Jean Lafitte Swamp Tours

This tour is so awesome! I experienced the Large Airboat Tour lead by Captain Kendall. He is the best example of Cajun Hospitality Louisiana has to offer! He was very friendly and extremely educated on all aspects of the tour. From agriculture, gator behavior, and even hunting… he was able to answer all questions and some! The tour is very peaceful and beautiful to say the least. You will most certainly see gators and other wildlife as they are everywhere but the Captain maintains full control at all times and makes the experience easy for someone who may be nervous. This tour is a «must see» during your New Orleans visit!

So this tour company does airboat tours and swamp tours, we did the airboat tour, and it was pretty awesome. They arranged a bus to pick us up and drop us off at our hotel afterwards and it was pretty smooth going, so no problems there for us. The driver even pointed out sites around New Orleans for us as he was driving us out to the swamp.
Our tour was on an airboat where you needed to wear ear protection while the boat was in motion, so there wasn’t much talking to be done by our guide. If you do the airboat tour, I HIGHLY recommend you bring some sort of eye protection, be it sunglasses or whatever, as we were speeding along the water bugs and such might just hit you in the face. So it’s probably best you keep your mouth shut too! Luckily, I had my sunglasses with me so it wasn’t a huge issue for me.
This tour was pretty much more of an alligator tour where our guide went around and talked about the alligators in the swamp, picked up and fed an alligator and showed us where they would nest. Who knew alligators loved marshmallows so much? It was actually pretty awesome that our guide was able to call out to an alligator and have it swim up to him on command just as you would a dog. He picked it up and showed her to us too. As part of the tour we even got to hold a small alligator.
Overall, this short 90 minute tour was well worth it for us, we had a great time zooming around the swamp and checking out the gators. So definitely check this out if you got the time!

What a great outing! Our group did the small boat tour and had a blast. We booked through the main office online, a courteous and helpful lady got us our own boat, our guide was semi-​knowledgeable about the swamp ecosystems, and one of my favorite points of the tour was learning that the family-​run operation has gone into their swamped property and re-​planted in an effort to counteract the previous damages by purchasing one hundred bald cypress trees and planting them strategically to return the land to its original balance. Gold Star Humans in my book! It’s about an hour and one half start to finish, several swamp stops, gators, birds of sundry types, interspersed with high-​speed airboat runs that pumped up my adrenaline. Just a damned fine time. Highlights include: Easy access for peeps using walking canes, every person involved is as nice and genuinely interested in your enjoyment as can be, and the peripheral benefits of the location, meaning: what you can combine with the trip to make it a full-​day experience, coffee at j’aime café on the way, and a splendid dining experience afterwards at Restaurant des Familles, which is literally in rock throwing distance of the main office. Get to the main office way early for several reasons: last good restroom facilities before you travel from there to the actual boat dock (though there are Porto-​Potties at the launch site), plus, you’ll want to check out the baby alligators and turtles. Negatives include: if you have to «go» during the airboat tour, you’ll be hanging it in the wind, over the side, the guide is a wonderful human, but without facts and knowledge about bird and reptile biology, gives out some pretty blatantly erroneous information about same, and whilst explaining how difficult it is to make a living in the crabbing industry, he kept a crab pot with four live blue crabs out of the water for precisely eighteen minutes, didn’t notice that the boat has slipped anchor, sending us adrift into the channel, our group watching as he carried on with his heartfelt speech about loving crabs while torturing four of them needlessly in 88 degree sun, drying and dying. I’m sure he’ll do better in the future, as I was able to discuss these issues with him at the dock, where we loaded him up on both cash tips and usable knowledge for his future excursions. Otherwise, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Had a great experience. Randy was really nice and funny and knowledgeable.

This place was great! Our tour guide Capt’n Randy was really knowledgeable about the swamp and the gators!
This place was the real deal. I went with five other people and we all agreed sometimes these group tours feel forced or gimmicky, but this felt authentic.
The marsh was incredible beautiful and peaceful. I would definitely go on the fan boat tour because we were able to see places that we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to see!

Excellent experience, hands down the coolest thing we did in New Orleans. The only thing I will forewarn you of is if you book an airboat tour and pick up your tickets in advance to show up 20 minutes early. You need to drive from ticket pickup over to the actual airboat location which takes about 10 minutes.
The tour itself was very cool. Not only was it fun to go on an airboat for the first time, but the tour was actually wildly informational. You learn all sorts of fun facts not only about alligator biology, but about their drive toward extinction and the massive comeback in the area.
If you’re lucky enough to get a beautiful day like we did you’ll also have excellent scenery for some really cool pictures. There’s practically no risk of you dropping a camera off the side unless you’re an idiot or you’re using your cell phone while driving at high speeds. Take a real camera with a neck strap and you’ll be totally fine. Get a front row seat for the best pictures.
For anyone worried about the noise, you get full high quality ear covers while the engine is on. Interesting fact, the engine doesn’t make the bulk of the noise… The blades cutting through the air so fast do that!

We took an airboat tour with Capt’n Randy, who was by far the most knowledgeable and fun tour guide we could have imagined.
Jean Lafitte folks were super nice and helpful too, they arrange the transport and the tour, though the airboat tour somewhat seems to be from a different outfit. but no matter, the airboat is the way to go, very cool and beautiful zipping along out there in the bayou.
Of course we saw lots of cool wildlife, including alligators. And all the interesting history and stories from Captain Randy just made it so enjoyable, in the late afternoon as the sun started to set.

