It's an industry conference — plan accordingly
Tales is public-ticketed, but daytime is seminars and tasting rooms full of working bar professionals. As a tiki traveler you can skip the $595 pass entirely and still feast: free brand pop-ups, bar takeovers, and guest shifts blanket the Quarter all week. The flip side — every great bar is slammed and staffed thin. Reserve Latitude 29 well ahead.
July in New Orleans is no joke
Expect mid-90s heat, tropical humidity, and a daily late-afternoon thunderstorm. It's also hurricane season. Do your walking runs after sunset, duck into air conditioning without shame, and alternate every rum drink with water — the heat multiplies alcohol like a demerara float.
Go-cups are legal — glass is not
New Orleans famously allows open containers on French Quarter streets: ask any bar for a plastic 'go-cup' on your way out. Plastic only, no glass or metal on the street. This makes a walking crawl gloriously continuous — and makes pacing yourself entirely your problem.
Do not rent a car
Everything on this chart except the Rum House and the Bali Ha'i site is walkable from the Ritz-Carlton. Quarter parking is scarce, expensive, and towed with enthusiasm. Walk, streetcar, or rideshare — save the vehicle budget for one lakefront pilgrimage run.
The tiki current runs deep here
New Orleans isn't dressed as a tiki town, but it's load-bearing tiki history: the Hurricane came from the same wartime rum glut that fueled tiki's golden age, the Bali Ha'i defined a generation of local memory, and Jeff 'Beachbum' Berry — the man who saved tiki's recipes — chose this city for his bar. Treat the whole week as a rum-history field seminar.