Houston Fleet week a couple of weeks ago was great, not sure how many S. LA peeps were aware that a similar celebration, including public ship tours, is coming to MSY. There are tall ships (lots of sails) and modern ships to tour. The Kearsarge was unavailable for tour, but my kids loved being on the LCS that we got in Houston. The Kearsarge:

It looks like everything going to MSY is docking in one spot, which was not the case in Houston. The Kearsarge was launching LCACs near Galveston, while the ships for tour were docked 25 miles away, with tour buses leaving from a food mall near I-10/45.

Be advised, they did adjust stuff mid fleet week in Houston; changing how ship tours are scheduled, etc. We had to take buses to the LCSs after going through security (we'd been assigned wrist bands to schedule when we went through security almost 3.5 hours after we got the wrist band.)

They mention "educational experiences," but don't provide detail. In Houston's case, it was crayon eaters with pugil sticks and an M-ATV (I think, that's too new school for me), and VR trailers for submarine ops, and a cool exhibit where five people could do carrier launch ops and a SEAL fitness challenge for kids.

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Posted by Riverside

Member since Jul 2022

10713 posts

Posted on 5/7/26 at 10:34 pm to LemmyLives

I saw this announced a few weeks back and I’m going to try to make it downtown to tour the ships. Looks like a great event.

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Posted by LemmyLives

Texas

Member since Mar 2019

16103 posts

Posted on 5/7/26 at 10:41 pm to Riverside

The funny thing to me was the smell on board. I haven't been on a USN vessel in probably 30 years, but a boat built after my kids were born smelled *exactly* like a boat I was on that was scrapped 20 years ago.

If you're bringing kids on the tours, be very aggressive about pushing your kids to the front of the next presenter (they did fire control, damage control, drone ops, etc. for us,) so they can hear. The sailors didn't speak loud enough in most cases (they were used to generator noise, etc.) There were definitely not NCOs using authoritative voice when we went.

And if you get your hands on an M-2, do not rack it. Word of advice.