The city of Napier is Art Deco at its finest!! What a wonderful place to visit. And, the people of Napier are so friendly. We loved our brief stop there and wish we could have had more time to explore and enjoy the beautiful community.

None of our guides has tried to pass any extra information, one of them didn't speak English at all. The whole tour was done in a hurry and we arrived late at ALL attractions. For a tour lasting 13h, 22 minutes of "lunch" didn't seem enough to me. In the end, we still had to pay an "extra" because apparently one of our guides (the fourth of the day) confused us with another couple and we did an "extra tour" without knowing and nobody even asked! She gave us our tickets, we did the tour and we will have to pay MORE MONEY because of her mistake! If you really want to enjoy your day, without headache, choose another company, because this one is a big joke!

I decided to go check the Waitomo Caves and Hobbiton and I couldn't have made better choice. Small group tour, which means you're not sitting in one of those overwhelming buses with 50 passengers, but it's 12 people max. They were punctual, kind, polite and the driver/guide Yang was an absolute legend and made everyone feel comfortable and at ease. The places we visited were superb and I would rate the whole trip 10/10. I'll be in Auckland for a while and will definitely do this tour again.

What a great experience! Headfirst made it extremely easy to travel by yourself especially when you don't know where you are going! Got picked up in an easy location and drop off was the same! Also met really cool people during the trip! Would highly recommend if you are looking for a stress free fun day trip! Thank you Headfirst Travel :)

It was an early start, but we had a lovely drive to Hobbiton (clutching our coffees!). There were just three of us in a spacious car, so it was pretty comfy. Our driver, Mustafa, was a lovely man and made a real effort to make sure we got the full tour guide experience, telling us facts about our surroundings during the drive. He left us at Hobbiton then came back later to collect us from our tour and was totally cool about us having a last minute browse in the gift shop before starting the drive back to Auckland. As an added bonus, on the way back Mustafa also took us to a beautiful look out point and Hunua Falls, even though neither of these were on the itinerary. Would recommend!

I recently took a 2 day tour to Waitomo, Rotorua and Hobbiton with Headfirst and I definitely recommend it! The drivers/guides tell you interesting facts about the beautiful scenery while they take you to your destination. I enjoyed in particular driving with Christine, she is very knowledgeable and funny and she even stopped along the way to show us the Arapuni swing bridge over the Waikato River. On the first day I visited Waitomo and Ruakuri caves, here I walked inside the caves and went through it on a boat to learn all about the rock formation and see the magical glowworms! Arriving in the afternoon in Rotorua, I had time to explore the town especially the lakefront and the Kuirau Park. The next day I visited Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland starting with a stop at the mud pool and the spectacular Lady Knox Geyser eruption, then I had plenty of time to walk around this natural volcanic park and take lots of photos! In the afternoon we headed to Hobbiton for the movie set tour; I have to admit that I didn’t watch the movies or read the book but I still enjoyed my time in this cute fantasy village and the cider at the Green Dragon Inn!

Had a fantastic time on the Waitomo Black Labyrinth and Hobbiton tour from Auckland! Pick up was super punctual and the lovely Emily was a wonderful driver. Hobbiton was by far my highlight and it was all made so easy through Headfirst as everything was taken care of for us. Emily even went out of her way through roadworks to drop other guests off at their hotel when we arrived back in Auckland. 100% recommend!

Before 7am, the driver was arguing with a passenger. In addition, the driver (Yang) has such a THICK accent when he was giving us instructions, I could barely understand him. I grew up in NYC, the city of accents... had to listen intently to understand the gist of what he was saying. He shouldn't have a job in hospitality as he was not hospitable in the slightest. This tour makes stops along the day, if you're not participating in something at all the stops you have to sit and wait for hours until the other people on the tour are done with their part. The website says you get to spend 4hrs are Waitomo but that's not true, the driver said I had to leave with everyone. When I told him what the website said and why he couldn't just pick me up after the other passengers were done at the other nearby cave he said "We all leave together, it doesn't make sense for me to have to come back for 1 passenger, this is how we do it. If you have a problem take it up with my office, I'm just the driver." and turned away. We left Waitomo to the drop off at the next stop which was 5min away, therefore he dropped me off at "their office" where I had to sit for 4hrs waiting for the rest of the group to finish their tour of another cave. The office was 5min from Waitomo, so why I couldn't hang out at Waitomo and he couldn't pick me up I don't know. I had packed all my stuff for the few hours I thought I would get to spend according to their advertising in Waitomo for nothing. The website is misleading, the bus was disgustingly DIRTY and the driver was RUDE. Listen to the other reviews if you value your time, this tour compny doesn't respect your time or your interests.

