Beyond belief.. beautiful ..the shallowest earth 's crust area. See the steam rising from the surrounding town drains and vents. Surrounded by gentle rolling hills lines with thick forest and of course a sheep or two.

I would suggest renting a car and doing this one on your own to allow more flexibility to do what you want to do. We ended up stopping for coffee on the way and waited a half hour while our driver had breakfast. On the way back we had to wait while the guide picked up some people from a hostel.

Beautiful sights, friendly knowledgeable staff would highly recommend

Awesome even though the journey was about 3.5 hours each way.
Commentry helpful and informative. The living Maori Village well worth the journey,allowing us to immerse ourselves in Maori history culture,traditions and unique way of life including a cultural performance,weaving display,hangi food and a ta moke tattoodisplay

Very well informed guides -Gary and David were excellent.We were treated as VIPs throughout.

Un premier chauffeur nous am?ne ? Hobbiton o? 8 personnes descendent on change de chauffeur et on continue ? 4 seulement le premier est ponctuel, enjou? le deuxi?me est plus rigide on a 2 heures pour explorer Rotoruaon ne sait pas trop quoi faire. Il se permet de nous reprocher de ne pas avoir suivi ses recommandations alors qu'on n'avait pas tr?s bien compris ce qu'il disait en anglais nous nous d?brouillons en anglais, pas plus. La deuxi?me partie est plus int?ressante avec les geysers de Te Puia et le lunch hangi des Maoris

Excellent tour. Vic went out of his way to show us some extra scenes and his knowledge of New Zealand was fantastic. We opted to stay in Rotorua and he dropped us to our hotel and assisted with our luggage.

It was indeed an exciting day trip. The amazing green country side and scenery was just unbelievable. Every one traveling with us in our van were as amazed as me and arriving at Rotorua was just another incredible site. Lunch was good and enjoyed the people who had lunch with us as they were coming from different parts of the world, all quite fascinated being in Rotorua and seeing such gorgeous sites like the Blueys thermal pool, enjoying the biggest geyser in the southern hemisphere and the heated mud pools. The icing on the cake at the end of the tour was spending few hours at the Polynesian spa where we relaxed. The only thing I regret was not buying more manuka honey.

When they say Flexi Tours -- it means that you, the customer, have to be flexible, because there's going to be a lot of unknowns as you make your way through your day. We had fun once we got to the locales, but the entire day overall was a bit hectic. We expected to be taken from our pick up location straight to our tour destination, however, we were shuttled to the Hobbiton not part of our itinerary where we met up with others and got onto a different bus with a different tour guide to head to our intended destination. Clive was our tour guide to Te Puia and Rotorua and he was awesome. Very low key and friendly but also had a lot of knowledge, a very positive attitude and genuinely fond of the places we visited. After our encounter with Clive we were told that a 3rd driver was going to pick us up and drop us off at our next activity. No one knew the name of the person coming to pick us up, but eventually someone showed. This 3rd driver of the day took us to a natural spa and advised us to be ready to be picked up by a 4th person at 3:15pm and to be prompt because the bus back to Auckland needed to leave Rotorua at 4pm. The spa was awesome and we made sure to be showered, ready and waiting outside for our 3:15pm pick up.....3:15, 3:20: 3:30...no pick up, no call. I finally got in touch with someone and was told that the driver was on his way. Finally at around 3:45 our 4th driver of the day shows up and apologizes because he was routed to the wrong locale and miscommunication and yada....yada....yada....and oh by the way, I can't take you on the whole tour of the city because we don't have enough time and I need to get you to the bus that's going to take you back to Auckland. So we do a quick drive through of the bay side and small town area before meeting up with our 5th driver. The only reason this is getting 2 stars is because Clive driver 2 was great and the spa experience was great and had we been given just those 2 experiences that we booked without all of the other run around so that Flexi Tours can maximize profits, it would have been a highly rated trip.

Driver Gary was a delight just absolutely exceptional he gave us tips about New Zealand, history tidbits, and drove us through the Prime Minister's hometown, just for kicks. Oh, the Rotorua tour? That was great too! I enjoyed the quick lesson in pronouncing Maori. One thing that wasn't included in the booking was the Haka presentation, so pay for that onsite because it was worth it. I added the hot springs spa to my day trip. While nice, the water is--yep, you guessed it--hot, so it was good for a half hour or so. I suggest that, instead of the hot springs, you do the add-on to see the additional geysers.