Queenstown Beach Trips

I picked this itinerary because it had the things and places I wanted to check off my bucket list - visiting Uluru/Ayers Rock, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, visiting the Sydney Opera House and climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge (optional) in Australia! Optional means it is an activity you have to pay extra to participate in. It included 3 days in Melbourne where we had a Welcome Dinner the first day. 2nd day - city walkabout tour of Melbourne, the Conservatory, Shrine of Remembrance, Koala Conservation Reserve where we saw koalas and wallabies (optional) and Phillip Island to see fairy penguins come out of the sea at dusk (optional). 3rd day - drive along the Great Ocean Road (optional). Uluru/Ayers Rock - Got to learn about aboriginal art (free) and have a BBQ in the desert and tasted kangaroo meat (optional). New Zealand is really beautiful - one cannot capture its beauty accurately on video! In Auckland, we got to attend the All-Blacks Experience. Visited Hobbiton and Rotorua where we had a Maori traditional show, saw geysers and a meal cooked using the traditional method (hangi- sorry not sure how to spell it using the Maori alphabet) (bucket list). Also visited The National Kiwi Hatchery in Rotorua. We visited Milford Sound and went on a cruise. It was raining that day, so we saw lots of waterfalls! Missed out on flying over the fjords (optional) cos of the weather. Queenstown - went on a cruise on a steamboat (optional), missed out on Jetboat (optional) cos of the weather but went on the gondola instead and did some luging (optional). Visited Arrowtown, Tony Quinn motorway, Lake Tekapo (blue turquoise water and Church of the Good Shephard) and star gazing at Lake Tekapo. Had our Be Our Guest invitation to a sheep farm where we were hosted by and (lovely couple). Our last excursion was to a winery in Waipara where you can taste the best sauvignon Blanc wine New Zealand can offer. It was an amazing trip but I can't lie, it was also tiring - one has to pace onself! This was my third trip with Trafalgar so I knew the pace. Our 2 Tour Directors were great! We had *************** in Australia and ************** in New Zealand.

Good balance of included and optional experiences, good variety and coverage of important sights, good balance of travel time - rest time - sight seeing time, great accommodations, smooth transfers, and awesome tour directors.

My wife and I have been on several trips with the Trafalgar group (AAT Kings / Insight / Trafalgar). We have not had a bad experience yet. The travel directors were like personal concierges to us. Our travel directors, Tony and Marty, were fantastic people. Funny, professional and helpful. Bus drivers were excellent, optional experiences were great. We look forward to going on future tours with the Trafalgar group.

All of N. Zealand is beautiful from north to south, from the Bay of Islands to Milford Sound with mountain and ocean and lakes galore. How can you choose just one favorite. Now it's the land of Hobbits as well as sheep and cows, and even a lot of very nice people.

It is a well thought out itinerary. However it is only given to us a week or so before we travel I mean the detailed one. You have already paid and purchased your air ticket so there is no going back. What was concerning were the very early morning flights and time we had to be at reception to hop on the bus. We booked this tour due to our age and mobility issues, the rushing and running around was a bit too much for us, even though we do understand that we covered a lot of places and the drives are quite long. I must however say that the Travel directors we got and for Australia and New Zealand were excellent and very well versed in their explanations of everything we asked for and that made a huge difference to our overall experience. We were only disappointed with one optional tour to the Blue Mountains as it was very full, all we did was hop on to one sky train and hop on the next one and back again, due to the long lines of people and felt that was not worth our while and was a wasted day. We did complain to hoping for a refund but nothing happened. The only other issue was the one day we had to take 2 flights to reach Cairns and that too was given to us so last minute and you honestly do not have a choice but go along as we are all in a large group. So another day was completely wasted in travel, packing and flying. Maybe next time a little better thought looking at the age of the group should be considered. Overall amazing experience and we would surely recommend Trafalgar to our friends for future visits. Hopefully my comment helps in considering the age of the group and make it more friendly or have a detailed itinerary in advance before final payment needs to be made. Thank you Sunita and

The locations were really good, the hotels were really nice. I liked most of the excursions. The food choices for the dinners in Australia were good. All but the final night's dinner choices in New Zealand were not good. The combination of economy flights in country without option for upgrades were uncomfortable. I really enjoyed the tour with the exception of the pace. I came home to rest.