This was a really well rounded trip. The convenience of everything being handled for you was a huge boon. Everything is taken care of when you reach the destination and you don’t have to stress about anything and can just enjoy. The only thing that was a bit annoying was that the buses don’t have any luggage storage, which seems strange as you are given the option to start in Auckland and end in Rotorua. Ended up having to have my luggage on my lap for the drive from Waitomo to Hobbiton. The second driver I had (switched buses at Hobbiton to go onward to Rotorua) was much more of a tour guide and offered a lot of fun anecdotes about New Zealand and things we passed. Would definitely recommend this trip

If you are planning to take one of the Waitomo Day trip in conjunction with Hobbiton Movie set from Auckland, there are planty of travel agencies offering about almost the same price range and itineraries. Definitely recommend to study carefully before making your reservation. Don’t make the same mistake as I did......booking with Headfirst. I booked a round trip Auckland to Waitomo Glowworm Cave and Hobbiton day tour with Headfirst website, and it was almost my last choice, since most of the big name agencies were full. Every other agencies star their trip around 8am from Auckland, but Headfirst started the trip at 6:15am. It should have been a red flag with this strange starting time, but I didn’t give it a second thought prior to making the reservation since most of the review I had read about this company on Trip Advisor was pretty positive. Sure enough it was a big mistake!!!! The problems are: 1. Transportation: a rental mini-bus, dirty and uncomfortable for a long road trip while most of other agencies were using full size tour bus. 2. Tour guide/bus driver: unprofessional, extremely heavy accent non-English speaking part timer. Absolutely no communication with customers during the whole trip. 3. Itinerary: grouping customers with different itineraries into the same bus, some customers like myself was strended at Waitomo visitor center for over two hours while waiting for other customers finishing their additional cave tour . HeadFirst is the only agency start the trip at 6:15am, all other agencies started theirs around 8am. And there was absolutely no warning or caution note on HeadFirst website. 4. Faust advertising: advertise hotel pickup on website, but actually only pickup and drop off at the assembly point. In conclusion, do a little research and comparison before booking with this agency!

It was great day and a magical experience. I would recommend this tour to everyone who visits Auckland and is interested in the hobbit or the lord of the ring films. We had the best driver ever (Mustafa) who made a lot of fun but also told many interesting facts about Auckland/New Zealand, we did not know yet. He was always friendly and did everything to make us feel comfortable and let us have a great day. He shows many places you have to visit if you are in Auckland and we just had a great time. The tour was magical and very funny because of our tour guides (Courtney) humor. I loved her humor because that made everything very funny but also interesting and she told many facts and things nobody knew about the hobbit/lord of the ring films. All in all we had a fantastic day and I would recommend this tour to everyone. Thank you Mustafa and Courtney, you were the best guides we could have imagined. Cheers, Lisa

This was an incredibly efficient way of seeing two major sites and travel from Auckland to Rotorua all in one day! HeadFirst arranged for a taxi to transport us from our hotel to the early morning pick up point for the tour. We were very impressed by the punctuality of this service. The drive to Waitomo was pleasant and included a short stop about an hour out of Auckland. We did the basic boat ride through the glow worm cave. Note that per the local rules you are not allowed to take pictures once you enter the cave. The tour through the cave was interesting and the boat ride was otherworldly. The other passengers on the tour were participating on longer cave options so we had about two hours to fill. Fortunately, during this down time our driver was headed toward Otorohanga so we asked if he could drop us there so that we could see the Kiwi House. What a great stroke of luck! The Kiwi House and Bird Park is a great stop for about an hour or so. The Bird Park is impressive and you see quite a variety of interesting species. But the highlight was the kiwi enclosures. We spent 30 minutes just watching the kiwi run back and forth. Note that kiwi are nocturnal so you can only see them in darkened enclosures and, again, no photos are allowed to prevent injuring the birds with a flash. The highlight of the day was Hobbiton. Even if you are only marginally familiar with the LOTR films (like my wife) the site is spectacular! It is quite a drive to Hobbiton on rural backroads but the scenery is spectacular. The tour through Hobbiton is thorough and allows plenty of time for pictures. This is really a wothwhile tour. From Hobbiton we changed to a different HeadFirst van for the one hour drive to Rotorua where we were dropped off at our hotel right on time. Everything went very smoothly through the long day and we were able to get from Auckland to Rotorua and see Waitomo and Hobbiton all in the same day which saved us both time and money had we done these as separate events. FYI - We took our luggage with us from Auckland and, while there was some confusion about where to store it on the van, it all worked out. We very much recommend HeadFirst Travel and if you want to see Waitomo and Hobbiton on the way from Auckland to Rotorua then this is an excellent tour to take!

I did Hobbiton and Waitomo from Auckland to Rotorua last week. Everything was absolutely amazing. The driver Yang was super nice; he told us so many interesting facts while driving out of Auckland. We arrived on time in Waitomo and we also had some spare time before starting our adventure in the caves. In Hobbiton Yang made sure that we know what to do and where to go. On the way back, the driver Christine, explained us the territory around Rotorua. I really recommend this tour: you don’t have to worry about anything, the drivers and the guides make sure that everything is perfect! Thank you for the amazing day!

Waitomo is amazing specially if you choose the "wet option". The guides are amazing, they create a friendly environment. Finishing the trip with Hobbiton is great! Everything is well organized. Thank you guys!!

We booked Headfirst for the following shuttle service to Wai-O-Tapu and Waimangu and also the tour to the waitomo and ruakuri caves. Both caves were spectacular . After the caves we arrived to Hobbiton and had a 2 hour tour in the settings of the shire and the green dragon. Simply Awesome . the service was excellent as well as the people of headfirst. They are highly recomended.