Beaches & Volcanoes: Best of the North Island for Families

We have just returned from a 6 week trip to Australia and New Zealand.  Our travel agents and their team at this travel company are personable, professional, knowledgeable and did an amazing job putting together our trip! Our collaboration involved several phone calls to discuss options and preferences as our trip was being organized as well as a pre-trip call to answer any questions.  Our email exchange was continuous and responses were very prompt.  We even received a call once during our travels to check in.  Our detailed itinerary was precise and accurate.  Every connection, tour, driver, hotel, etc. was on time and of excellent quality. While in New Zealand in Milford Sound our flight back to Queenstown was cancelled due to poor weather and we received a quick refund.                

In Australia we visited Sydney, Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road ( a favorite of ours!), Uluru, Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef, and Hobart, Tasmania.  We only stayed a few days in Tasmania but would love to return to enjoy more of the wilderness outside of Hobart.  

In New Zealand we visited Auckland and then drove to the Coromandel Peninsula, Rotorua, and Napier.  Then we flew to Christchurch on the South Island and drove to Mt. Cook, Queenstown, and Dunedin.  If you are big fans of the outdoors, spend more time on the South Island.                                                                                                                 

Our agent selected beautiful and centrally located lodging that usually offered laundry facilities-helpful for a long trip!  The travel company also provided a suggested restaurant list that proved to be excellent!  We would highly recommend this company for your Down Under adventures!  When we travel again to that part of the world, we will definitely call this company.

We felt very comfortable planning our trip with Rick. We told him our interests, concerns and and the pace we wanted to travel at.  He presented us with an itinerary which we spent hours reviewing along with a map, photos and and a website. Our primary hub towns were Queenstown, Wellington and Christchurch. We used two regional flights and two trains with gorgeous views of the coast and mountains. We took a few cruises and a private flight over the glaciers. Our River Dartboat excursion was cancelled when the drivers came down with Covid and the swim with the Dolphins mistakenly cancelled us off this trip. Cyclone Gabriela damaged Napier and the Coromandel Penninsula and the access roads, so we had to create an alternate plan on the ground in NZ. We added two days at Waiheke Island and attempted a hike up mount Doom and visits to the Weta Projects in Auckland and Wellington.Rick was amazingly helpful with changes that had to be made before and during the trip. He was the best!

This was definitely a bucket list trip and we are hopeful to return for some of the adventures that we just couldn’t fit in within the three weeks! We met great people while there, friendly and helpful to a fault (if that is possible.)  It was a whole series of fantastic adventures.  No worries at all!  Thanks to our New Zealand travel company for organizing such a memorable trip.

The only minor glitches were with the pick up for the Penguin Tour in Dunedin—they still had the original location-- and the Taxi was about a half-hour late in Taupo. The Hilltop House and Waitomo Guest Lodge both have great hosts, great views, great food, and good location.  Hotels had great locations within Queenstown, in Taupo, and in Rotorua for walking to lakefront and free attractions.   

Thanks for asking for feedback. It truly is the key to continued client satisfaction and referral. Here is some information about our trip.

When I have time, I would like to write up all my notes, but that will take a while.

In general, we had an AWESOME time! This was a BIG deal for us, and your itinerary and the hotels and taking care of all that stuff, made it doable and for the most part, worry free. The hotels especially, were VERY very nice.

On the way home, I informally rated everything we did/encountered as a + or – based on whether it exceeded or missed our (lofty) expectations. We had 24 + and 10 – so overall that’s excellent. And the +’s in most cases were much more rewarding than the –‘s were disappointing. Here’s what we liked the most, in order:

1. Milford trip -- off the charts positive! While expensive, it was worth every penny. The Wanderer had just been refurbished. It was superb. We didn’t need to phantom book the fourth person, as it had only 30 of 36 spots filled, but that’s not a big deal. We worried too much about the shared bathroom….no berths had one and it was not a big deal at all. In fact we liked the smaller atmosphere and crew a lot. I would do this again in a heartbeat. The scenery was at a Yosemite level, maybe better bc it rained on the way down, then cleared for our cruise and the waterfalls were at their max. simply awesome! Photo of our family on boat.

2. Queenstown – electric and fun. They were filming the Hobbit and Orlando Bloom was in town, Film crew at the Novotel. Lots of stuff to do.

3. Great barrier reef --- gorgeous day, and fun snorkel, vivid colors…needs to be seen in person

4. Wine tour on Waiheke -- Ananda did great job and as mentioned in earlier note, Coleen got the Lunch at Mudbrick print…need I say more (see our photo looking back at Auckland). Saw 300 year old Pohutukawa trees. Photo from winery table.

