This was supposed to be one of the highlights of our visit to New Zealand and ended up being the only disappointment.

This was supposed to be one of the highlights of our visit to New Zealand and ended up being the only disappointment. The 9pm tour was full, so took the 11pm tour which was supposed to be a smaller group. If two busloads is small I would hate to see a large group. When we arrived, our guide led us up to the first point of the tour, but did not wait until we were all gathered to start the tour. We were in a long line, 30 plus people, going from the parking lot up the walkway to the first gathering spot and the guide is talking the whole way. We no idea what he was talking about. Once we all assembled, we did get a informative short star tour before we were lead into one of the observatories. In the observatory we were able to see a nebula through a telescope that normally is mounted with a camera...this was a bonus. The problem was we had 30 plus people packed into a small observatory in the dark. Being that many people in the dark it was very difficult to organize who had the next turn to look through the telescope...this wasted a lot of time. This was also the odd time for the operators to bring in hot chocolate...nice gesture, but we are cramped, in the dark...now hand us hot liquids? Once we left the observatory we could see the bank of clouds I noticed when we arrived was almost over us, but they seemed to be surprised. This is their careers and home turf, how could they be surprised. At home I can have a darn good idea what will happen in the next 2 hours....especially with the available weather data they have. I know New Zealand weather is difficult to predict, but they are sitting on top of the mountain and could see the clouds moving in before we arrived. The rest of the tour consisted of sitting in their cafe watching a slide show of photos some of their astrophotographer's shot. I unfortunately considered this tour to be a waste of money.

Reviewed over 11 years ago