After snow slowdown, New Orleans makes a mad dash to Super Bowl and Mardi Gras
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Snow slowed down some of the prep for Super Bowl LIX, but officials remain optimistic everything will proceed smoothly. Photo: Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images
After a terror attack and a once-in-a-lifetime snow, New Orleans is in a mad dash to finish preparations to host the Super Bowl, with NFL events beginning in just a week.
The intrigue: Oh, and Chewbacchus, our first major parade this Carnival season, rolls on Saturday.
Fun fact: This year's Carnival, which began Jan. 6 and runs until Mardi Gras on March 4, lasts nearly 60 days.
- That's so much more time to celebrate than last year's roughly six-week-long season.
Yes, but: The number of working hours got cut short because of the snow, and it was already especially nutty with the Super Bowl smack in the middle of all of the madness.
- This year's parade schedule shifts slightly because city officials didn't want the NOPD to split focus between patrolling parade routes and Super Bowl crowds.
Zoom in: City leaders held Super Bowl prep briefings last week as the NFL continued loading gear into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and the Caesars Superdome, officials said.
- "There's probably going to be some pretty furious work as far as 24-hour days trying to get some things done because we want to make sure that we have our best foot forward for Super Bowl," NOLA Ready director Collin Arnold said last week. "But while this [snow] has been a distraction, I don't think it's anything that's been limiting at this point."
- Security-focused meetings will pick up this week, too, Arnold said.
- "'Snowmageddon' should only cause us to lose a couple of days," Super Bowl czar and GNO Inc. CEO Michael Hecht tells Axios New Orleans. "We are confident we can make these up in the coming days, assuming Mother Nature cooperates."
State of play: As for Mardi Gras, this year's revelry will have a few new rules on the route after City Council officials edited Carnival laws during the offseason.
- We also expect to see new security measures in place because of the New Year's Day terror attack.
Meanwhile, notably absent will be the Krewe of Nyx, which got the axe from the city's official Mardi Gras calendar last summer. (Go deeper)
- The Krewe of Alla will now parade in Nyx's place on the Wednesday before Mardi Gras.
Here's a quick look at some of the new rules for 2025:
- Banned: Tents, tarps, sofas, scaffolding, charcoal barbecue pits, portable toilets of any kind, ladders that have been strapped together.
- Confetti cannons are out, and so are beads with any non-krewe-related symbols.
- Krewe members can't throw toilet paper anymore. (Tucks is exempt from this one.)
- School and nonprofit bands must have at least 30 participants.
Go deeper for more rules impacting krewes.
What's next:
- Les Fous du Carnaval rolls Friday at 8pm in the French Quarter. (Route)
- Chewbacchus rolls Saturday at 7pm in the Marigny. (Route)