New Zealand Dec. 25 2022 report

[Eastridge]

[Edited to mention Anvil]

This is my report on the Dec. 25, 2022 New Zealand trip. This was an "all ages" trip and was a little different than the adults only trip that @Grifdog22 and @Mathmagicland are describing in their excellent report. This is a new ABD trip and it is long and expensive, so my hope is this report will aid those who are considering this trip and those who have already signed up. Overall this was a spectacular trip and I'm very glad I went, but I will note a few things about the activities to help you decide if you should do or skip some activities. Since @Grifdog22 and @Mathmagicland have already covered many logistical details, I have only a few additional general comments:

• We had 35 guests on this trip.
• Each family had at least one teen, near-teen or young adult in their group.
• I was impressed that almost all the families were experienced veterans. Most had done 6 or more previous ABD trips, and I think two had completed 10+ ABD trips. Another family did many Disney cruises, and another had gone on several A&K trips.
• While I'm not going to mention every little detail, this report will be comprehensive and may be considered to have spoilers. If you want to be surprised, then skip this report.
• This trip is heavy on scenery and a wide range of activities, some of which are unique. If you want more hands-on activities where you create things, look for another ABD trip.
• There are 3 full days worth of travel, but 2.5 of those days are filled with stunning scenery. I think some kids were bored during these stretches, though.
• I think the adults-only version of this trip provides more alcohol, so if that is important to you then choose an adults-only trip
• Food was usually provided via buffets or family style. It felt like I was on a cruise ship. But there were two places where the portions were too small, which I will mention.
• If you go during the Christmas and New Year time period, be aware that some activities and restaurants are closed. It didn't affect our trip much but others have reported issues with their trips (on different dates). Also there are 10-20% surcharges on public holidays.
• Start times were usually reasonable, around 8-9am. There were 1-2 earlier starts.
• Schedule extra time for your return flight connection in Auckland. We had a 2.5 hour layover which I thought would have been plenty. The check in, passport check and security at the international terminal took 2 hours. It was very slow. Combined with having to walk from the domestic to the international terminal, we barely made it to the gate at the scheduled departure time. Fortunately they delayed departure by 30 minutes so we made our connection.
• The weather was excellent during our trip, with one notable exception.
• If you have hay fever or allergies, bring your medication. The different vegetation really triggered our allergies.
• If you are into skydiving or bungy jumping, schedule those activities for Franz Josef or Queenstown
• Anvil sends you the link to provide COVID vaccination documentation only 5 days before the start of the trip. You can and should contact ABD to get the link to provide that information much earlier.

To start with, here are the pins for this trip:

 

[Eastridge]

Guides

Our two guides were Kira (right) and Nettie (left):

The guides are the best part of ABD and we were fortunate to have two excellent guides.

Kira has been with ABD for a long time and many people on this board know her. In the past, she recruited and interviewed ABD guides. She seems to be the main guide for New Zealand this season and she is scheduled to guide the 2023 trips in January to March.

Nettie was our local guide and she is Maori. That provided an extra dimension as she could speak Maori fluently and explain with authority the cultural activities on this trip. I think she is the only local ABD NZ guide who is Maori.

 

[Eastridge]

Health and Safety

The elephant in the room, of course, is COVID. So I must mention how ABD conducted this trip.

ABD recommended that guests wear masks on the transportation and Kira wore a mask on the bus. However, very few people in New Zealand wore masks and hardly any of the guests wore masks, including me.

It felt very similar to a pre-COVID ABD trip, where we ate meals together on long tables, got to know each other, and had meaningful conversations and connections. There is simply no way to avoid exposure to the other guests.

ABD policies state they can remove a guest or guide who tests positive, so I was worried before and during this trip. Fortunately, I don't think anybody got sick. My son and I had hay fever, but nobody forced us to test and people didn't overreact to every sneeze or cough. I tested myself after returning to the US and got negative results.

