Hobbiton cancellation

[Womble99]

Hmm I received a notice from Princess today that they have to cancel our excursion to the Hobbiton Movie set from Tauranga in Jan for 'Operational' reasons.

Pretty vague excuse. What is odd is that Hobbiton still has all the booking slots still reserved for the cruise line with a handful of vacancies dotted in between for the public.

 

Wonder what they need the extra bookings for?

[Aus Traveller]

11 minutes ago, Womble99 said:

Hmm I received a notice from Princess today that they have to cancel our excursion to the Hobbiton Movie set from Tauranga in Jan for 'Operational' reasons.

Pretty vague excuse. What is odd is that Hobbiton still has all the booking slots still reserved for the cruise line with a handful of vacancies dotted in between for the public.

 

Wonder what they need the extra bookings for?

'Operational reasons' could be a lack of buses to take passengers to the Hobbiton site - just speculating. If the time in port had been cut too short to allow the trip, passengers would have been advised of this. Maybe you could see if you can book this trip with an independent tour operator.

[Yaya_in_Oz]

This happened to me in Nov. I was booked for 8am and the booking just disappeared one day. I rang them and after quite a discussion we got down to the "operational" reasons and she agreed to put me on a waitlist. She told me the 8am was cancelled even though it was still showing on the website. I left it at that and expected to be doing something else.

 

When I boarded I found I'd been put on the noon bus for the tour. Great. I attended the Port lectures and Sue who was presenting said they usually have 6 buses going to Hobbiton and now only 3. This was also mentioned by the guide showing us around the movie set. It was busy at Hobbiton, it would be crowded with twice the number of people! Oddly enough the 8am tour still went ahead so perhaps I was bumped off as people who were on a later tour had signed up before me. I knew it would be popular so I signed up early.

 

Its a great day out, so I hope you get to go there. Of course, I bought a souvenir 'Hobbit Hole'

 

 

[Aus Traveller]

Is it possible that the owners of the Hobbiton site have limited the number of people who can visit at any one time?

 

After Yaya's comment, maybe check if Princess has tours departing at times other than the one you booked.

[Womble99]

5 minutes ago, Aus Traveller said:

After Yaya's comment, maybe check if Princess has tours departing at times other than the one you booked.

 

Yeah i was thinking along those lines as well. Funny thing is though when I check the personaliser i can see availability for both the morning and afternoon session still being advertised????

 

Think we will just leave it and see what actually happens

[NumnuT_OZ]

Yep - same for us on Dec 23 Ovation of the seas NZ cruise...

 

sucks!

[Aus Traveller]

30 minutes ago, Womble99 said:

 

Yeah i was thinking along those lines as well. Funny thing is though when I check the personaliser i can see availability for both the morning and afternoon session still being advertised????

 

Think we will just leave it and see what actually happens

As your booking has been cancelled and the Personalizer still shows availability, why not book again?

[Flash harriet]

Hee Hee…not laughing at your predicament, but I think it is so cute that someone with a username Womble99 is asking about Hobbiton…..

[Womble99]

2 hours ago, Flash harriet said:

Hee Hee…not laughing at your predicament, but I think it is so cute that someone with a username Womble99 is asking about Hobbiton…..

Kind of like visiting my third cousins 😃

[Thunderbird19]

Maybe check some of the local tour companies out of Tauranga that offer Hobbiton tours?

 

[Port Power]

Tauranga Tourism has a great big marquee at the dock where everyone who has booked directly with their registered people meet up and depart. Guaranteed to return on time.  Smaller groups.  Absolutely much better than using the cruise lines with their inflated prices.  They have a range of other tours as well.

[NSWP]

12 hours ago, Port Power said:

Tauranga Tourism has a great big marquee at the dock where everyone who has booked directly with their registered people meet up and depart. Guaranteed to return on time.  Smaller groups.  Absolutely much better than using the cruise lines with their inflated prices.  They have a range of other tours as well.

Perhaps The cruiseline  books out the entire Hobbiton complex, thus shutting out other tourists an tour operators.

What is the capacity of Hobbiton?

Edited December 18, 2022 by NSWP

[Aussieflyer]

Along the same lines, Princess cancelled ships tours of Port Arthur for a recent cruise I was on - again citing operational reasons. Wondered if it was lack of guides or some decision by Port Arthur itself not to provide ship tours.

[Aus Traveller]

4 minutes ago, Aussieflyer said:

Along the same lines, Princess cancelled ships tours of Port Arthur for a recent cruise I was on - again citing operational reasons. Wondered if it was lack of guides or some decision by Port Arthur itself not to provide ship tours.

Were you still able to visit Port Arthur?

[NSWP]

17 minutes ago, Aussieflyer said:

Along the same lines, Princess cancelled ships tours of Port Arthur for a recent cruise I was on - again citing operational reasons. Wondered if it was lack of guides or some decision by Port Arthur itself not to provide ship tours.

Perhaps they did not want Covid people on site.

[Aussieflyer]

4 minutes ago, NSWP said:

Perhaps they did not want Covid people on site.

Considering Princess as a cruise line had had a number of covid cases on board in the lead up, maybe you are right though it was well over a month before the cruise that the cancellation was announced.

[Aus Traveller]

57 minutes ago, Aussieflyer said:

Considering Princess as a cruise line had had a number of covid cases on board in the lead up, maybe you are right though it was well over a month before the cruise that the cancellation was announced.

Was your visit to Port Arthur cancelled or was it Princess tours only that were cancelled?

[Port Power]

3 hours ago, NSWP said:

Perhaps The cruiseline  books out the entire Hobbiton complex, thus shutting out other tourists an tour operators.

What is the capacity of Hobbiton?

No, that definitely does not happen.  Local tourism ways has access.

 

 

[Aussieflyer]

4 hours ago, Aus Traveller said:

Was your visit to Port Arthur cancelled or was it Princess tours only that were cancelled?

As it turned out we couldn't tender in. to Port Arthur as it was too rough but the cancellation I wrote about was the Princess Shore ex ones (there were about 4) and after I got the email about the cancellation of the one we had booked, I checked the Princess site and all the excursions to the site itself were missing. We ended up up booking something different but missed it anyway (and strangely received a cheque in the mail this week as refund).

Edited December 18, 2022 by Aussieflyer

[Aus Traveller]

1 minute ago, Aussieflyer said:

As it turned out we couldn't tender in. to Port Arthur as it was too rough but the cancellation I wrote about was the Princess Shore ex ones (there were about 4) and after I got the email about the cancellation of the one we had booked, I checked the Princess site and all the excursions to the site itself were missing. We ended up up booking something different but missed it anyway (and strangely received a cheque in the mail this week as refund).

On cruises that go to Port Arthur, passengers disembark the tenders in the Port Arthur site. Of course, this can only happen if the tenders can safely operate and this isn't known until shortly before the port stop. Passengers can wander around or go on escorted tours. I wonder if the Princess excursions on your cruise (and on ours next January) were cancelled because of difficulties in getting buses to operate tours to areas away from the historic Port Arthur site.