New Orleans or Orlando?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.
Wins on good for families and nature & day trips with your weighting.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose New Orleans if the trip is about the city itself: museums and notable places packed within walking distance of the centre, the wider choice of restaurants and bars, and swimmable sea for seven months of the year.
Choose Orlando if you are travelling with children: 20 theme parks within reach, more protected land around the city, and mild winters with highs of 22°C.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. New Orleans leads by 39 points.39
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 7 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 3 | 1 |
| Coast distance | 21 km | 68 km |
| Water distance | 17 km | — |
Places to eat. New Orleans leads by 13 points.13
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 61 | 48 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 803 | 365 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 25 | 21 |
Museums & heritage. New Orleans leads by 37 points.37
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 8 |
| Museums within 10 km | 42 | 11 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 30 | 2 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 71 | 18 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
Nightlife. New Orleans leads by 13 points.13
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 54 | 41 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 704 | 344 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 495 | 216 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 70 | 63 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 41 | 39 |
Nature & day trips. Orlando leads by 19 points.19
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 25 | 44 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 4 | 15 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 89 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 43 hectares | 52 hectares |
Good for families. Orlando leads by 43 points.43
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 46 | 89 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 22 | — |
| Park area within 2 km | 43 hectares | 52 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 1 | 20 |
| Theme park ground ha 30 km | — | 8,853 |
| Zoo aquarium 15 km | — | 2 |
| Scoring variant | — | familyScoreThemeGroundLed |
| Declared | — | 2026-08-25 |
| Register | — | seed/editorial-overrides.json |
Sights concentration. New Orleans leads by 24 points.24
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 16 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 40 | 10 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. New Orleans and Orlando are level on 43.
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 43 | 43 |
| Price level global | 100 | 100 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Orlando leads by 6 points.6
| New Orleans | Orlando | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 74 |
| Monthly daytime high | 17.1 °C to 33 °C | 22.1 °C to 33.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 94 mm to 194 mm | 46 mm to 203 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 0 |
Where they differ
New Orleans has far more museums than Orlando, and they sit tightly around the centre, alongside many times more notable places within walking distance. It has 3 beaches nearby against Orlando's 1, and sea at 21°C or more for seven months where Orlando has none.
Orlando is built for families: 20 theme parks within reach against New Orleans's 1, more park space near the centre, and 15% of the land around it protected against 4% around New Orleans.
Where they are alike
Weather is where the two sit closest. Both are hot and humid in high summer, topping out at 33°C, and both stay warm enough to visit at any time of year. Neither gets a month at 40mm of rain or less.
They are also close on eating and drinking. In both, the restaurants, bars and clubs cluster near the centre, and the two have much the same number of nightclubs, so an evening out is walkable.
Which traveller are you?
Travelling with children: Orlando, without much argument. 20 theme parks within reach against one, more park space near the centre, and winter highs of 22°C for walking between attractions.
Here for museums, restaurants and bars: New Orleans. It has far more museums than Orlando, roughly twice the restaurants and twice the drinking places near the centre, and its notable sites sit close together.
Wanting to swim: New Orleans again, with 3 beaches nearby and sea above 21°C from spring into autumn. Orlando's outdoor case rests instead on protected land and parks.
What the numbers don't tell you
The two share the same value figure because it is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it says nothing about the difference between them. The dataset also carries no daily budget for either city, so no cost comparison between these two is possible in any direction.
No weather station near either city records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low, and the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Note too that New Orleans's warmest sea, at 30°C in August, falls in its wettest stretch, and Orlando's family strength says nothing about peak-week queues.
When should you go?
The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre). Orlando: 1991-2020 normals, Orlando Airport (14.2 km from centre).
October is New Orleans's pick: highs of 27°C, the year's lightest rain at 94mm, and sea still at 24°C. Spring is warm but wetter. High summer is hot and heavy, with over 169mm of rain a month.
Orlando suits the cooler half of the year, from November to March, when highs sit at 22-26°C and rain drops to 46-77mm. June to August is hotter and much wetter, close to 200mm a month, which is when New Orleans is no better.
Getting there
| Flying from | New Orleans | Orlando |
|---|---|---|
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 2 h 55 m €254-325 1 stop MSY · 18 km | 2 h 25 m €158-197 MCO · 14 km |
| WashingtonIAD, DCA | 2 h 30 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 2 h 5 m no fares MCO · 14 km |
| ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1 | 2 h 15 m €208-268 1 stop MSY · 18 km | 2 h 35 m €157-165 MCO · 14 km |
| Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY | 3 h 50 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 4 h 50 m no fares MCO · 14 km |
| DallasDFW, DAL, AFW | 1 h 30 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 2 h 30 m €195-271 1 stop MCO · 14 km |
| PhiladelphiaPHL, TTN | 2 h 45 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 2 h 20 m €126-198 MCO · 14 km |
| BostonBOS, PSM | 3 h 15 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 2 h 45 m €176-244 MCO · 14 km |
| AtlantaATL, PDK | 1 h 30 m €106-150 1 stop MSY · 18 km | 1 h 25 m €32-127 MCO · 14 km |
| CancunCUN | 1 h 55 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 1 h 50 m no fares MCO · 14 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 9 h 25 m no fares MSY · 18 km | 8 h 50 m €483-548 1 stop MCO · 14 km |
The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.
Before you go
| Measure | New Orleans | Orlando |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | US Dollar (USD) | US Dollar (USD) |
| Sockets | AB120 V, 60 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC-6, UTC-5 in summer | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer |
| Emergency number | 911 | 911 |
| Elevation | -2 m | 34 m |
| Main airport | Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinations | Orlando International Airport (MCO)14 km from centre169 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 14 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | New Orleans | Orlando |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 383,997 | 334,854 |
| People per km² | 423 | 1,086 |
| Museums within 10 km | 16 | 11 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 39 | 30 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 7 months | – |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New Orleans or Orlando somewhere new.