One family said they went on a different ABD trip post-COVID where ABD forced people to stay within family groups. They felt that was more confining and lost some of the value of the trip.

 

[Eastridge]

Day 1: Kia Ora (Christmas Day)

We landed in Auckland very early Christmas morning. Fortunately we were able to sleep on the flight. Even more fortunately, the Park Hyatt let us into our rooms around 9am! The Park Hyatt was by far the best hotel on this trip.

The light controls took some getting used to. I appreciated the "night light" mode.

The lobby where the ABD group met in the morning:

The Hyatt has a resident dog, named Beau, who was "career changed" while being trained as a seeing eye dog. We never got to see Beau on duty, however.

An external shot of the hotel:

The shower floor was slippery but there was a shower mat in one of the drawers, or you can ask the front desk for one.

 

[Eastridge]

Day 1 activities

Since it was Christmas, virtually nothing was open. The restaurants that were open had expensive holiday menus. So we ended up getting room service since we were able to check in early.

And the only place that was open was the Sky Tower. It was a short walk.

Parts of the floor on the observation deck were see through!​

The only ABD activity was the welcome dinner. Which was the best dinner of the entire trip. They offered wine and hors d'oeuvres. The foods was provided family style. The appetizers included heirloom tomatoes and the main dishes were salmon, turkey and ham. It was too much food, but very good. I don't have many photos of dishes for this and other meals because it was served family style and people dug in quickly.

The dessert course:

Kira and Nettie welcomed us and gave us an overview of the trip. They also asked for patience because New Zealand had only recently opened up and many hotels and tourist facilities had staffing shortages. We did run into that. The Hyatt didn't have the personnel to service our room one night, and we ate in a restaurant at Auckland where the service was very slow.

 

[Eastridge]

Day 2: Auckland

The Hyatt had a nice breakfast offering. You ordered one main dish (omelette, eggs benedict, etc.), a drink like a flat white, and then could get things from the buffet as well.

They also had Marmite. The taste was, um, unusual...

 

[Eastridge]

Day 2: Fish market and cooking school

We started by walking to the fish market. This was small and had a variety of seafood for sale. Originally this trip was supposed to have a chef guide us through the market, where we would buy fish and then cook it at a cooking school on site. But that venue closed during COVID. So instead we took a bus to a different cooking school.

Their salmon looked better than what I can buy at home:

In the cooking school, they showed us how to prepare oyster fritters, potato chips and mince meat pies. There were also cakes that needed frosting and toppings. So we tried to follow the directions with mixed results, but it came out ok and everyone had lunch from what we prepared:

This is what the results were supposed to look like​

Fun sign at the cooking school​

 

[Eastridge]

Day 2: America's Cup boat

Ok, this was the one failure of the entire trip. It's a great idea, but weather and mechanical issues scuttled this activity. New Zealand is known for capturing the America's Cup. We had the opportunity to ride a training boat. It was modified to have a motor so they could propel themselves without sailing.

The Sky Tower was listed as an alternate activity but nobody chose that. There were too many people to go on the America's Cup boat so they offered a second boat that had covered spaces, a toilet and better seating. Turned out that the people who volunteered for that boat chose wisely.

The other boat that the smarter people went on​

It had started raining and by the time we boarded, the rain started coming down fairly hard. The boat offered jackets (which some guests reported were smelly and moldy). There is no cover on the boat and an umbrella doesn't make sense unless you want to do a Mary Poppins impression and try to fly off the boat. We went out into the harbor and a few people got to try turning the cranks:

Then the crew reported that the mechanism that connects the cranks to the outputs that raise the sails and do other tasks was broken. So we couldn't sail. And then we heard thunder. Big, booming thunder.

So we're out in the harbor. All sitting on the top of a boat, holding on with metal handrails and are the tallest thing in our neighborhood. Yeah, the captain took us back into the harbor and aborted the trip. Which was absolutely the correct decision for safety reasons but it made the trip very short and few of us got to try the cranks or steering the helm. The captain did do one "donut" where he turned the ship rapidly and the turning radius was about the length of the ship! Those who got to steer reported that the boat is very nimble, given its size.

