North IslandHobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · from $71 The North Island warms you up. The South Island wrecks you.
Which Milford day trip is worth the 12-hour round trip from Queenstown. What the Hobbiton ticket really costs once lunch is in. Whether the glacier helicopter beats the glow-worm cave when the weather is only good for one. Reviews of every tour you can book in New Zealand.
South IslandSmall Group, Award Winning Milford Sound Day Experience & Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $235 Hobbiton, a fiord, a jet boat and a haka.
The four bookings almost every New Zealand itinerary is built around. What each one costs, and what the people who went say about it.
- 01The one everyone booksHobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour TicketThe Shire, mown and replanted and kept that way year round. Take an early slot before the Auckland coaches land at midday.
- 02The long day southSmall Group, Award Winning Milford Sound Day Experience & CruiseMitre Peak, the waterfalls and a small boat that gets under them. Twelve hours door to door from Queenstown, and nobody regrets it.
03The night in RotoruaMitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner BuffetA war canoe on the stream, a haka in the trees and a hangi lifted out of the ground. Book the earlier sitting.
04The four wet minutesShotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in QueenstownShotover Jet through the canyon walls at speed. Short, loud, and the story you tell first when you get home.
In New Zealand the best day usually ends up on a boat.
A fiord that only opens up once the bow is inside it, a whale surfacing off the Kaikoura canyon, a kayak in the Abel Tasman shallows with a seal following. Three kinds of day on the water, what each costs to board, and where it sails from.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Whale Watching Cruise
Fiord cruisesMitre Peak, the waterfalls, and spray on the deck.
Whale watchingSperm whales over the Kaikoura canyon, most mornings.
Kayak daysSea caves, seal colonies and water you can see the bottom of.
Under sailHarbour cruising, Taupo rock carvings, an America's Cup hull.
All 294 days on the water →
Six New Zealand bases, ordered the way you drive them.
A harbour city at the top, a geothermal valley two hours south, the capital on the strait, then a cathedral city, a lake town that invented commercial bungy, and a peninsula full of albatross and penguins. Pick a base and the best days out come with it.
Half of the Southern Alps has no road to it.
Franz Josef and Fox spill off the divide within 20km of the sea, Aoraki stands 3,724m over a glacier you can land on, and the only honest way to see any of it is with a rotor overhead. Flights go when the cloud lifts, which is why the pilot decides the schedule.
The New Zealand days out more travellers take than any other.
Every New Zealand tour we have reviewed →These are the ones the country is booked around. What each one is, what it costs, and why it keeps the slot.
1
Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour Ticket
Walk through the 12-acre Hobbiton Movie Set with an English-speaking guide, visiting Hobbit Holes, the Mill, and the Green Dragon Inn. Guides such as James, Sam, Wyatt, and Melissa are praised for lively film stories. The 150-minute tour includes a drink, photo stops, and a bus ride from the car park.
From · $71
Read our review →
2
Rotorua Canopy Tours: 2.5Hour Native Forest Zipline Adventure
from $123
3
Hobbiton™ Movie Set Walking Tour from Shires Rest
from $74
4
Mitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner Buffet
from $101
5
Whale Watching Cruise
from $104
6
Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from Queenstown
from $216
7
Cruise Milford NZ Small Boutique Cruise Experience
from $111
8
Whale Watching in Kaikoura by Boat
from $111
Queenstown sells adrenaline, then pours you a pinot noir.
Everything in Queenstown →
A town of 16,000 people on a lake, with a gondola above it and the Remarkables behind. Everything leaves from the same waterfront: the jet boats, the Milford coaches, the wine vans heading over the Crown Range to Central Otago.
Shotover or Kawarau, or both
The Shotover run is the narrow one, walls close enough to flinch at. The Kawarau is wider and gentler. Combo tickets do both in a morning and cost less than the two separately.
Central Otago, over the Crown Range
Gibbston, Bannockburn and Cromwell grow the pinot noir the region is known for. Four cellar doors is the standard shape, lunch usually sits in the middle, and somebody else does the mountain road.
Aoraki and the Tasman Glacier
Up the Lindis Pass, past Lake Pukaki and its impossible blue, to the village under the highest mountain in the country. Long day in a seat, but the last hour justifies the first four.
What a day out in New Zealand actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Plenty of the best New Zealand days come in under the cost of a tank of petrol.
City trams, cable cars, thermal park entries, cave tickets and the short harbour runs.
