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Driving from Dallas to New Orleans day of cruise??


brimichelle15
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So my husband and I live near Baton Rouge and are cruising out of New Orleans in Oct. We won't be able to leave until around noon on the day of our cruise. The ship sails at 4 and the port is only about an hour away (and the Saints don't have a home game that day - Thank you Jesus!) so I put our check in time as 1:30 but I'm still a little nervous about cutting it close. We really don't have any other choice (my husband is a pastor and can't leave until after the service that day) so this plan will have to work...

 

You are sort of forgetting something or you never read your boarding instructions. If the ship sails at 4:00, you have to be on board 90 minutes before sail-away or at 2:30. If you leave at 12:00 and the trip takes 1 hour, you will get there at 1:00, not counting time for parking, walking from the parking area to the ship, etc.

 

I can think of a million or maybe a thousand things that could delay you by 1 1/2 hours. We were once heading to the airport from a hotel somewhere and the taxi had a flat tire. Just recently, there was a major fire on one of the interstates here in Denver and all of the lanes were closed for almost 24 hours. Imagine what that did to traffic.

 

You can do what you want but I would not want to base my entire cruise on a 1 1/2 hour buffer.

 

DON

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Totally agree that you should drive the day before. Stay a little ways out where the hotels are cheaper. We have done this a couple of times driving from the San Francisco bay area and driving to Seattle.

 

Granted it's a bit farther than your drive (12 hours) but the drive was interesting to say the least. And slow, oh so slow. Accidents, road work. On the way there the first time we didn't know there was a hemp festival in Seattle and it took us nearly 2 hours to go 30 miles. Partly because we tried to get out of the traffic and got lost. Coming back the second time traffic was held up because of some incident where someone got arrested on the freeway. And did I mention road work?

 

Anyway, we got a hotel an hour or two away, it was cheaper and then just drove into port the next morning.

 

Next time we're flying. Honestly between the high gas prices and the cost of the hotel and parking it would have been about the same cost.

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As someone who drives that actual route on a fairly regular basis....DON'T DO IT.

 

Traffic is Baton Rouge backs up across the MR bridge on a regular basis. If there is an accident on the swamp bridge between Lafayette and BR you are screwed. (US 190 is an alternate but it is so rough and all the little towns you don't save much actual time. miles yes, but time no). Traffic between DFW and Shreveport can back up at the drop of a hat for no reason. The stretch between Shreveport and Lafeyette is probably one of the top 10 MOST BORING drives in the country. My advice would be to go half way of so the day before. (Alexandria LA is about as close to half way as you can realistically get. Or stay in the Lafayette area. Then you are only a couple/few hours from NOLA)

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Flights on Southwest from Dallas Love Field to New Orleans are as low as $125 each way nonstop. Fly in and take a taxi. Save the parking fees and the hotel fees. There are flights going nearly every hour, so book an early morning flight and you should get to NOLA in plenty of time. Alternatively fly in a day ahead and spend the night. There are hotels near the French Quarter for as little as $85 a night. (look on Priceline for example.)

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The one time I left the day of happily we had no issues. Then again it was a 3 1/2 hour drive, and only required 1 stop for gas, just so we had enough to get back out of Baltimore when we left. We couldn't leave until after 7:30am as the place our dog gets boarded doesn't open until 7am for drop off on Sundays. We were in the port terminal by noon. I had everything packed and in the car the night before except the medicine/toiletries bag which everyone just threw their stuff in as they finished with the bathroom before leaving.

 

On the other hand, when we went out of NYC, a 5 hour drive, there was NO WAY I was going the day of. Sure we are talking about only 90 minutes difference, but 90 minutes can easily turn into 900 sometimes! Actually this was the best decision I could have made! Our city chose that weekend to close down all about 1 lane each way on all of the major highways leading outside the city, or at least it seemed like that! It took us almost 2 hours to get out of our county alone.

 

Driving back from visiting in-laws a few times we had major problems. Once was on a highway in Ohio. We did not move for almost 5 hours because of an accident. Another time (also in Ohio... we have bad luck there!!) we got stuck outside Cincinnati in almost dead stop traffic for 3 hours just to get less than 10 miles. This time wasn't even at like a "reasonable" time when traffic might occur, it was 11pm on weekday.

 

If you plan right I don't see an issue with leaving the same day to catch a cruise/plane. I am currently roughly estimating flights for our 2018 cruise. Based on 1 year in advance prices, I can save close to $500pp if I fly our of Newark instead of Pittsburgh. If it was this year, the flight leaves after 7pm for Newark, and we would drive there that day leaving at 7am giving us about 10 hours for a 5 hour drive. Same goes for leaving out of Toronto. 5 1/2 hour drive with a red-eye flight. I would be more hesitant to fly out of Canada though, because of what could go wrong at the border and would want to give myself about 12 hours for a 5 hour drive.

 

The ONLY way I can actually advise driving more than 3-4 hours on the same day is if you have a good trip insurance policy suited to driving. They do exist just aren't the easiest to find. When we drove down to Tampa, an agent at that web site that "insured my trip" spent 2 hours on the phone with me finding the perfect policy that didn't include air travel but DID include delay time in driving. Only problem is the delay has to be more than 4 hours, which on the same day could easily have you missing the ship and frantically trying to make arrangements.

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