We walked back to the Hyatt, absolutely soaked. The additional "on your own" time before dinner gave me a chance to try doing hand laundry in the sink far earlier than I had planned in this trip. It gave us time to shower, change clothes and get ready for the zoo.

 

[Eastridge]

Day 2: Auckland Zoo

We had a private, after hours tour of the section of Auckland Zoo that holds the wildlife native to New Zealand. The zoo is impressive and it was a great experience. And it had stopped raining.

We were greeted by Maori, who performed several dances. Nettie joined in on some of the dances!

There was an eel tank where we had the chance to feed the eels. The safest way to do that was from a distance because they can jump and their bites are painful.

The New Zealand wood pigeon is the biggest pigeon I've seen. I wondered what Manhattan would look like with fleets of pigeons this big:

The kakariki is a rare parakeet that lives only on Antipodes Island. It nests in burrows on the ground and is vulnerable to rats and other predators.

The takahe is an endangered NZ bird:

Dinner was at the Elephant House. The building originally held the elephants but now is a restaurant. Originally ABD planned on using a cafe overlooking the orangutan habitat. But they don't come out at this time of night so ABD changed it to this historic building instead.

The zoo was very nice and I think everyone enjoyed this event.

 

[TravelJunkieHubby]

• Schedule extra time for your return flight connection in Auckland. We had a 2.5 hour layover which I thought would have been plenty. The check in, passport check and security at the international terminal took 2 hours. It was very slow. Combined with having to walk from the domestic to the international terminal, we barely made it to the gate at the scheduled departure time. Fortunately they delayed departure by 30 minutes so we made our connection.

Thanks for sharing this point - we were on the 12/22 trip and thought this would have been a tight connection as well from what we had read about the AKL airport configuration (let alone all the stress of flying nowadays).

We ended up missing the e-bikes and farewell dinner in order to fly back to AKL the night before our trip back to the US. While we have always enjoyed the farewell dinners, for us personally this what definitely less stressful. If anyone chooses to do the same, the Novotel at Auckland airport is a convenient place to stay (across the street from international terminal, 10 min walk or shuttle from domestic terminal).

 

[CaliforniaGirl09]

Great report so far. Looking forward to reading the rest!

 

[sayhello]

Thanks for the detailed report! Especially the info about the Americas Cup activity. We have 40 on our trip in March, so I'm assuming we'll have the same choice.

Did you find that breakfast at the Park Hyatt took a long time if you ordered an entree? I am not a morning person, and sometimes really only have enough time for the buffet. Would there be enough that was not just bakery stuff if I did that?

One family said they went on a different ABD trip post-COVID where ABD forced people to stay within family groups. They felt that was more confining and lost some of the value of the trip.

Just thought I'd mention here that the family "pod" situation was an early days Covid-19 policy after ABD started running trips again post-shutdown. They've discontinued that policy, so none of the trips that I'm aware of still have that requirement. It was one of the reasons I did not schedule an ABD until the end of 2022. As a solo traveler, everyone being in their own pods would have been extremely isolating and definitely would have lessened the value for me.

I thought 2 hours & 55 minutes would be an OK connection time in Auckland, but now I'm not so sure. I don't know that I had any other options for my flight, but I'm definitely going to be nervous!

Looking forward to more of your report!

Sayhello

 

[TravelJunkieHubby]

On the 12/22 adventure we lucked out with the weather and the America's Cup sailing was pretty fun, everyone who wanted to got to try "sailing". For breakfast at the Park Hyatt (and everywhere for that matter) it can take time for some meals to arrive given the staffing challenges.

I also think the culture in NZ, like most other places, isn't as rushed as the US.

We found it typically more peaceful (and less wait) if we arrived right at 7am when the restaurant opened.

