BTW, July is the off-season in New Orleans for a reason. That is good because plane tickets are easy to get and cheaper than the rest of the year but it is bad because it will likely be hotter than anything you have ever experienced unless you grew up in West Africa. Don’t think I am exaggerating either. It is shockingly hot so you will need to lighten up on the dress code if don’t want to deal with heat stress issues.
When I was in high school the marching band went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras to play in some parade. Cincinnati to New Orleans on a charter bus. I have a few distinct memories from that trip, one was the smell of the toilet on the bus, the other was lying underneath the seats on the floor because I was so unbelievably tired and miserable and I couldn’t get comfortable any other way. That bus ride was god awful.
Fly, for the love of god, fly. Forget the charm of a train or the camaraderie or whatever you’re envisioning, get to your destination and back as painlessly as possible.
Exactly. I don’t understand why that wasn’t presented as an option. Charter a bus to O’Hare or Midway and fly straight to New Orleans for less money than a bus or train for the full ride. Done. I grew up in the boonies with a mother that was also a teacher that organized field trips over the summer. We just got a charter bus to go a couple of hundred miles to Dallas and flew directly to Washington DC or wherever else we wanted to go. It worked fine and it was inexpensive overall. I don’t see why a similar model wouldn’t work in this case. All you need to do is find a way to get to Chicago and then take a direct flight. It isn’t that hard. Navigating large airports should be part of the learning experience for the students that have never done it before. I have made my kids guide me around lots of airports since they were very young because I consider it at least as useful as anything else they learn in school.
Personally I would take the train. Just because.
But given the situation I would present it back. Do you want to herd cats for 2 days or take an hour to teach them the proper etiquette of traveling by air.
As a side note. If you take the train pack some Dramamine and make sure the kids prone to motion sickness are facing forward. Discuss the causes of motion sickness so they’re better prepared.
No, they’d drive an hour to a train station, take a train from there to Chicago, wait several more hours in Chicago, and then leave on the 18 hour trip.
Well, has anyone wrote a country song about a flight from ORD to MSY? 
But yeah, my call these days would be bus to Chicago in the morning, plane straight to NOLA in the afternoon/evening. Like **Magiver **if travelling for myself I’d ride the rails just because, City of New Orleans, dude, but with the circumstances involved it may be better for everyone’s safety and mental health to take the Tom Tildrum/Shagnasty alternative. Also less total time in trip = less total time for something to go wrong, or for someone to absentmindedly step off the train in Memphis and fail to get back on.
“Only about half the group has flown before.” Use this to your advantage!
I see Chinese tour groups consisting of first-time fliers in other countries quite often, and a lot of them are less disciplined than high school kids.
[ul]
[li]Check to see if the airline you’re considering has a group ticketing option, especially at check-in. You should be able to get everyone’s tickets at once.[/li][li]Have the experienced fliers supplement your own coaching. Definitely don’t forget to stress proper security behavior.[/li][li]Get a long stick with a distinctive flag or stuffed animal or some other thing you can put at the end. This serves as your guidon, and everyone will always follow and group around this symbol.[/li][li]Consider asking everyone to wear the same color shirt on flying days, or if your budget supports it purchase a shirt for everyone to wear on flying days, or if everyone already has a team/club/activity shirt, require that they be worn on flying days.[/li][/ul]
If you plan well enough in advance, you can probably get direct Midway-New Orleans tickets on Southwest Airlines for under $200 each round-trip. It’s a 2.5 hour flight.
The only tricky thing might be arranging a bus or something from the airport to New Orleans proper (I assume the convention is downtown or in the French Quarter), as it’s probably a 20 minute ride to anywhere useful.
I’d look into the charter bus option- you’d probably have to arrange for meal stops and the like, but the buses can drive straight through, with driver changes, or at least that’s what the ones I’ve been on have done.
Curious about the references to getting sick on the train. Until my early twenties I was quite prone to motion sickness. Cars in heavy traffic were bad, buses were problematic, planes were especially disastrous–but trains, for whatever reason, never bothered me. I would actually be more worried about kids getting motion sickness in the air–but that is based only on my experience, so who knows.
