Best Lord of the Rings Tours & Hikes in New Zealand

For any Lord of the Rings fan, a trip to New Zealand is likely at the top of your bucket list. Here we’ve put together our Lord of the Rings New Zealand guide to the best tours, hikes & filming locations on both islands.

Especially when traveling in New Zealand summer (North America winter) it’s very important to book your activities and tours well in advance. To help you out, we’re putting our top Lord of the Rings-focused New Zealand tours, hikes, filming locations, and booking tips + prices all in one place!

Getting to New Zealand

Before you can set off on your adventure, you’ve got to get to Middle Earth! We saved up points on our Capital One Venture X and, once we found our desired flight availability, transferred these points to Air Canada’s Aeroplan to book United Polaris business class from San Francisco to Auckland.

We set up miles deal alerts on seats.aero and ended up being able to book our business class flight to New Zealand 4 months prior (in September 2023) and our return flight 1 month prior (in late December 2023). Patience was key!

For more info on using points and miles, see our resources here.

North Island

Hobbiton

Seeing the Shire is probably the first thing that came to mind when you started considering a trip to New Zealand – we know it was for us!

We booked our Hobbiton tour a year in advance; this books up fast in the summer months, particularly in December and January. For 2 tour tickets (this did not include a meal) our total was around $135 USD in January 2023. 

Lord of the Rings Filming Locations Tour (Wellington)

This was probably our favorite activity in New Zealand. The full day Lord of the Rings Tour from Wellington, operated by Capital Personalised Tours, included an amazing tour guide (shout out to Robbie!) who drove us to LOTR filming locations, took us for a delicious lunch and provided us access to Weta Workshop – the studios who created props for LOTR and other famous fantasy franchises. This was an incredible day. We booked this tour 7 months in advance and paid a total of $350 USD for the two of us in April 2023.

Hike to Mordor (Tongariro Alpine Crossing)

This is the famous (or maybe infamous!) 12 miles to Mordor hike. Because this hike is one way, and not a loop or a feasible out-and-back, you either need to book a guided hike (which we recommend if you have any hesitation about your ability to complete the hike) or book a parking spot and shuttle bus.

If you choose to do the hike on your own, you have the option of either parking at the beginning of the hike (Mangatepopo) and shuttling from the end back to your car, or parking at the end of the hike (Ketetahi) and shuttling from the parking lot to the beginning of the hike. We recommend the latter, as at the end of your journey, you’re unlikely to want to have to wait for a shuttle and sit amidst other exhausted (and stinky!) hikers.

A month before our trip, we booked our parking spot and shuttle with Tongariro Crossing Car Park and Shuttle for a 7AM shuttle departure. We felt this was a great time to begin – there weren’t too many other hikers arriving at the same time and we completed our hike with more than enough daylight left. For the 2 of us, our total was $67 USD in December 2023.

South Island

Lord of the Rings Filming Locations Tour (Queenstown)

This half day tour began with a pickup at our hotel and included some off-roading, panning for gold, and a drive to Skippers Canyon – one of New Zealand’s most dangerous roads. While this tour didn’t offer as many LOTR secrets and sites as the Wellington tour, we still enjoyed seeing the beautiful landscapes surrounding Queenstown. We booked via Viator about 1 ½ months prior for $335 USD total for the two of us (December 2023). 

Tasman Glacier Heli-Hike from Mount Cook

Not purely LOTR-focused, but the Tasman Glacier Heli-Hike was a splurge we felt was well-worth it! There are numerous heli-hike operators departing from the small Mount Cook Airport – ours was operated by Mount Cook Glacier Guiding (and Mount Cook is the Lonely Mountain in the Hobbit films!). We booked via Viator 1 ½ months prior for $980 total for the two of us (December 2023).