It’s what you’d expect. You sit on these large airboats. The guide takes you all over. He explained so many facts about the tour, the area and what it was before, alligators and answers questions. He had a small baby alligator on the boat we were all able to pass around and hold if you wanted to. At a few of the stops the guide had food to use to bring the alligators over. That was pretty cool. The weather was nice which we got lucky. Our tour guide was George

Loved this airboat tour. It was amazing and the highlight of our trip to New Orleans. Capt’n Randy was the icing on the cake. He was my favorite tour guide. He was very informative and friendly. We learned so much about the history of the swamps and his family. I love alligators and am so grateful to have seen so many out in the swamp. Holding a baby alligator just melted my heart. This ride was so much fun and would recommend anybody to come and pay a visit.

Just finished up a tour with Captain Randy with 10 Bachelorettes and it was wonderful. Everyone from the staff, the woman on the phone, the bus driver, to the captain were nothing but accommodating. Our tour was complete with holding a baby gator, seeing some in the wild, and learning all about life on the bayou. I definitely recommend this tour!
The one this is the bus may not come exactly on time but whatevs.

We made a reservation the day before. They were supposed to pick us up at our hotel at 12:30. Called at 12:45, they said they were running about ten minutes late. 1:30, still not there. Called again. Whoops, the bus driver forgot to pick you up. They booked us for a 2:30 pick up. Didn’t show up until 3:30. We waisted a whole day of our vacation waiting in the hotel. When we got to the swamp tour office there was a bunch of angry customers who had been waiting hours for their ride back to New Orleans. To make up for the screw up they didn’t charge us for the transportation.
The airboat guide was good, but he works for a different company.

Loved this tour! Randy was our tour guide and he was informative and personable: D he answered all of our questions and even brought along Justin, a baby gator, for all of us to hold! Great tour and amazing scenery.

This air boat tour was definitely a highlight. Even our transportation guide, Dawn, was lovely and clearly proud and knowledgable as a native daughter.
Cap’n Randy was a hoot! You can’t get his insight and knowledge from a book. It is clear to see that he has a deep appreciate and love for that swampy, ‘only worth $ 200/​acre’ bog.
When he spoke to growing up in this place – he and his grandfather – and that he continues to come, so that he can feel close to his grandfather-​it was not corny. It was genuine and sweet.
Part historical, part educational, throw in a baby gator and a little sap – you have a great day ahead of you!

This was the highlight of our NOLA trip last week! We got lucky and had a pretty warm day so we saw a handful of gators. We took the large airboat tour and Randy was our guide. He was awesome! He was very knowledgeable and funny. We learned a lot about the swamp and the wildlife in the area. He told us stories about growing up in the area and how they used to hunt and navigate the swamp vs how things are done now. It was really interesting!
The best part of the whole thing was getting to hold the baby gator he brought out for us. It was definitely something we’re not able to do every day. We seriously had a blast. Loved every minute of the tour! As others have said, just try to go on a warm day. We had other friends go on colder days and see nothing.

My friends and I came on this Swamp Tour when we were visiting Nola for our friend’s 25^th birthday. We picked it because it was the closest to our hotel in the French Quarter. The über ride there wasn’t too bad, and we stopped at a drive through daiquiri place on the way which was super fun.
I enjoyed the tour a lot. It was 1.5 hours which I think was a good amount of time. We didn’t see too many alligators because we went in March and alligator season is in the summer, but we did get to hold a baby alligator on the boat.
It was kind of a hassle getting back and we couldn’t get an über, so we had to take the shuttle which was $ 15 a person (we negotiated with them a little).
Overall, this was a great, quick little tour.

We had a nice swamp tour with our guide Jamie. The jokes are really cheesy but we saw several alligators, birds, turtles and other wildlife. The boat is comfortable and at the end you can hold a smaller alligator which was fun.
The drive is about 40 minutes in morning rush hour from the French Quarter if you drive yourself.
Great for kids.

Alligators were everywhere, even in the boat.
Some TV show was filming an episode on our boat where they followed a family on the tour. A baby alligator was shown and everyone got to hold it. My son loved that.
The whole tour was friendly and educational. I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to get out of the city and see some swampland.

I was expecting better. We chose to do the small airboat tour and the ride itself was a lot of fun. You get to explore deep into the bayou on a high-​speed airboat, and you go pretty fast. The problem I had was with the guide. To be honest it seemed as if he didn’t really want to be there. The whole point of this tour was to see gators and he didn’t seem to be trying very hard to make sure we saw some. When we finally got to the spot where there were some gators, the sky got dark and we saw a flash of lighting way off in the distance, and we left. On our tour we saw 3 gators: one from afar and two up close. We saw more gators back at the dock where the staff was feeding them than we did on our entire 1:45 hour airboat tour.
At one point we stopped so the guide could tell us about some birds. He then spent the next 20 minutes trying to get a bird on his hand so that he could take a picture with his phone to show the guys back at dock. I don’t mind if he does this on his own time, but not when we are paying $ 85 per head for a 1:45 hour tour.
I see the potential in this place. If you get a great enthusiastic guide, on a nice weather day, this tour could be amazing.

Great 90-​minute tour of the swamp where the guide tells you all about what you’re seeing. I’ve been on other swamp tours where the guide feeds the alligators, but this one didn’t do that. Plenty of (small) gators to see, though. And other wildlife like turtles, birds, fat carp jumping out of the water.
They sell drinks and snacks on the boat in case you get the munchies. Boat is covered in case it rains.

Captain Dave was great! We had a really fun tour and our Captain was very entertaining yet informative.
We had 10 people so we got a group discount, an FYI for larger groups. The boat is covered so you won’t get wet if it rains or burned it it’s sunny. They sell snacks and cold drinks on board, plus there is a restroom but I’m not sure how nice of a facility it is
I don’t want to say much more, other than that it was a fun and unique activity especially if you’re not from the south.