Couple of other thoughts–I’m neutral on the subject overall:
*My son did a train trip like this from Chicago to Denver, and he loved it–loved being with the other group members, loved the romance of it all, didn’t even mind all that much when the return train was 8 hours late arriving in Denver. Now, he was a college student at the time, not a high school student, so there is that–but he’d tell you he would not have preferred to fly.
*Have these students spent much time out of their home region? If not, some of them may find it very interesting to travel via train–you get an up close and personal view of cities and landscapes. There certainly are interesting sights along that route. Looking out a plane window isn’t the same IMO… You’d know better than I whether this would appeal to the students, but it could give them an extra travel experience that they wouldn’t get by flying.
I concur with the above posters, and I love long train rides (latest was this past April, from Wellington to Auckland, New Zealand. I have even taken the N.O. - Chicago route once. It wasn’t very exciting, I must admit.
With a group your size, and being that they are teenagers, 18+ hours on a train is just an open invitation for someone to get in trouble (not casting asperions, mind you, just a group of teenagers, together for almost two days in a contained area…). Find a way to Midway (being a smaller airport, it might be better for your first-time flyers than O-Hare, which is a monster to get through). If you want the train experiecne, take the Chicago metro train to Midway.
But I do concur in working with the airline for group travel; they are as interested as you are that things go right. For that matter, AMTRAK would probably do the same.
But air is probably your best bet.
This.
A chaperoned group of students can be handled through an airport with minimal problems. It helps to have an adult known to be “tough” helping to chaperone the trip. Coach BigScaryGuy or the ex-NYC-narcotics cop husband of the English teacher do nicely.
In school, I went on plane trips to DC, New York, the UK, and a few other places that slipped my mind. Friends went to other places. All were groups of 10-20 students. No one got lost or arrested or even mugged (though a couple of us were flashed in NYC).
Bus to Chicago
Fly non-stop to NOLA.
No other option is even worth it. Why would you pay more and take two whole days, both ways for the train? The train shouldn’t even be an option.
The train illness was blamed on some of the food they took. Missed the first day. I’ve taken the train before hence my suggestion.
Flying will go through a travel agent, prbably the same one that neglected to give us our tickets last time. And no one bothered tocheck. Also last time a suitcase or two went missing for several weeks. I will bring up the direct flight from Midway as I hadn’t considered it. Also bussing is back on the table. Charter flight was priced out of our budget earlier. Thanks for all the information.
What city are you starting from? Another airport might be more convenient than Midway. SWA flies to a lot pf places.
You’ve said bus is not an option: is that assuming public bus such as Greyhound?
Might a bus charter be an option?
There are certainly issues with that - drivers have limits on how long they may drive in a day, for example, and you’d have to put the driver(s) at your hotel while you’re there. It would, at the least, let you go point to point (no 200 miles to Chicago, for example).
Train: More legroom, can walk around, bring own food (for return trip you can purchase food near the hotel) - but you’ve got an overnight on the train both ways. The kids (and you) will NOT sleep well on the train unless you spring for rooms - which add a lot to the cost. This means you and they will be very cranky when you get there.
Look into group discounts. I don’t know what Amtrak or the airlines might offer - but it’s worth checking.
For giggles, I just went to Amtrak and requested a quote for 2 adults and 6 students (most it would allow me) for October 14 returning the 21st, and it would be 939 dollars for the cheapest seats, and about twice that for “flexible” which I guess means you could change the travel dates or something. No rooms available for those dates.
Look into alternate departure destinations for flights, if you haven’t already - Midway, Milwaukee, even one of the closer destinations in Indiana depending on where you’re going from.
I’d vote for the train, personally (though I’m biased, I love traveling by train), though 2 hours versus 20 hours is a big time differential.
Motion sickness is usually a function of sensory disorientation. If your inner ear says your body is moving one way buy your eyesight is telling a different story then it’s disorienting. I suspect flying is worse than a train but there’s also a time factor involved and the train is taking a great deal more of it.