Here’s hoping New Zealand Cabinet agrees to trans-Tasman bubble with Australia https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12...o-trans-tasman-bubble-with-australia/12981258 @climberman and I rolled our deposits over from this year. Woot
Joining in here. I’m about to lock in refundable flights for mid July for a week. Ikon pass gives 5 days between Remarks and Coronet. So looking for accomodation recommendations for 2 in Queenstown, close to bus to the resorts. Bus looks expensive but hire car more so.
Accomodation will be expensive in QT. Demand is there. Hire cars shouldn't be exey though. Especially the middle tier companies.
A quick check for SUV came in at $800 for a week. Many hire car companies have sold fleet due to low demand. Assume AWD is required.
Mid Size SUV Auto Toyota Rav4 4WD / Similar 2015 - 2017 5 Stars Safety Rating View vehicle details $81.00 per day Includes $0.00 Total $486.00 NZD
Plus insurance excess removal. And not all Rav 4s are AWD. Bus works out at around $420 NZD. Still close on cost and easy life. And I’ve been looking at Saturday to Saturday, allowing a rest/weather day. So 7 days.
NZ goes back to school around the 25th July. You wouldn't be booking a trip before then with any assurity of snow.. August Sept is ideal.
I think last season was especially bad.. They didn't open until July 29th. That has stuck in my mind a bit.
As in 2020? FB says they had decent snow early July. In any case it’s lift tickets that won’t get used otherwise, QFF point flights and a weeks holiday in a pretty town. Sounds good to me. It’s not like the only time I’ll ski next season (crossing everything).
Covid 2020 was all abit of a blur...I do remember they had their biggest school hols ever. 100% domestic. Yeah its cause the reason you posted above i'd suggest getting a car. So you could go to Cardies for instance..Or see a bit of the scenary. You don't have to drive up the hill. The remarks has a park and ride at the base. It also means you could stay out of QT just a wee bit. Cuts costs and its not such a head **** busy.
Either. Location is more important. Small kitchen would be good or included breakfast. Just need 2 beds.
Turner heights townhouses have a couple of 1 bedroom apartments with views over the town, a couple of minutes walk to town/bus. Boots in backpack walk. Another that’s same sorta distance is Blue Peaks. I don’t have any experience with the bus. We have just rented a standard car/wagon with chains over the last 20 years, as we have stayed 10-14 days with kids as they grew up and car was best for that scenario.
The other thing worth mentioning about the bus is that I understand there are stops/pick up points along each route to Coronet / Remarks. So you don’t necessarily have to be as close as possible to the central stop, just close to a stop and still within walking distance of town for dinner. We have always seen people waiting for the bus up around the Earnslaw Lodge, Copthorne area, where there are a lot of accommodation options. Again, I don’t have any experience on how good the bus system works, it would be best to contact NZSki guest services to ask some questions. Needless to say the Sofitel would be the best of all accom options for 2 for a week, but you would pay for it I’m sure.
Reality check, you need to get this under control before a bubble happens.https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...ydney-s-northern-beaches-20201217-p56o8h.html. The same thing could happen here so don’t make any premature decisions.
Govt got voted in with an exceptional majority : 50% of those new votes from huggy celebrity/ and half from covid safety so they aint gonna blow votes over holidayers
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.
@Untele-whippet I’m jealous! As much as we’re trying to get back over there, I’m not liking my chances for this year.
