The Best New Orleans Spooky Tour for Kids: French Quartour Kids

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For our February break, we booked a Disney Cruise out of New Orleans. Wanting to explore NOLA a little more, we flew to New Orleans a few days before our Disney Wonder cruise. I had been to New Orleans in my early 20’s but had never been with the kids. I was excited to show them this cool city and do some sightseeing. We only had two nights in NOLA, so I knew I wanted to do an organized tour where we could hit the highlights and learn a bit about this intriguing city. I was so excited to partner with French Quartour kids to learn more about the family friendly tours they offer and participate in their tour designed just for tweens!

 

Momma To Go would like to thank French Quartour kids for hosting us in New Orleans. We were given a complimentary tour for purpose of this review. As always, all opinions are my own.

The Best New Orleans Spooky Tour for Kids: French Quartour Kids

When visiting New Orleans, I really wanted to do a spooky tour. Apparently, this city is haunted and ghosts lurk all over! But some of the adult tours contain scary, graphic, and inappropriate content for kids. For these reasons, a family friendly tour with French Quartour kids seemed to be the perfect match for us!

The tours by French Quartour kids are all teacher-led, with an educational and hands on component in mind. Their twilight tween tour is designed for kids age 8-12 – which was perfect for my eight and ten year old!

Twilight Tween Tour with French Quartour Kids

On the day of our visit, our tour started at 5:30pm. The group was small – it was my family of four and two other families. Sara was our tour guide.

Prior to the tour Sara texted us where to meet on the edge of the French Quarter, near the river. It was a 15-minute walk from our hotel, the New Orleans Marriott.

Our tour guide, and French Quarter resident, Sara arrived with a cart of goodies and we were ready to get started on our 90 minute walking tour of the French Quarter.

We started by heading over to the Mississippi River, which was the perfect place to start since the river is such an important part of New Orleans’ history. Here Sarah told us a bit about the history of the early settling of the city, and from here we could see the walls built to keep the floods back!

Then we started to get to the fun, spooky stuff! Next, we learned about the ancient legend of the Rougarou, and old Cajun mythical creature believed to live in the swamps and seek out bad boys and girls! Sara did tell us how we can ward off the Rougarou – but you will have to take the tour yourself to find out!

After our time down by the river, we headed into the French Quarter and stopped near the Old Ursuline Convent to learn some more about the spooky history of the city. I was so interested to learn WHY this is a city so obsessed with honoring the dead, why cemeteries are places to sightsee and how voodoo culture came to become popular in New Orleans. This part of the tour was so informative, and straight forward, but not scary for the kids in the group.

Of course, you need to take the tour to find out why New Orleans is a city so entrenched in mass death…

As the sun went down, and day turned to night, we headed to two of the most famous haunted spots in the French Quarter. First, we went over to the LaLaurie mansion – known to be the most haunted house in NOLA, possibly the world!

We stopped about a block away from the haunted house to learn more about Madame LaLaurie who is said to haunt her old mansion. This kept us away from the crowds and gave us the opportunity to then get as close to, or stay as far back from the house as we wanted (our group was not afraid, we went right up to the house and touched it!). This house is so haunted, and it is privately owned that you can’t go in it, you can only creep around the exterior.

The story of Madame LaLaurie is a little scary – it does involve her chasing a twelve year old slave girl to her death. Sara, our tour guide implied that there were more graphic parts to the story that grown-ups can later read up on their own.

The house was definitely creepy, and Sara mentioned that children are often more in tune with ghost energy, but the kids were not afraid and were definitely intrigued by this haunted mansion.

After our stop at the LaLaurie mansion, Sara gave the kids ghost meters! These were really neat. They are little hand held devices that measure the amount of electro-magnetic energy in the air – and there certainly were a lot of spirits as we walked down Royal Street. For some reason, when the kids put the ghost meters up to my belly the things went nuts, so they are convinced I have a ghost baby growing inside me.

Maybe I do?

The last stop on our tour was the Andrew Jackson hotel, another famous haunted New Orleans spot. Sadly, we did not see any ghosts here, but our guide Sara showed us a photo that a past guest took where you can see some suspicious shadows at the Jackson. To find out who haunts this hotel (and by the way it is still a functional hotel, you can book a room right here) you gotta take this awesome New Orleans Tour!

Our 90-minute tour ended near Jackson Square, which was perfect because we had dinner reservations at Muriel’s (which is also a haunted spot, there is a ghost that dines there each evening). So definitely consider making a dinner reservation at this restaurant after your tween tour of New Orleans.

How to book a French Quartour Kids tour

You can book your French Quartour Kids tour online. The twilight teen tour is offered most days at 3pm or 5:30pm. These tours sell out fast, so definitely book well in advance of your New Orleans trip.

If you are traveling with smaller kids, ages 4-8, consider their Spooky Tour and for families with older teenagers, you can take the teen tour for ages 11 – 18. French Quartour Kids also offers field trips, a music tour for teens, a creole tour for tweens as well as private tours.

We loved our tour with French Quartour Kids. We learned a ton and it was the perfect amount of just scary enough. Since we only had one full day in New Orleans before our Disney cruise, this was a great way to see, and learn lots about the city. For your next New Orleans trip with kids, be sure to book a French Quartour Kids tour!

Have you ever done a New Orleans spooky tour? Do you believe in ghosts?

 

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