Small-Group Hobbiton and Waitomo Day Tour from Auckland

Hobbiton was amazing for the Tolkien fan. A full sized Shire with 42 Hobbit holes including Bags End and the Green Dragon! The Waitomo Cave & glow worm experience was super cool. It's a one-of-a-kind adventure that you'll talk about long after.

As a life long Tolkien fan, a trip to Hobbiton was a must. It didn’t disappoint. It was great to walk around the places that I had seen on screen and the attention to detail takes your breath away. I’m glad I added the trip to the Waitomo caves too. The boat trip around the cave was a highlight and helps you appreciate the beauty in the world that living in a big city (London) you often miss. The organisation for the trips was great. We had two drivers but both were very informative and great hosts.

Kiwi Segway Tour of the combo Hobbiton / Waitomo is a small group tour...there were only 9 of us and the driver in the comfortable van. The driver was very good in providing commentary and answering questions while driving, which was good, as there is a fair bit of driving time from Auckland to get to these two interesting, and yet very different locations in one day. Even if your not into Hobbiton / Lord of the Rings, the tour was very interesting due to the tour guide explanations. Unless your a Hobbiton expert, the guide is very important in order to get a lot more from this site visit than just walking around on your own. The Waitomo Glow Worm Caves was a definite highlight. Again the expert guide (who was a Maori), let us understand a lot about the caves / history and the Glow Worms. These are both very very popular sites, so book well in advance to ensure good tours and times, especially if a day before a cruise ship departs Auckland, or arrives in Auckland, as the numbers from a cruise ship will both take up lots of of tour space, and also make these locations very busy. Small group tours enables both getting to the locations quicker and helping avoid peak times.

I was thinking a loooong time about booking this tour or not doing it, because I thought it is pretty expensive for a one day tour. That's what I still think, and thats the only negative point in my review. But I really have to say if your not a backpacker like me and you don't have to watch every dollar, this is an absolutely awesome daytour! The pickup worked very good, I even got a call one day before to double check when and where they gonna pick me up. Our driver was super nice and during the tour he told us a lot of interesting things about Auckland, Newzealand in total, history and the areas we were driving through. I'm not a fan of Lord of the rings, I don't even remember the movies, but I still enjoyed hobbiton. Super cool to see and a lot of interesting informations about making of and the movies in total. We had a very cool tour guide there as well, the lunchbuffet was very good and even enough to eat for me as a vegetarian! Didn't expect that! After Hobbiton we went to the Caves, everyone fell asleep on that way, and the caves were super cool as well. Definetly worth a visit. So at all, I still think the price could be less, but I really enjoyed the day, everything was super super well organised and the tourdriver was just a very nice guy. You will not regret to book it!