Thank you to those who filled out the survey from the previous news update regarding the various options to visit the Hobbiton Movie Set. I've since learned some things that have crystalized our options and want to share with you the plans.

I'll share below in detail why we might, but probably not, be able to visit Hobbiton during the cruise and then the plans to visit before the cruise starts.

During the Cruise

To recap, we are currently scheduled to be in Tauranga (the port closest to Hobbiton) for a very short window - 1:30pm until 8:00pm - and that's just too tight to make it from the port out to the tour and back in time. This is because I've been told by multiple sources that with 1:30pm listed as our arrival time, we can't reasonable expect to actually get off the ship and onto a bus until 2:15pm at the earliest, maybe more like 2:30pm once we actually depart the port. And it's at least an hour plus, maybe more like 90 minutes depending on traffic to arrive at Hobbiton from Tauranga.

I will say that I have talked with multiple sources, both within the cruise line, and local New Zealand tour operators and I still do have a good explanation on why we are arriving in Tauranga late in the afternoon after departing Napier the evening before. It shouldn't take us that long to get there. I still hold out hope that our itinerary will be adjusted to arrive earlier - just an hour or two will be enough, as you'll see below.

We are required to be at Hobbiton at least 20 minutes prior to our tour departure time - they will not wait for us. If you're even a minute late, the tour departs without you and there are no refunds.

And the tour is 2.5 hours long, cannot be shortened. So we can't go later and still make it back in time before the ship leaves without us.

When I started looking into this, all the potential public times between 3-4pm were fully booked. But I did find out that the 3:20pm time slot is reserved for private groups, and it was available. So I grabbed it - I have a deposit down for this time slot for up to 48 people for the regular 2.5 hour tour. I will hold onto this deposit for a while to see if our itinerary is adjusted to arrive in Tauranga earlier, buying us the hour or two we need to make it work. But it is probably most likely that we will not be able to visit Hobbiton during the Tauranga port stop.

I had floated the idea of a group of us departing the ship in Napier the day before to give us the time we need on our own to get to Hobbiton and then rejoin the cruise before it departs. Unfortunately the cruise line was not as agreeable to this idea as I was expecting. They will only allow departures from the ship for business or medical reasons. And even if they were to approve this for our group, they would treat this overnight stay as a full departure from the ship and then joining the cruise anew the next day - as new passengers with new bookings, outside my group contract, etc. - a whole mess. A no-go from my perspective.

Pre-Cruise

Taking the cruise line out of the equation gives us a lot more flexibility to make this work. So we can try to visit Hobbiton either before or after the cruise, and it just so happens that I'm running another cruise prior to this one, out of Brisbane, with a three-day gap between the two - the perfect opportunity to jet over to Auckland in the days in-between.

So for those of you with me on both cruises, we would fly from Brisbane to Auckland after getting off the Voyager of the Seas on Thursday afternoon, February 12th. For those not on the Clocktower Cruise, you can just fly direct to Auckland from wherever you are, again please arrive by Thursday, February 12th.

I have reserved the premium "Behind the Scenes" Tour for Friday, February 13th. With travel time to and from Auckland, this will be an all day affair, with a private and premium lunch included.

We will then fly over to Sydney on Saturday, February 14th. It is a three-hour flight, but last I checked the flights were only around $150-200 per person.

We only have room for a maximum of 28 people on this tour and you can get your tickets here. Note that this purchase only includes the actual tour experience itself - I'm still working out the details for transportation from Auckland and don't have pricing on that yet. I will also look into a group hotel in Auckland for Thursday and Friday nights if there's enough interest.

I know this is rather long-winded, and I've probably still forgotten something. Feel free to contact me with any questions, or if the group would benefit from the discussion, there's a dedicated thread for this excursion on our Discord server.

Thanks, Jeff