 

[Eastridge]

Thanks for sharing this point - we were on the 12/22 trip and thought this would have been a tight connection as well from what we had read about the AKL airport configuration (let alone all the stress of flying nowadays).

About half the security stations were closed. Don't know if that was due to staffing issues, equipment or being close to the holidays (Jan 5). I'll give more details when I cover Day 12.

For the January - March trips, maybe this won't be a problem but I figured it was important to mention. The line was amazingly long and slow, and there was a backup of 20 bags requiring additional security screening when we got through

 

[Eastridge]

Did you find that breakfast at the Park Hyatt took a long time if you ordered an entree? I am not a morning person, and sometimes really only have enough time for the buffet. Would there be enough that was not just bakery stuff if I did that?

The service for breakfast at the Park Hyatt was not slow. They provided the drinks and main item in a reasonable amount of time. I recall the buffet lacked eggs and other hot items since you are expected to order a main item

 

[Hannah nz]

About half the security stations were closed. Don't know if that was due to staffing issues, equipment or being close to the holidays (Jan 5). I'll give more details when I cover Day 12.

For the January - March trips, maybe this won't be a problem but I figured it was important to mention. The line was amazingly long and slow, and there was a backup of 20 bags requiring additional security screening when we got through

The airport is definitely having staff shortages but the summer holidays are the busiest time of year too - https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/in...of-delays-this-summer-with-many-jobs-unfilled

There is a bus between terminals that goes every 15 min but the walk is only 10 mins so not sure which would be quicker.

 

[Eastridge]

I am not a morning person, and sometimes really only have enough time for the buffet.

The time change helps with waking up early. I found myself waking up earlier than normal

 

[Eastridge]

Day 3: Zip me to Waiheke

Day 3 took place on Waiheke island, a short ferry ride from Auckland. We took the public ferry and there was no special section or reserved seating. The ferry trip provides nice views of the harbor.

After arriving at Waiheke, we split into two groups. Our group went to the EcoZip zipline first. There really isn't an alternate activity for this if you don't want to zipline. There are three lines and each has two cables that run in parallel so two people can launch simultaneously. Our group was further broken up into 3 subgroups (I think) so that there weren't too many people for the zipline staff to handle in each group. One person supervised launching while another was at the receiving end, helping you catch a rope and pull yourself in.

This is not a scary zipline experience. It's not high up and the lines aren't that long. It's a good experience for beginners.

Nettie about to launch with me​

After finishing the 3 lines, you must walk a mile uphill back to the starting point. It is covered and you walk through forests and may see wildlife. I think we saw a wood pigeon. You must continue to wear the safety gear during the hike back.

We saw a silver fern, which is a symbol of New Zealand:

 

[Eastridge]

Day 3: Lunch at Mudbrick

Everyone on the tour met at Mudbrick for lunch. This is a very pretty location, popular for weddings. It was crowded. We had a private room for our lunch. The food was excellent but the portions were small. We ran out and I'm not sure everyone had enough to eat.

While this is a winery, ABD did not provide wine with this lunch. I thought that was strange. The adults-only version goes to Stonyridge Winery instead and seems to do a wine tasting experience.

Also, we found only two toilet stalls for the entire restaurant.

View from Mudbrick, looking back towards Auckland​

 

[Eastridge]

Day 3: Touring Waiheke and Oneroa

After lunch, the bus driver took us an tour of the island. We saw various beaches, wineries, and expensive homes.

Little Palm Beach​

Onetangi beach. There was a short stop here so some guests got to take a brief swim in the ocean​

We had less than an hour in the town of Oneroa. It has shopping and a gelato store with long lines.

Dinner is on your own, and I had a reservation in Auckland for 7pm because a Vacationista told me we would return by 6:30pm. However, one group returned at 6pm and the other returned at 7pm. Kira ensured that my family was in the group that returned by 6pm. So check with your guides or make your dinner reservation for a later time.