Luxury Travel Review: Australia & New Zealand 3-Week Tour, Sydney, Blue Mountains, Queensland, Christchurch, Auckland, Snorkeling

This travel company was not up to Zicasso’s usual companies, but it was the first time we used a non in-country company. Several things that were on the itinerary did not occur as stated. For example, after our sailing trip around the Sydney Harbor, we were to be transported back to our hotel. Neither the sailing company nor the day tour company said it was their responsibility. The sailing captain got us to a spot closer to the hotel than he normally would have used, but it was still many blocks away. Our trip was to be small group tours, but our tour to the Blue Mountains was a large bus tour. After, we complained, our travel planner did adjust the size of our tours. However, that day we literally sat on a bus all day just to get lunch. It was pouring rain, so none of the lookouts, tours, etc. could happen. Our travel planner can’t control the weather, but they could have changed the tour. They didn’t because they had to drop off and pick up passengers in the Blue Mountains. They actually left us in a village for a half hour, because they had to drop a passenger off elsewhere.
Both in Australia and New Zealand, we spent many hours waiting as they picked and dropped off people from many hotels. We were asked to be 15 minutes early for our pick ups, but many times the tour didn’t pick us up until 45 minutes after the scheduled time because they were picking up other passengers. The same thing occurred at the end of the day. We spent an hour on a van in Auckland while the tour tried to pick people up from a cruise ship for a tour. We should not have been scheduled for a tour with people from a cruise ship.
We were surprised when we flew with Air New Zealand that our luggage was not paid for with the ticket. We were to be refunded for our baggage costs, but that has not occurred yet. We each had one checked bag and one carry on bag. We were told that we could only do carry on to Kangaroo Island, which we planned on. We were able to leave our luggage at the airport hotel where we would stay at on our flight back. That was not offered as an option by the travel company, but we asked the hotel and they said certainly.
The itinerary itself was very confusing to read. Our travel planner should reconsider the formatting of their itineraries.