Zorbing
The next day was fun day! To be honest, we were really pleased by how well behaved the kids were through the trip so far, but we wanted to build in some fun activities in the itinerary to cater to their needs as well.
How did the day start? How about rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable ball? The activity is most well known as “zorbing”. There are a couple places where you can do this. Zorb Rotorua and OGO Rotorua. There were 2 ways of doing it – wet or dry. Wet means diving into the ball in your swim suits with the ball partially filled with water. I’d imagine it would be as close to experiencing being in a washing machine as it could get.
With the kids we elected to go dry as it meant that they don’t like being upside down, and we paired up DW with DS and DD with myself. We each tried 2 tracks available – a more straight track to start followed by a bumpier, zig zag track.
Zorbing at Rotorua was a unique experience, DD thought it was “super fun”. If you’re going to try this, make sure you go early in the morning. We did it at 10am and it was already very stuffy inside the ball – I couldn’t imagine what the ball after an afternoon in the sun would feel like. Any time later in the day only means it will be like an oven inside the ball. In fact, the operator only does wet runs after it heats up in the day.
Skyline Luge
Continuing on with our day of fun itinerary, we took a very short drive to a gondola that took us up to the Skyline Luge. We had done this activity years ago in Singapore’s Sentosa Island, and thought the kids would enjoy it as well. They did. And we did as well. I had forgotten how much fun it is to roll down the side of a mountain in a little gravity-powered go-cart. And if you pick the right track – these things could go pretty fast! Going down once was certainly not enough, so we tried a couple different paths and did 3 to 4 runs each.
But the other thing about getting up to Skyline is the spectacular views when you’re up at the top of the mountain. The view of Lake Rotorua was absolutely stunning on a bright sunny day. We had lunch at the outdoor cafe over looking the view and that in itself was wonderful!!
While we probably could have raced all day at Skyline, with our jam-packed itinerary it was time to leave as we hopped back into the car for a 2 hour drive to our next destination – Hobbiton Movie Set!
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Hobbiton Movie Set
Super dad who does his best to keep a roof over our head and chauffeured around. He picked up cross-fit in 2017 and was quite proud of it.