Australia, New Zealand Travel Review: Great Barrier Reef, Te Anau Glowworm Caves, Milford Sound, Port Douglas, Auckland

Opportunities for improvement:

Everything in the app needed to be validated. We had two incorrect phone numbers (the GBR snorkel trip provider and Melbourne transport provider) that we know of. The reservation at the hotel in Queenstown was in someone else’s name. A line item breakdown of prices would have helped us with making decisions (eg, the transfers were expensive and we would have used Ubers). The hotel room descriptions should have been identical to the hotel websites so we knew what we had paid for. This would have helped at the hotel desks as we checked in.

Some vendors need to be reconsidered:

The tour in Daintree did not deliver what was stated – no boomerang, spearfishing, or crab hunting. Most serious: they had us do part of the rainforest walk by ourselves (a 1.5+ km loop) while they sat with umbrellas (it was pouring with rain) on a bench waiting for us. We thought we were getting a guided rainforest tour. They explained they had done it yesterday, like that mattered to us.

The hotel in Melbourne – Rhonda was placed in a tiny room (smaller than ours) without a safe, tissues, and other amenities. We are not sure why she got this, but they did move her (the first in a row of three hotel issues for Rhonda).

The resort in Wanaka – they “upgraded” two of us to a large room (David and Debbie) and a small, adjoining front room overlooking the parking lot where Rhonda was disturbed by construction noise (the second of three hotel issues for her).

The hotel in Queenstown – we were placed in a two-room suite (not what was shown in the app). The bedrooms were small, but David and Debbie had a lake view when their door was open and they looked across the dining room. Rhonda’s room was down the hall with no view and no TV (the third hotel issue for Rhonda).

We expected identical rooms, which is what the app description showed. For some reason, Rhonda’s rooms were sub-par. She was not paying a lesser price, nor was she the “child”.