The standards: Hobbiton, the Kaikoura whale boat, a Rotorua marae evening, jet boats.
Milford by coach and cruise, glacier heli-hikes, small-group wine days and private drivers.
Peter Jackson filmed here and the country never quite gave it back.
The Shire was rebuilt in permanent materials on a Waikato sheep farm and is gardened year round. Edoras was a hill in the Canterbury high country. The workshop that built the swords runs tours in Wellington and Auckland, and the props are the real ones.
Every film-location day →
Rotorua smells of sulphur and it is worth every minute.
The town sits on an active caldera. Mud pots bubble in the public park, geysers go off on a schedule at Whakarewarewa, and the marae here have been hosting visitors for more than a century. Book an evening: the war canoe, the haka and the hangi all belong to the same night.
- 1Mitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner Buffetfrom $101
- 2Cultural Experience & Seasonal Māori Cuisine at Te Pā Tūfrom $167
- 3Mitai Maori Village Cultural Experience in Rotoruafrom $104
Three things New Zealand has and nowhere else does properly.
Caves and coastlines and night skies exist everywhere. A river you float down under a ceiling of living light, a canyon a kilometre deep starting a few minutes offshore, and a reserve where the streetlights are aimed at the ground do not.
The Waitomo Glowworms
Arachnocampa luminosa lives on the roof of the Waitomo caves and fishes with a hanging line of sticky silk. In the dark, a few thousand of them read like a night sky held ten feet above your head. You can walk it, drift through it on a boat, or float it on a rubber tube in a wetsuit, which is colder and considerably better.
- 1Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,677 reviews
- 2Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
- 3Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Day Trip with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,505 reviews
Sperm Whales off Kaikoura
The seabed drops more than a kilometre within a few minutes of Kaikoura harbour, and cold and warm currents collide over it. Sperm whales feed there all year, which is why this is one of the very few places on earth you can see one on a two-hour boat trip. The operator is Ngai Tahu owned and pays out if nothing surfaces.
- 1Whale Watching Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,089 reviews
- 2Whale Watching in Kaikoura by Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,906 reviews
- 3Auckland Dolphin and Whale Watching Eco-Safari Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,790 reviews
The Mackenzie Basin at Night
The Aoraki Mackenzie reserve covers 4,300 square kilometres where every outdoor light is shielded and aimed down. From the Mount John summit above Tekapo the Milky Way throws a shadow, and the Magellanic Clouds sit where northern visitors expect nothing at all. Dress for the frost, whatever the forecast said in town.
- 1Alpine Stargazing Experience with a Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 626 reviews
- 2Stargazing Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 607 reviews
- 3Chameleon Stargazing Shared Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 181 reviews
Four New Zealand bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be sorted from a motel reception the night before. These four run on ticketed slots, one daily train and small boats with fixed seat counts, and they sell out weeks deep over summer.
- 01Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour TicketEntry is by timed tour only and the set is never open to walk-ups. December and January slots go weeks out.
- 02Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from QueenstownThe coach and cruise runs on one long fixed timetable from Queenstown, and the boats have a set number of seats.
- 03TranzAlpine Train, Arthur’s Pass and Castle Hill Day TripOne train a day each way across the Southern Alps. Miss the seat and there is no second departure to move to.
- 04Glowworm Caves Guided TourCave numbers are capped to protect the larvae, so departures are small and spaced through the day.
West Coast rain and alpine wind cancel more New Zealand plans than anything else.
The divide catches the weather and holds it. Helicopters do not fly, boats stay tied up, and the tramping tracks turn to river. The answer is geothermal and indoors: hot pools that are better in the rain, a film workshop, a cellar door, a museum with a whole Antarctic wing.
- 1Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Park Entry Ticketfrom $28
- 2Hell’s Gate Outdoor Mud Spa & Guided Walkfrom $68
- 3Hell’s Gate Mud Bath & Spasfrom $55
Sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, pinot noir from Central Otago.
Two of those regions changed how the world drinks. The tours are built around somebody else driving, which matters on the Crown Range and matters more after four cellar doors. Waiheke is the easy one: a 40-minute ferry from downtown Auckland and you are in the vines.
By town, north to south
By kind of day out
Auckland to Milford Sound: the route most first trips end up taking.
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Radical U-Drive – Highlands Motorsport and Tourism Park
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Queenstown to Lake Tekapo via Mt Cook One-Way Small Group Tour
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Queenstown to Mt Cook Small Group Tour (One-Way)
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