When you think New Orleans, you may think of the fabulous food that has quite a plethora of specialty regional food that is a medley of Creole and Cajun, of French, Spanish, West African, Southern, Native American, Vietnamese, and more. There’s also the live music scene – any time of day, in the clubs or in a cafe or even out in the streets. And then there’s Mardi Gras. In terms of things to do in New Orleans, it’s one of the most unique things to see. You don’t have to come during the two weekends before Fat Tuesday. You can get a little taste by visiting Mardi Gras World.
Mardi Gras World makes is very easy to get to – they even have free shuttles available from the French Quarter or downtown to take you here that you can call for a pick-up. They are open 7 days a week, from 9:00am to 5:30pm, with tours every half hour starting 9:30am with the last tour beginning at 4:30pm. They are even open most holidays, except Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Mardi Gras Day/Fat Tuesday.
A visit here will likely last 1 hour – 1.5 hours, depending on how many photos you want to take. The tour starts out with a 20 minute film giving you the background of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which has been celebrated here for more then 100 years.
You will learn about krewes, organizations responsible for planning and executing Mardi Gras parades and masquerade balls. You can also see how the parades got more elaborate and more often over time as the number of krewes grew and see footage from past parades. It will explain the various steps of how props for floats were created in the past and how that has evolved to the present. After the film, you get to try a slice of King Cake.
Then for the rest of the visit, you get to walk through the warehouse where they store parts of floats from previous years and for the upcoming Mardi Gras parades. There is a year round staff that works here – Kerns Studios, which runs Mardi Gras World, has been helping krewes create props and floats for 3 generations and is still family owned.
Sculptors and artists are on staff year round here fabricating custom pieces for Mardi Gras and other contracts. You will likely see some pieces that are works in progress with craftsmen working on them during your tour, and the warehouse has some pieces on display as examples in case there isn’t an active prop in that stage of the process. 
For instance, some of the older props were crafted with wood, then cardboard and chicken wire, while now it’s more likely to use Styrofoam or Plexiglas. Styrofoam is the most common as it is faster and can be used to make even larger pieces then the other materials.
The process starts when artists in-house create rounds of sketches on the computer first from a theme a krewe provides for them, or perhaps the krewe presents a sketch to them. The approved final outline is printed and then traced onto styrofoam that is cut into many duplicate layers to create a 3D version. Some of the cutting may be by hand to carefully sculpt the piece. Or, they also have in house one new technical friend, a robot they call Pixie.
The next step is a layer of paper mache, and a layer of white base, a color base, then detailed painting by the artists.
The final paint jobs can be pretty detailed even though it’s a prop on a float in motion in a parade. Other pieces were not as detailed and may have been older, or perhaps were timed for evening parades rather then daytime.
The tour guide might describe how some of the props are made, or which krewe and theme the prop was used for, or give you some more background on the sponsoring krewe. For instance, we learned how some of the floats get around regulations on length. Also, how some of the floats have bathrooms inside since those on the floats may be on them for many hours during the parade.
There are so many props this part with the guide might take another 30 minutes depending on how many questions you ask, and then you get to have as much time as you’d like to go back and take more photos if you’d like. Here are a few more that I captured, along with some of the information I learned about Mardi Gras.
You don’t have to be in New Orleans during two weekends before Fat Tuesday to see a parade – they happen for multiple weekends starting on the Twelfth Night of Christmas. The two weekends before and then Monday leading up to Fat Tuesday just happen to have the largest celebrations, but not the only ones. This Twelfth Night, also called the Epiphany, is when Jesus was visited by the three wise men – aka January 6.
From January 6 on, that time period is considered Carnival, which includes parades on multiple weekends before the official Mardi Gras time period of two weekends before Fat Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday, which is always 46 days before Easter). So it can be quite a few weekends between January 6 and Mardi Gras weekends – the only sure date is January 6 and the rest shifts year to year.
For some reason I thought there were corporate sponsors that work with groups similar to the Rose Parade, but that generally not true here! Mardi Gras parade krewes are private, non-profit organizations whose members pay dues or do fundraising, very few krewes have sponsors. By law all the people on the float need to wear masks, but many krewes also never publicize their identities.
All the parades are free, though if a route is in the French Quarter it tends to be a walking parade versus the ones with floats, those are routed on larger streets.
It is also not tradition at all to flash for beads – or that floats necessarily throw beads. Just like Bourbon Street often has people who have had a lot to drink, that is also the area where that flashing behavior may happen. Most of that behavior happens only in the Bourbon Street area and more typically after parades. In any other location of Mardi Gras parades, the parades are completely family friendly.
All throws are all free – perhaps a call to “Throw me something mister/miss” is all that is needed, no flashing required. Also, typical throws include beads, cups, doubloons, medallions, stuffed animals and other toys, toiletries, etc., not just beads.
There is a theme of colors for Mardi Gras – and it has a meaning behind it. Purple stands for justice, green for faith, and gold for power. 
Hope you’ve had fun learning a few things about Mardi Gras and getting a look at some of the float and prop details I saw! Would you ever go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans? Have you been to New Orleans, and if so what day time activities did you enjoy?
Speak Your Mind