I’m a bit late jumping in here, but we’ve started making arrangements to go over to NZ this year. We had cancelled flights through Emirates from last year that I rolled over to fly SYD-CHC-SYD for this year, but they’ve already cancelled the SYD-CHC flight, so I’m not really sure what to do. We’re also kind of tentatively starting to make plans to just stay in Australia.
I go over with hubby and our two children, so after several trips, we’ve worked out that car hire works out better for us. Last time we flew into Queenstown, then drove up to Christchurch and spent a couple of days there before flying out. We enjoyed the drive, and we’ve worked out that from a cost perspective for 2 adults and 2 children, flying into and out of Christchurch and hiring the car is cheaper than flying directly into Queenstown. You really need to do the maths regarding buses vs car hire for the number of people you have going with you.
We hired through Apex, and were very happy with them. They allow you to pay once you arrive to pick up the car and don’t charge one-way fees. We hired a mid-size 2WD last time, as I made the call to hire a car pretty late in the trip planning process, and all the AWD vehicles were already booked. The staff were very helpful in showing us how to fit the chains, and let us hang around in their office for as long as we wanted to practice fitting the chains to their demo tyre/wheel set-up in the office. It came in handy, as we had to fit chains on several occasions and were able to get it done much more quickly than most other people that were pulled up in the chain fitting bays.
Having the car also means the children can sleep in for a little longer on skiing mornings, and I don’t have to deal with the autistic meltdowns from the younger child that usually go for long enough that we miss our pre-booked bus from the nearest bus stop. Well, the meltdowns still happen, but we just bundle the child into the car and drive off rather than trying to get him to carry his gear down the hill mid-meltdown.
We’ve always stayed at Sherwood, which is about halfway between downtown Queenstown and Frankton. We book a room that has a kitchenette, so we can cook our own meals, but they also have an amazing restaurant on-site if we don’t feel like cooking one night. We like staying out of the downtown area because it’s quieter. There are fees to park cars in the downtown area, so we often catch the bus into town. The buses run something like every 10-15 minutes, and are $2 per trip for adults, and either $1 or $1.50 per trip for kids. We’ve bought a travel card for the buses, and just top it up each trip as needed.
We have used the buses up to the mountain for several trips, and they are quite good. Something to be aware of is that if you wait until the end of the day to get off the mountain, the lines for the buses can be quite long, and it can take ages to get off the mountain. We worked out that it’s better to leave no later than 3pm if you don’t want to get stuck in lines for ages. Waiting in line for up to an hour with whinging kids is no fun.
Been to much white stuff this summer, almost a weekly occurrence
