Whenever anyone goes to New Zealand they almost always end up at Hobbiton! In fact most of the tourist who go on the tour don't actually know that its a movie set for Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit - a lot of people think its Harry Potter related! So when the opportunity came to go visit Hobbiton I was really intrigued to see if it was worth it!
The movie set is located near Matamata, a small town just 40 min drive from Tauranga. The town itself doesn't have much going on, in fact the only reason people visit is to go to the movie set. The tourist office is even shaped like a Hobit house. It cost $80 (NZD) for a ticket. We bought our tickets from the tourist office and then got on a bus which drove the 20 mins it took to get to the movie set. The scenery there is beautiful! Full of green rolling hills and sheep! Unfortunately you can not tour the set on your own, you have to go with a tour guide.
The tour itself is really not long at all, and the tour guide moves you from place to place pretty quickly as they are often on a tight schedule to get as many people as they can through. But it is honestly a really fun place to visit! I'm not a massive Hobbit/Lord of the Rings fan, but I had watched a few Hobit scenes so knew roughly what I was going to visit. And the movie set did NOT disappoint.
- It's super beautiful: the amazing rolling hills of New Zealand do not disappoint and the movie set has plenty of them!
- Film perception is cool: in order to make the actors who played Hobits look small they used a movie technique called film perception. This meant that some Hobit doors are really small and some are normal size so that camera angles could make it look like the actors look smaller or bigger then they actually were.
- There is beer: at the end of the tour you get to go to the 'green dragon' for a drink. WARNING: make sure you bring your passport because NZ doesn't accept any other form of ID if you're international.
So is it worth the money? In my opinion $80 was a lot for the tour itself. But I did have a great time and I'm super glad I went when I did.
Would I go again? I think Hobbiton is kind of a one trip deal. It's great to do it once, but you don't need to do it again.
Comments