Our 10 Favorite New Zealand Excursions

Few places in the world are as renowned for their dramatic beauty and frenetic activity as the Shaky Isles of New Zealand. Because of this, adventure seekers arrive from all over the globe to hike world class trails and pursue adrenaline pumping thrills. In this article we’re talking about our ten favorite excursions for family adventure in New Zealand.

This list will highlight a variety of visceral activities, some of them unusual, as opposed to simply the best things we did on our vacation. Beautiful hikes, meals, museums, etc., won’t be featured.

If you’re simply looking for the best things to do, after you’ve read about the 10 Best New Zealand Excursions, be sure to check out the 35 Amazing Things to do in New Zealand. This is a comprehensive list of the very best things we saw and experienced during our 39 day adventure in Aotearoa.

We’re gonna list the excursions purely on fun rather than cultural impact, inspirational beauty, or what we think other people would say. Ranking by good times make the most sense to us, cause that’s mostly what we’re doing here.

So here are our ten favorite excursions in New Zealand. As always, blue links go to helpful websites. We hope you enjoy!

1. Second Breakfast Tour @ Hobbiton

One of the most popular excursions in New Zealand is Hobbiton on North Island. Contrary to popular understanding, this is not the Hobbiton created for LOTR, but the one created for The Hobbit trilogy. The LOTR set was built to be temporary and deconstructed / burned down afterwards.

If you choose the 2nd Breakfast Tour — which we recommend — you’ll pay $70 NZD extra, but you’ll be treated to a feast you’ll never forget. Inside the Millhouse, they’ll seat you around a table large enough for 20+ hobbit folk. Here you’ll share a spread of downright delicious foods and drink that’ll stuff you fuller than Samwise at Shony’s. Everything tastes fantastic!

Hobbiton is phenomenal no matter how you tour it, but when coupled with the 2nd Breakfast it makes for an unforgettable morning. This is New Zealand family adventure at its finest.

2. Skyline Gondola and Luge

If measured on pure joy and hilarity, the short amount of time we spent luging down the mountain above Queenstown was the best time we had in all of New Zealand.

We purchased three tickets for each of us and we should have bought double. There’s something about racing people you love at high speeds in mildly dangerous conditions with strangers playing the role of obstacles that makes for classic family hijinks. And when someone wrecks … oh, man. You’ll laugh, but don’t do that if you can help it.

When you come to Queenstown, be sure to take the Skyline Gondola and do the luge! If your family loves fast-paced adventure you will have a blast!

Are you going to be renting a motorhome in New Zealand? If so, be sure to check out our article, 20 Tips for Driving a Motorhome in New Zealand.

3. Black Water Rafting @ Waitomo Glowworm Caves

If you’re looking for an unforgettable experience doing something you’ve never done, try cave rafting under the blue light of glowworms!

We spent three hours in the dark, walking through caves, floating down rivers, jumping off cliffs (backwards!), and crawling through tight spaces. It was an obstacle course for the ages.

The highlight was the silent float beneath the blue light of the famous Waitomo glowworms. What a surreal experience. The kids and I had a blast and we would recommend this to any family with a sense of adventure. Here’s a LINK.

4. Milford Sound Boat Cruise

So here’s the profound beauty we’ve neglected thus far in lieu of cheap thrills. The Milford Sound Cruise is one of the most well-known experiences in the world and an absolute must-do if you’ve come all the way to New Zealand. We chose the Southern Discoveries company.

For two hours we stood atop a ferry boat and marveled at the tallest sheer rock walls to rise straight out of the ocean on God’s green earth. And not only are the rock walls magnificent on their own, but they have the good decency to drape themselves in spectacular waterfalls.

This type of New Zealand excursion falls under the awe-inspired category, and is rivaled only by Mt. Cook National Park for otherworldly beauty.

5. AJ Hackett Bungee in Queenstown

If you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band. And if you’re gonna play in Queenstown, you best get your ass to jump off a bridge.

We chose to leap from the Kawarau Bridge, which is the birthplace of commercial bungee jumping. From downtown Queenstown our family took the AJ Hackett bus about 30 minutes to the site, where we could hang out and watch as long as we needed before getting in line to face our fears.

It was rather epic to stand on a plank and leap toward a turquoise river 140′ below. And most impressive of all was our 15-year-old daughter mustered the gumption herself. Yet the unspoken part of this awesome experience was chatting in line with adventure seekers from all over the world while each of us quietly wet our pants.

If you love to travel, we have something we would like to give you. It is our professionally designed e-book and it is FREE of charge. We think it’s pretty great, and we’re hopeful you’ll like it, too. It’s called, “Cultivating a Lifetime of Travel”. Click HERE. and we’ll send it on over!

