Advice on Queenstown for a visiting Brit from Brisbane
 

Hi,

I'm thinking about taking a week's holiday from Brisbane to go skiing in NZ. Flight Centre has a deal on to fly into Christchurch get 6 days car rental and accomodation at Rydges Queenstown.

My questions are these:

1. How long do you think it would take to drive from Christchurch to Queenstown?
2. Is Queenstown any good for Skiiing? (We're looking at coming over on 26 June)
3. What else is there to do in/around Queenstown?
4. Any ideas on what Rydges Lakeland Resort is like?

Ta very much

Rob

Re: Advice on Queenstown for a visiting Brit from Brisbane
 

Hi we drove from Christchurch to Twizel to stay then drove to Queenstown. Its a long drive but well worth it for the views. 4/6 hours depending on how fast you drive. If you PM me i will email you some pictures to you. Used to live in CHCH but back in the UK for now. Queens town is beautiful with stunning views. Can't comment on the ski'ing, but there are plenty of flights into Queensland by the way.

Re: Advice on Queenstown for a visiting Brit from Brisbane
 

Great Idea Rob!!
We have just moved to Brisbane after living in Dunedin, NZ for a couple of years, and loved going for weekends of skiing!! Sking there is great, you have a good choice of ski resorts - Cardrona (http://www.cardrona.com/index.html), Treble Cone, Coronet Peak etc... we used to base ourselves in Wanaka (just because it was slightly less touristy and prettier than q'town), and ski at Cardrona - a good place for beginners (me!). The ski season there starts a few days before youre thinking of going, so hopefully it should be okay. They have snow there already, which is promising. Last year was horrendous, with hardly any snow. This years promising to be better!!

It will take you about 6-7 hrs to drive to queenstown from christchurch, but its a lovely drive.
Theres heaps of other stuff to do in queenstown - just check their tourist websites etc for info, great tramping, drives, adrenaline stuff etc.
Rydges is generally good, we took a cheap room there once and werent impressed, but I think we were unlucky and we would give them another chance, so I would say you should be okay. Its a lovely location on the lake, a short walk into the main part of town.

Let us know how you get on!! enjoy!!

Jude

Re: Advice on Queenstown for a visiting Brit from Brisbane
 

The best advice I can give on Queenstown:

1. Always check your change when you pay for things.

2. Always make sure that the advertised price for goods is the one that they charge you.

I have never been to a place so rife with attempted scams on tourists.

Apart from that you should have a good time.

G

Re: Advice on Queenstown for a visiting Brit from Brisbane
 

Gee, you must have been unlucky!! we have never had any problems in the many, many times we went there - found everyone to be really friendly and straight-up.....
sorry to hear you had a bad experience...

Re: Advice on Queenstown for a visiting Brit from Brisbane
 

Thanks one and all, but alas not going to NZ this time around. It seems every man and his dog had the same idea we did and the only tickets we could get were extortionate.

Going to Vietnam instead to take in the Mekong Delta and Cu-Chi tunnels! :D

Ta

Rob