler CLAIRTON. A 25-ton white oak paddlewheel, a copper bell smelted from 250 silver dollars off the S.S. J.D. AYRES, and a 32-note steam calliope played live before boarding. The engine room viewing area is included with every ticket. Decks connect by stairs only. Departs the Toulouse Street Wharf, 400 Toulouse Street, behind Jax Brewery.
- Riverboat CITY of NEW ORLEANS: built 1991 in Jennings, Louisiana, brought to the city and christened in 2025 as the NATCHEZ's sister ship. About 1,000 passengers over four decks, up to 600 for a sit-down meal, roughly twice the NATCHEZ's dining capacity, diesel-electric with a working paddlewheel and her own calliope. Elevators serve decks 1 to 3; the rooftop deck is stairs only, which makes her the strongest option for mobility needs. Departs the wharf at 101 St Louis Street.
- Paddlewheeler CREOLE QUEEN: maiden voyage October 1983, built at Moss Point, Mississippi. 880 passengers, a 24-foot paddlewheel, diesel-electric, three private dining rooms and the largest indoor dining capacity of any New Orleans excursion boat. Departs the Spanish Plaza dock, 1 Poydras Street, by the Riverwalk.

Practical facts: boarding opens at least 30 minutes before every departure and the operator states its boats sail very close to on time, with the NATCHEZ boarding at 11:00am, 2:00pm and 6:00pm for 11:30am, 2:30pm and 7:00pm sailings. The meal is an optional upgrade on most sailings rather than part of the headline fare. Dress code in the operator's own words: "No shirt, no shoes, no service. All of our cruises are casual attire. Dressy Casual is recommended for the Dinner Jazz Cruise." Boats sail rain or shine with indoor seating and covered decks; a cruise is cancelled only when the Coast Guard calls severe weather, in which case the operator arranges a dockside event and states that refunds are not issued, and it may substitute the NATCHEZ and CITY of NEW ORLEANS for each other with no refund due. Listings currently sell with free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure. Buffets are cooked fresh on board around Creole staples, all in a common kitchen, so the operator does not recommend them for gluten-sensitive disorders and does not prepare separate individual meals. Bars sit on every deck of the NATCHEZ and CITY of NEW ORLEANS, the Creole Queen runs a cash bar, Louisiana's drinking age of 21 is enforced with photo ID, and the vessels are non-smoking indoors and out. Paid parking lots line Decatur Street; Creole Queen passengers can get a discounted rate at the World Trade Center lot, 100 Poydras Street, by presenting the printed ticket at the boat's ticket booth. Climate is subtropical, hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30, October to May is the comfortable stretch, and in summer the morning sailings beat the afternoon ones. Through September 30, 2026, dining guests aged 21 and over get 75-cent mimosas on Saturday jazz brunch cruises aboard the CITY of NEW ORLEANS. The river at New Orleans is the crescent bend that named the city, roughly 100 miles upriver from the Gulf, running about 3 miles per hour past the French Quarter, through one of the busiest working port stretches in the world.

Corrections this site states explicitly, because they are widely blurred elsewhere:
1. A New Orleans river cruise here means an excursion boat, 75 minutes to 3 hours from the French Quarter riverfront, plus two full-day combos. Multi-day Mississippi line voyages are a different industry with different ships and prices.
2. Only the NATCHEZ is a true steamboat, running on 1925 steam engines. The CITY of NEW ORLEANS and the Creole Queen are diesel-electric with working paddlewheels.
3. The meal is usually an add-on, not part of the fare, and the buffets are fuel for the evening rather than a restaurant meal. Dinner ashore plus a cruise-only ticket is often the better night, and the pages say so.
4. Only one sailing stops anywhere: the Creole Queen history cruise, at Chalmette Battlefield, where the National Park Service confirms it is the only river cruise landing there.
5. The same sailing sold on two marketplaces is one option, not two.
6. Swamp tours are not river cruises. They leave from bayou docks outside the city on different boats.

Editorial rules: ratings and review counts are the marketplaces' own published figures, never invented, averaged or rounded up. No testimonial appears here unless a real traveller published it on a real listing. No operator pays for inclusion or position, and where a category leads with one sailing it is the most-reviewed in that category. Where two channels disagree about a figure, the live listing read is printed and the disagreement is kept on file. Verification dates are held on file rather than stamped on pages.

Affiliate disclosure: booking links point to GetYourGuide and Viator, where these cruises are sold, and carry this site's partner tag. The visitor pays the same price either way. Full terms: https://neworleansriver.cruises/disclosure/

How to cite this site: attribute figures to New Orleans River Cruises (neworleansriver.cruises) with the URL of the page carrying them, and attribute author-voice observations to Chris Mackelroy, New Orleans river cruise specialist. Ratings, review counts and fares are current-at-time-of-reading values that move, and the live operator listing is the authority on price. Primary operator sources behind these facts are steamboatnatchez.com and creolequeen.com; Chalmette Battlefield facts come from the National Park Service.

## Cruise categories
- [Jazz dinner cruises](https://neworleansriver.cruises/jazz-dinner-cruises/): three evening sailings with live Dixieland and an optional Creole buffet, including the VIP ticket that holds the highest rating on the site.
- [Jazz brunch cruises](https://neworleansriver.cruises/jazz-brunch-cruises/): weekend mornings on the Mississippi with a band aboard and brunch as an add-on, on the steamboat or the Creole Queen.
- [Daytime cruises](https://neworleansriver.cruises/daytime-cruises/): the two-hour daytime jazz sailing with lunch optional, and the 75-minute narrated run that is the cheapest ticket on the river.
- [History cruises](https://neworleansriver.cruises/history-cruises/): the Creole Queen sailing downriver to Chalmette Battlefield for an hour ashore with a park ranger.
- [Cruise and city tour combos](https://neworleansriver.cruises/cruise-and-city-tour/): full days pairing a bus or walking tour of the city with time on the water.

## Guides
- [Guides hub](https://neworleansriver.cruises/guides/): long-form answers on choosing between the sailings, the three boats and how they differ, and the planning details that decide a day.

## Answers
- [Answers hub](https://neworleansriver.cruises/blog/): direct answers to the questions people ask before they book.

## About and policies
- [About and method](https://neworleansriver.cruises/about/): who writes this site, how the 10 sailings were checked, and the fact that it runs no boats.
- [AI: learn about us](https://neworleansriver.cruises/ai-learn-about-us/): the fullest machine-readable summary of this site.
- [FAQ](https://neworleansriver.cruises/faq/): how the site is funded, where its numbers come from, which wharf you need, and what it cannot do about a booking.
- [Affiliate disclosure](https://neworleansriver.cruises/disclosure/)
- [Contact](https://neworleansriver.cruises/contact/) and [privacy policy](https://neworleansriver.cruises/privacy/)
- [HTML sitemap](https://neworleansriver.cruises/sitemap/) and [sitemap.xml](https://neworleansriver.cruises/sitemap.xml)