Travel
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
WDYT of this deal to NZ?
http://www.airnewzealand.com/new-zealand-on-sale
Found it on travelzoo. Would go later when it costs a little more to have nicer weather. NZ hasn't been on my radar recently but always on our must-see list so I am not overly familiar with costs and sights to see. WDYT?
Re: WDYT of this deal to NZ?
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I am not sure what the current airfare rates are to NZ, but assuming there are two of you at the lower cost times, $5K doesn't sound too bad. However, I think you could potentially do better on your own for 10 nights. I also think there are a lot more interesting places to see in NZ than those included in the tour. Queenstown was fun, but definitely not my favorite spot in NZ, and while Auckland was a cool city, it is still just a city and not terribly exciting from a tourist standpoint unless you're really into sailing (I haven't been to Rotorua).
To give you an idea, we probably spent $6-7K for our three-week trip, not including airfare (we used miles). This also included all of our meals, activities, souvenirs, etc., as well as three days in Sydney (which was $$$), an overnight cruise in Doubtful Sound, and some other pricy excursions. We did, however, get private, en suite rooms in hostels instead of staying at hotels, which helped lower the cost for us.
Baby248 - ETA 1/10/13
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For that amount of money (and distance traveled), I would look do a little more and make sure you are seeing the places you'd want to see in NZ. We went to 10-11 different towns/areas, and I still feel like we missed a lot!
I don't know if you saw the post from earlier this week re. NZ, but it has a link to my trip review and another Nestie's blog. Those might be helpful in getting a sense of the places you would (or wouldn't) want to visit.
http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/64582558.aspx
Baby248 - ETA 1/10/13
What about this one?
http://www.groupon.com/deals/ga-m-down-under-endeavours?c=all&p=20
You should be able to get flights close to $1000 each from the West Coast. We pay between $900-1300 at various times of the year that aren't xmas.
Personally while I would include Rotorua and Queenstown, they wouldn't be the only places I'd go. And I know this is a terribly unpopular opinion, but big young first world cities are big young first world cities. Auckland isn't terribly different from Sydney or San Francisco or Vancouver. While black water rafting or the Milford sound or Kaikoura are uniquely NZ.
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If you want to keep NZ on your radar and haven't already done so, sign up for the Air NZ emails. We were able to snag a cyber Monday deal and got $300 off our tickets (each). I never would have known without their email and it was good for airfare during the high season.
We're flying from Chicago to Christchurch in a month (yay!) and paid about $1,300 each for the flights. I've been tracking it since then and it hasn't even come close to this amount.
Also, we're spending about $150 USD a night for lodging. We could have done it for much less but decided to splurge. As a disclaimer, it is the off season.
Finally, look into the GrabOne deals. It's the NZ version of Groupon.