6. Hot Water Beach U-Dig Hot Tubs

We can’t say enough about the wild time we had at Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula. You see those three happy souls lounging in the hot tub? That was the second hot tub I dug that day. Why dig two hot tubs, might you ask?

Because not all hot tubs are the same temperature. There’s nothing like digging a tub for twenty minutes to find its an unusable pot of boiling water. Notice there’s nobody in the one next door? Just some gal spooning sand like she’s getting somewhere? That was the other one I dug that day.

Which brings us to the best part: No one knowns what the hell they’re doing here, which is fantastic for people watching! Dig here and it’s too cold. Dig here and its too hot. Every newcomer has to figure it out and they gawk at the folk who’ve already pulled it off and wonder how the $@!% they did it.

Digging a dirt tub in a crowd of bewildered tourists is New Zealand family adventure at it’s absolute finest.

7. Polar Plunges in Mt. Cook, Wanaka, and Hokitika

This might not be for everyone, but in our family we have this crazy little person who likes to sit in freezing cold water. And I do it with her because I’m not gonna let her think she’s tougher than her dad. Because she’s not! … err…

So here she is at Mt. Cook National Park exiting the glacial tarn. Other college-aged young people dipped in the water, some in their underwear, but our daughter sat in the water fully clothed up to her neck for 3 minutes. If you’re wondering, yes, those are icebergs in the water.

Then we jumped into the icy blue river at the Hokitika Gorge, which was the coldest water I’ve ever felt in my life. I had trouble talking in less than a minute as my jaw locked up. And finally we sat in Lake Wanaka for about five minutes, which wasn’t so bad.

If you’ve never done a polar plunge you’ll have a lot of options in New Zealand. It’s great for bragging rights or to save face with your daughter.

Related Article: 5 Best Kept Secrets in New Zealand

8. Able Tasman Boat Cruise & Hike

Abel Tasman National Park is one of the most well-loved places in all of New Zealand, and a boat ride + hike excursion is a fantastic way to experience it. We chose the 8 mile track from Medlands Beach to Anchorage Bay. Originally we had the Awaroa Beach tour, but it was too windy on our day to go.

This hike was exceptionally beautiful and moderately difficult. The water was turquoise all throughout the hike and there were enough interesting stops along the way that the eight miles (which we thought was going to be 5), didn’t bother us at all.

On the way home we were super thirsty, but they didn’t have fresh water on the boat. Or so we thought. Our son found some “fresh water” and filled our water bottle. He excitedly brought it to us…

Wasn’t I surprised when I chugged that extra salty water. Good times!

9. Wellington Chocolate Factory

Wellington Chocolate Factory offers 90 minute classes that teach about the process of making chocolate. Once the class is out of the way the students are turned loose to create three of their own chocolate bars. Classes start at $65 NZD.

Monica and Halea did this one together and they were all smiles afterward. Their choice of ingredients were extra creative, but we gobbled the chocolate anyway.

10. Surfing Lessons @ Mount Maunganui

Because Mount Maunganui is a great place for novice surfers to get their nostrils filled with salt water, we signed up for a small group class with Mount Surf School. They have a high visibility trailer on the side of the road and you don’t need to book ahead of time, so it was perfect.

Halea and I took turns wiping out on choppy waves — the wind was playing games with the surf — and I don’t think I got up a single time. She did, however, catch the first tasty wave of her young life and I think she might be hooked.

If you’re looking for some family friendly adventure in New Zealand, surfing in Mount Maunganui is a great option!

Related Article: 15 Best Surprises in New Zealand

* Tongariro Crossing Alpine Hike

Oh, what might have been! If you didn’t know, when someone passes away on the 12-mile Mordor trail through Tongariro National Park, they shut down the trail for three days. So of course we arrived the day after the hiker died, rest their soul.

In a family first event, we checked into our campsite then checked right back out all within an hour. This gave us two extra days in Mount Maunganui, which is an amazing place to spend a week. However, many more days in our future will be lost when we return to Tongariro National Park to place the One Ring in Mount Doom at long last.

An Honest Conclusion for New Zealand Excursions

If you’re headed to New Zealand for adventure and excursions you are going to have the time of your lives. It is simply unavoidable.

I think this is the shortest honest conclusion ever.

Thank you for stopping by our website! We are the Hoffmann family, a full-time RV family that has split residence in Seattle, Washington and San Antonio, Texas. We have special needs children that we homeschool, and work travel assignments for the Veteran Affairs Hospital. If you would like to learn more about us, check out our Start Here and Biography pages.

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