Planning our NZ trip – Part 01

So we have started planning our New Zealand holiday already, even though it is still about a year away. We were planning on going through the June/July school holidays, however the rugby tour is on during that time, and the prices have literally tripled during that time.

So we have decided that it would be better to take the kids out of school for that time and allow them to do some catch up work over the holidays instead. We have priced a 6 Berth motorhome for the 21 days over the holidays and the cheapest we could find available was going to set us back a little over $8,000. Going 2 weeks after the school holidays, the price comes down to about $1200 for the same vehicle.

Flights were the same, we were going to have to pay almost $3300 for flights during the holidays and now we are looking closer to $1600. Both Belinda and I weren’t keen to have the kids out of school, but when it means the difference between going and not going, we didn’t think that a few weeks off school for a trip that we will possibly only be able to afford to do once, was such a bad thing.

We have started showing the kids some of the activities and places to visit in New Zealand and they are getting really excited about the trip. We are planning on visiting the Dunedin chocolate factory and the Queenstown Luge rides. We have been told that the Zoo in Christchurch is really great for families and worth a visit. We have seen there is a Kids Ice Bar in Queenstown that looks like fun. Everything is made from ice including the cups. The adults can even get a vodka based cocktail and the kids get a juice based mocktail.

Planning a trip is so much fun however sometimes I wish we could just tell the kids to pack up and lets go today. I’ve made a countdown timer for the kids, along with a pocket money scheduler so they can see their savings progress and countdown the number of days…to the second 🙂

I found this Kiwi Bird Dot-to-Dot that we have given the kids and they have started hanging them in there rooms.