Our Azamara New Zealand and Australia cruise
We are a group of 5 booked in 3 rooms on the Azamara Journey for a cruise from Auckland to a Sydney. My wife and I have cruised with Azamara twice before, most recently a few months ago on Quest from Barcelona to Lisbon. The other 3 are new to Azamara and have been impressed. We've already booked our next Azamara cruise together.
We started in Auckland. We arrived a couple of days early in order to enjoy Auckland before the cruise. We all flew from different places. As it turned out, 2 of our 3 different itineraries were changed the day before travel, but it all worked out.
Here are a couple of hints for the Auckland airport. If you want NZ currency (which you absolutely don't need) find a bank ATM, available once you clear customs. Avoid the high fee non-bank ATMs. Every place we went took credit cards, even little booths selling souvenirs. We ended up looking for how to spend our cash at our last NZ ports. I advise Uber from the airport. Once through customs, take the door as far to the left as you can to get to rideshare pickup.
We stayed at a hotel called M Social in Auckland. It's directly across from the cruise terminal and the ferry terminal and is easily walkable with luggage. The rooms were nice and were clean, if a bit small, and we had an amazing harbor view. We didn't care for the restaurant menu, but there are dozens of waterfront restaurants in the harbor area.
We booked a tour on Waiheke Island for one day in Auckland and I highly advise this. We booked with Ananda tours. We took an early ferry and walked into town for shopping and sites before the tour. Our guide, Janis, was fantastic. He took us to 2 wineries with lunch at the second. We had a nice driving tour of the island and finished up at a gin distillery with amazing views. I highly recommend their tours!
Our other free day we enjoyed wandering around the harbor area. We had dinner at Orbit, the rotating restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower. It was nice and with amazing views. Don't bother booking the observation deck tickets, as the views are the same.
Boarding was painless. Luggage was collected on the wharf. Our rooms were ready about an hour after we boarded.
As far as Azamara, there are plenty of reviews. New for us, they let us upgrade our Premium drink package to Ultimate for $8 a day. On Quest a few months prior, we were told no upgrades, you would have to purchase the Ultimate package at list price, which isn't worth it if you already have Premium. The Ultimate is mainly beneficial for the wines by the glass, which are not great, but a definite improvement over the really bad Azamara house wines. The house cab was actually new and a little better than on Quest, but still not good. That said, prices on the wine list are reasonable if you want something good. The internet varied from pretty good to not working at all. The crew is amazing! I actually think the Journey crew beats the Quest crew, with the exception of Mark at the pool bar on Quest, who is fantastic.
Our first port was Bay of Islands/Russell. This port was our only port with tenders. We booked an Opua forest walk and glow worms cave tour with Mullarkey Tours through Viator. The tour was very good and they dropped us at the ferry to Russell where we had lunch reservations at the Duke of Marlborough (very nice), then explored the town a bit before returning taking the ferry back to the ship tenders.
Our next stop was Tauranga. We decided to visit Hobbiton to see the Shire from the Hobbit movies. Really fun to see, even for those who weren't into Loud of the Rings. We booked transfers through Viator with Adventure and Cultural Tours Bay of Plenty. The Hobbiton tickets are purchased separately, but the transfer company will guide you. The transfers also included a few scenic stops, and our guide, Amanda, took great care to see that everyone was where they needed to be. There were about 15 people on our transfers. Of note, the New Zealand ports are all working ports and require picture ID and cruise card to enter.
Napier was our next port. This and the remaining NZ ports were only accessible by shuttle bus, so be sure to allow time for the shuttle transfers. Unfortunately, the shuttle service often would end up to 2 hours prior to departure. It was never a problem for us, but it could limit your port time. In Napier we took our only ship purchased excursion (we had excursion credits to use). We did a Hawkes Bay winery tour. There were about 40 people, and while we preferred our private and small group tours, it was quite nice.
Wellington came next. This was our only port without a planned excursion and that worked out fine. We took the port shuttle into town. From there, we took the cable car up then walked down through the beautiful botanical gardens. Later that evening we had our Azamazing evening event which, as always, was wonderful.
Nelson came next and we had our favorite excursion here. We booked a private boat charter to the Abel Tasman park and had an amazing day. We booked with Abel Tasman Charters through Viator. Our captain/guide Tim was wonderful and the area is spectacular. It was about an hour drive from the port to the charter, but the charter company arranged transfers for us.
For our next stop, Picton, we booked a private Marlborough wine tour with Marlborough Wine Tours. Our driver guide Keith took us to some great places and we had a very enjoyable day.
Next up was Christchurch. Here we booked a Tours By Locals tour. Our guide, Scotty Bamford, went out of his way to make sure that we saw everything that we wanted to see. Instead of taking the gondola up, he took us on a scenic drive up the mountain with several stops to take in the views. Ultimately this was much better than the gondola (and the lines) would have been.
When we returned to the ship that evening we were informed that our planned overnight port stop in Hobart Tasmania was canceled due to a cyclone in the area and instead we would spend 2 days in Sydney before going to Eden and then back to Sydney to disembark. We had booked Hobart tours with Tassie Tours and they were quick to refund our tours when the stop was canceled.
Our next stop was Dunedin. We booked a private tour through Viator with Dunedin Nature and City Tours. We had a little bit of an issue with Azamara in that the shuttle from the port of Chalmers to town had been full and left early with the next one not due to leave for 30 minutes. This which would have put us late for our tour. We ended up taking the only 2 taxis to town (about $50 US each). We met our guide, Chris, in town. He was fantastic. He shared amazing history and took us to some out of the way places we would have never seen. At the “castle” he was such a good guide that others were stopping to listen in. The castle is interesting, but the gardens are amazing. After the tour, he took us directly back to Chalmers so that we didn't have to deal with the port shuttle, which was ending early anyway.
Our next day we were scheduled to cruise Milford Sound, which we did, as well as 2 other sounds (fjords really). The weather cleared in Milford and we had spectacular views.
Next up we had a couple of sea days to relax, then on to Sydney. Australia requires a face to face customs and immigration check at your first port, so everyone was required to disembark and we couldn't get back on the ship until this was complete. We were docked at White Bay cruise terminal which is accessible to nothing. We took an Uber into town and our driver turned out to be a great guide, taking us on an extra scenic route with recommendations at no charge. We spent the first day wandering on our own, which after all of our tours, was nice.
For our second day in Sydney, we booked a Private Blue Ridge Mountain Tour with Wildlife and River Cruise through Viator. The vehicle was nice and our driver took us to all of the planned sites and got us set up with the included entry tickets, but otherwise didn't say much. The tour included the Featherdale Wildlife Park, which we loved as well as the Scenic World gondolas and railroad. We elected not to do the included river cruise (really a ferry ride) and our driver took us back to our cruise terminal instead.
Next up we went to Eden, a small town with really nice people, but not much to do on your own. We took a 2 hour Highlights of Eden small group tour, again through Viator, which was very nice. Our driver guide, Kerri, also dropped us by a golf course to see kangaroos in their “natural” setting.
We're now heading back to Sydney where we will disembark. We've got an Opera House tour booked. From there, we'll be heading onto a few more sites in Australia, but as that isn't really cruise related I'll stop here.
I hope that some of this is helpful!