5. Sydney w Claire – so fun to see her…ran us ragged. Hotel location could not have been better. WE had transportation passes that got us on all busses, trains ferries…very worthwhile. Note sunrise photo from roof of the Holiday inn! One tip -- look at pic I’ll send…we went on the Sydney bridge tower climb for $11 and got almost as high as the actual bridge climb for $165. we saw as much, and saved time and money.

6. bike rental/ride in Auckland…Coleen and I rented bikes and rode along harbor to Mission Bay. Only $15 @. Easy ride and great scenery, when we’d thought riding a bike in Auckland would be scary. We love to bike ride and the rental down on Commerce and Quay was a pleasant surprise.

7. Daintree – Jamie from Back country Bliss was super. I suppose we could have rented a car and gotten the audio tape for $12 but not sure we’d have learned as much and certainly would not have seen the cassowaries. We’d thought our tour included the zipline, so we added it for $190 and it was underwhelming. Would not repeat that, especially when we ziplined later in ZQN that was truly exhilarating.

Some other pros and cons form your perspective, Jillian :

Hotels were awesome. We appreciated them from the start, and it was nice to know we would not be disappointed about our stay each night. I’m guessing they were more than we’d normally have paid for, but for this experience, they were perfect! Thanks!

Itinerary in general was very good and gave us chance to see so much. We could easily have spent more time everywhere – each spot was a destination in itself – but what a selection of the best of the best!

All the paperwork and vouchers and bookings details were nice to have taken care of.

Qantas was impressive! Thanks!

There a couple of glitches, though --- having us get up at 6:20am the first day after 32 hours of travel to drive an hour back to Cairns, when there were plenty of GBR tours right in Port Douglas, wasn’t good. The fine folks at Martinique, which we LOVED, helped us with this.

The shuttle from SYD to Holiday Inn didn’t work as planned, and took some intervention from the air[port transportation desk. It was rush hour which didn’t help.

The shuttle from Orari to CHC was cut too close…it was booked with 2 hours but the flight was changed to an hour earlier and somehow the shuttle was not changed accordingly. We made it, barely, with some worry.

We should have booked the car rental ZQN to Greymouth for 1pm pick up. That would have saved a day (which we ended up doing anyway) and given us another morning in ZQN to do stuff. Franz Josef was fun but the heli-hike was over-rated, at least it was for those of us who spend winters in the snow. I guess +Claire enjoyed first helicopter ride, but the glacier was just a bunch of dirty decaying snow…not that big of deal.

Our hotel in Auckland was very nice.  We were very happy with the location and the hotel bed was very comfortable.  The restaurant in the hotel had a good selection and the food was very good.  

The taste of Waiheke tour was outstanding.  We all very much enjoyed it.  The lunch served was some of the best food we ate while in NZ.  

We were very disappointed in the 10 day south island tour.  

First the good part.  Our tour director as good, very informative and a nice man.  The driver was very nice and a very safe driver.  We had a difficult time understanding him, partly because of his microphone.  

Now the rest.  When we boarded the coach 60 % of the passengers were sick.  They had been on the North Island for several days and passed around a virus.  Our first day , leaving Christchurch, everyone was coughing, sneezing and blowing their noses.  We complained to  our tour director and he told everyone to use hand antibacterial gel.  By the second day several of the people that had joined the tour in Christchurch, including the 4 of us, had contacted the virus.  Nothing was done to sanitize the coach or to provide face mask.  By the time we were in Queenstown several of us were at the doctors office.  Still everyone was coughing, fevers, sneezing, etc.  I missed out on 4 dinners due to illness and I know many others were very sick.  NOTHING was done, no preventive measures, by the tour company.  As we traveled through N.Z. we went to several pharmacys and were told that this is very common to have a coach arrive with a bus load of sick passengers.  Obviously this ruined our trip.  

I would never recommend traveling on that tour bus to anyone.  We are home now, April 9th and still sick.  I would expect that if this is the normal and nothing is done to disinfect or change air filters, then people need to know what they are getting themselves into.  

When we left N.Z.  we traveled to Fiji with plans to scuba dive.   Of course that didn't happen due to sickness.  So our entire trip was ruined.  

Besides the sickness, the hotels were OK.  Probably the nicest was in Queenstown.  But I was in bed the 2 nights we were there and didn't get to enjoy it.  

The food was buffet, buffet, buffet.  Same food every night.  Very disappointing.