Again, GREAT party, but WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE. It is sad that so many of these great festivals have become tourist dominated and SUPER CROWDED. They lost their true appeal after the crowds came.

This is, simply, a very strange and illogical holiday. French for "Fat Tuesday", these parades are as two-faced as...well...Two-Face. I mean, externally, they seem like clean parades with floats, dancers and nice people. However, look closer and you will see the bastions of immorality they truly are. Alcohol is pervasive, and it impairs the judgement of many. The inebriated women are brainwashed into flashing men just for some cheap beads which you can get for 10 cents at the local dollar store. Also, profanity runs rampant. May I suggest a "Nice Thursday" anyone as a replacement celebration?

Always a blast!

This was the greatest time in the world -- so long as your in 20s and can drink all day, wake up and do it again... and again. There's nothing quite like entering New Orleans during Mardi Gras and adjusting to the customs of what seems a strange foreign land: public drunkeness, encouraged; public nudity, encouraged; parades of floats become the greatest social event you can imagine; the people who ride the floats are like royalty; and cheap plastic beads and the most important thing in the world, your currency in this strange hedonistic land. I think that it would be pretty sad to become a Mardi Gras regular, but it's definitley worth doing once.

I'm glad that I went, but I don't think that I would want to go back. Mardi Gras is drunkeness in all of its ugly glory. I drove from Atlanta to New Orleans for my first and only Mardi Gras. When I got out of the car and wandered onto Bourbon Street, I remember thinking to myself that I was in hell. Everybody was SO wasted, and there were so many rednecks, that I thought I had made a huge mistake by coming. Then I had a few drinks. The next think I knew, I was into the flow... talking to strangers, dancing around, trying to get beads, watching the parades, etc. It ended up being a great time, but like I said, something that I probably wouldn't go back to.