Location: The main address for New Orleans City Park is 1 Palm Drive, New Orleans, LA 70124

Reading Time 4 minutes

Observing another Carnival Cruise Ship Being Stocked for its Next Voyage

We ate our breakfast and thought about our agenda for the day. My wife was pretty sure she overheard the Pryority Funeral Experience group (a large group gathered at the hotel) talking about boarding a cruise ship. On our way upstairs we asked the front desk lady if there was a cruise ship in port today. She was clueless. So I asked a lady who was part of the funeral group if they were going on a cruise. She said yes.

We went upstairs and went out on a public balcony at the end of our hall, and we could see the Carnival ship at the port.

So we decided to walk down to the Riverwalk again and take a photo of the large ship. If you can’t cruise, you can at least enjoy others taking one.

The ship in port was the Carnaval Liberty. We were fascinated by the well choreographed movements of the four forklift drivers, taking pallets off the trucks, placing them either in a covered tent, on the pavement, or in an aluminum container that was lowered over the side of the dock and into the side doors of the ship. Further on down was another group of loaders moving all the passenger’s luggage into the hold.


The Loading “Dance”

We walked as far as we could to the south along the exterior walkway of the building overlooking the Mississippi River. There we saw dozens of cars pulling into the parking garage. Shuttles were unloading anxious cruisers, ready to board the giant ship and party down.

It was the first time we’d witnessed the loading of a cruise ship. It is an amazing process. The ship arrives in the port early in the morning, refuels, loads the food for 2500-3000 passengers and over a 1000 crew members, all their luggage, and sails out again at 4 PM in the afternoon. All in the space of about 10 hours.

Here are some stats for this ship, in case you are interested, per Perplexity AI:

Food Loaded for a 7-Day Cruise

A typical cruise ship like the Carnival Liberty loads around 180 tons (about 400,000 pounds) of food supplies for a weeklong voyage. This supports roughly 2,974 passengers and 1,160 crew, with daily meal prep for 8,000–10,000 meals across buffets, dining rooms, and specialties.

Breakdown by Category:

• Meats and seafood: 45 tons total (30 tons meat, 15 tons fish/seafood).

• Vegetables and produce: 28 tons, including 2,200 pounds of fresh salad and over 13,000 pounds of potatoes.

• Beverages: 50 tons, plus 6,000 cups of coffee daily.

• Dry goods: 1,500 pounds of flour, 3,900 dozen eggs, and 9,700 gallons of milk.

These figures come from large ships (Carnival Liberty is mid-sized at 110,000 tons), ensuring variety without resupply on shorter itineraries.

City Park – Facts and Figures

We had a pretty simple agenda for the day – check out the ship, drive to City Park, and lunch at Lula. So the next stop was the legendary City Park. Legendary because it has a history, and is one of the largest urban parks in the USA. It is 50% larger than Central Park in NYC. Many people come from all over the country to visit this park.

In the very early days it was used by the native Americans as a trade route. Later purchased by a philanthropist by the name of John McDonough, who, upon his death in 1850, donated it to the city of New Orleans.

The city soon saw the potential of this large plot of land and hired the famed engineering firm, the Frederick Law Olmsted Group, to design City Park. The park ironically got its greatest boost during the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration spent millions of Federal Government dollars building the infrastructure of the park. Roads, structures, and over 10 miles of lagoons were built during this period. All the work was done by hand. Over 20,000 people worked on this very ambitious project.

Some interesting facts about the Park:

• The original carousel was mule driven. It was not motorized until 1906.
• Citizens settled their disputes here in the early days, when it was known as the dueling ground.
• For $5 dollars, you could buy a ticket to attend a concert by the new British group with the odd name of “The Beatles”, who performed here on September 16, 1964.

Playing Mini Golf at City Putt

We walked back to the hotel from our venture down to the port.

The view looking up Julia Steet towards our hotel

The valet at our hotel brought our car around. We drove through the crazy weaving roads lined with the lovely Live Oak trees, and arrived at the City Park where we planned to play the City Putt miniature golf courses. We found a nice parking space just across the green space from City Putt.

We bought our senior ticket to play both courses. First we played the Louisiana course. Both of us were a bit rusty on that one. To play the second course just cost $6 more, so we played both courses. The second course is called the New Orleans course. Each hole had a name and a small historical write-up. We did better on the 2nd course. If it weren’t for a hole-in-one I had, my wife and I would have been tied on this round. My wife also had a hole in one on this course.

Hole in one!

The weather was wonderful today, as you can see from the photos. We enjoy playing miniature golf. And we got our first taste of the many feature of City Park. It won’t be our last visit here. There’s the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) and the wonderful adjacent sculpture garden.

Have you been to City Park? What was your favorite activity in the park? Leave a comment below. And you can subscribe to this blog if you want to be notified about each article.