Queenstown is a small town with an absurd amount to book.
Whether the Milford day is worth thirteen hours on a coach or four in a plane. What the Shotover jet really costs. Which Gibbston cellar you can reach on a bike. Reviews of every tour you can book here.
The flight, the cellar, the jump and the road up the lake.
The four bookings a first week in Queenstown usually hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who booked it say.
01The big oneMilford Sound Fly-Cruise-Fly Tour from QueenstownFly over the Southern Alps, cruise the fiord, fly home. The whole Milford day without the coach.
02The slow dayBoutique Wine Tour – visit Central Otago, 4 Wineries & LunchFour Central Otago wineries and a long lunch, twenty minutes out of town. Somebody else drives.
03The one you talk aboutNevis Bungy – Australasia’s Biggest Bungy!Australasia’s biggest bungy, off a cage strung over the Nevis valley. Book it early in the trip, not late.
04The half day outGlenorchy & Paradise Half-Day Scenic Tour from QueenstownThe road up the lake to Glenorchy and Paradise, red boat shed and all. Back in time for dinner.
Six days Queenstown is really built on.
A fiord four hours south, a canyon full of jet boats, vines an hour east, a gravel road to the head of the lake and a helicopter that lands on snow. Pick the days first, then the hotel.
Most good Queenstown days end up on the lake somehow.
A coal-fired steamer that has been crossing Lake Wakatipu since 1912, a jet boat through the Shotover canyon, and a high-country farm on the far shore you can only reach by boat. Three very different afternoons.
Milford Sound from Queenstown: coach, plane, or one of each.
Every Milford day trip →
Thirteen hours door to door by road, roughly four if you fly, and a small-group van somewhere in between. The cruise on the fiord is the same two hours whichever way you arrive, so the choice is really about how you want to spend the rest of the day.
The coach and cruise day
Out through the Southern Alps, down the Eglinton Valley with stops at the mirror lakes, two hours on the fiord, then the whole thing again backwards. The cheapest way in and the longest day you will have here.
Fly in, cruise, fly out
A light plane over the Alps, a landing at Milford aerodrome, the cruise, then back over the tops. Cancellations are common and a re-book is not always possible, so put this early in the trip.
Mount Cook and Lake Pukaki
North instead of south, past Lindis Pass to a lake the colour of antifreeze and the tallest mountain in the country at the end of it. Less driving than Milford and nobody queues for the view.
The Queenstown days more people book than any others.
Every Queenstown review →The tours that sell out through a southern summer, and what earns each one the slot.
1
Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ & Lake Whakatipu Cruise
Take a 45-minute cruise from Queenstown to Walter Peak on the TSS Earnslaw or Spirit of Queenstown. Enjoy a generous BBQ buffet, lakeside gardens, and a lively sheep-shearing and farm-dog show featuring working dogs such as Echo and Kim.
From · $95
Read our review →2
Milford Sound Coach & Cruise Full-Day Trip
from $144
3
Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown
from $113
4
Small Group, Award Winning Milford Sound Day Experience & Cruise
from $235
5
Milford Sound Fly-Cruise-Fly Tour from Queenstown
from $462
6
Shotover River and Kawarau River Jet Boat Ride
from $89
7
Milford Sound Full-Day Trip by Plane & Boat
from $447
8
Lake Wakatipu Scenic Cruise (90 Minutes)
from $49
In Queenstown a helicopter counts as an ordinary afternoon.
Twenty minutes puts you on a ridge nobody walks to. An hour gets a glacier and a landing in the snow, and the pilot picks the peak on the day, which is why no two of these flights come back with the same photographs.
Glenorchy is forty-five minutes of gravel and a different country.
The road out of Queenstown runs along the water the whole way, past Bennett’s Bluff to a settlement of about four hundred people, a red boat shed everyone photographs, and the braided Dart River behind it. Paradise, the valley the film crews used, is another half hour on.
Every Glenorchy day →
Queenstown sits twenty minutes from the southernmost pinot noir on earth.
Gibbston is a gorge on the road to Cromwell, with a cellar tunnelled into the schist and a cycle trail linking the vineyards, so the tasting can be done on a bike if you want it to be. Bannockburn and Bendigo are further out and warmer, which is where the bigger reds come from.
- 1Boutique Wine Tour – visit Central Otago, 4 Wineries & Lunchfrom $173
- 2Award Winning Premium Wine Tour Queenstown Tasting at 4 Wineriesfrom $164
- 3Afternoon Wine & Beer Tour with Plattersfrom $158
What a day out of Queenstown actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. This is not a cheap town, but the lake does not charge admission and plenty of the best hours here come in under a hundred dollars.
Lake cruises, the ice bar, a bike on the Queenstown Trail and the shorter jet-boat runs.
The full-day standards: Milford by road, Central Otago wine, canyoning, rafting and the Nevis.
Milford by plane, glacier helicopters and the private days that earn it.
Three things that only happen in Queenstown.
Adventure towns are two a penny. A bridge where commercial bungy was invented, a coal-fired steamer still working its shift, and a valley the whole world recognises without ever having been are not.
The Kawarau bridge, and the Nevis
A. J. Hackett and Henry van Asch opened the world’s first commercial bungy operation off the old Kawarau suspension bridge in 1988, forty-three metres above a green river. The Nevis came later and is the serious one: a cage winched out over a valley on a wire, a hundred and thirty-four metres of free fall, and a shuttle ride to get there that already feels like part of the jump.
- 1Nevis Canyon Swing – 70m Free-Fall!★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 90 reviews
- 2Nevis Bungy – Australasia’s Biggest Bungy!★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 56 reviews
- 3Nevis Bungy & Swing Combo★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 9 reviews
The TSS Earnslaw
The Earnslaw was launched in 1912 and has been crossing Lake Wakatipu ever since, hauling sheep and mail long before it hauled anybody with a camera. It is still coal-fired and still hand-stoked, and you can stand at the rail above the engine room and watch it happen. The crossing to Walter Peak takes about forty minutes each way, which is exactly the right amount of time.
- 1Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ & Lake Whakatipu Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,713 reviews
- 2TSS Earnslaw Cruise of Lake Whakatipu★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,255 reviews
- 3Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ Lunch & Queenstown Lake Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,196 reviews
The valleys the films borrowed
Paradise, past Glenorchy at the head of the lake, stood in for Lothlórien and for Isengard. Twelve Mile Delta, on the Glenorchy road, became Ithilien. The Kawarau gorge out towards Gibbston is where the Pillars of the Kings were dropped in. None of it is signposted, which is why the tours exist.
- 1Lord of the Rings Scenic Half Day Tour from Queenstown★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,285 reviews
- 2Lord Of The Rings Tour to Glenorchy★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 432 reviews
- 34WD Lord Of the Rings Tour Half-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 314 reviews
Four Queenstown bookings that will not wait.
Most of this town can be sorted over breakfast for the same afternoon. These four run on timetables, one-of-a-kind hardware and weather that does not care when your flight lands.
- 01Nevis Bungy – Australasia’s Biggest Bungy!One cage on one wire, reached by a shuttle that runs to a fixed timetable. Summer slots go weeks out.
- 02TSS Earnslaw Cruise of Lake WhakatipuThere is one steamer and there is no second one. It sails to a published timetable and the dinner crossings go first.
- 03Milford Sound Coach & Cruise Full-Day TripThe good departures leave Queenstown before seven and fill first. What is left gets you back into town after dark.
- 04NZONE Skydive QueenstownJumps run on the weather, not the calendar. Book the first day you are here so a scrub still has somewhere to go.
Queenstown weather cancels flights, not holidays.
Low cloud grounds the helicopters and the Milford planes at short notice, and you usually find out the night before. The lake boats still sail, the jet boats still run, the Gibbston cellars do not care what the sky is doing, and the ice bar is the same temperature either way. Keep one of these in reserve.
By how far you are willing to drive
Four days in Queenstown, and what to book on each.
Weather dayThe newest Queenstown reviews.
Keep going through the catalogue →
Queenstown to Christchurch One Way Tour Via Lake Tekapo & Mt Cook
Read our review →
Lake Dunstan Cycleway Bike Rental And Return Shuttle
Read our review →
Mount Cook Full-Day Tour: Queenstown to Christchurch
Read our review →
AuthenticAs Star Gazing -Nightscape Portrait Photography Tour
Read our review →
Full Day Queenstown & Southern Lakes Private Photography Tour
Read our review →
Photography Tour from Queenstown to Glenorchy – 1/2 Day
Read our review →
Mustang V8 U-Drive – Highlands Motorsport and Tourism Park
Read our review →
