Free and Cheap fun for families in New Zealand
The purpose of this Wiki is to share information about cheap or free activities for families around New Zealand. There are plenty of web-sites aimed at creaming money out of tourists, but few that provide families with quality information about the low cost or free possibilities.
I welcome contributions to make this a useful resource covering the whole nation. Please try to add your contribution to the various pages and tags as outlined below. For an example of the type of page I am aiming at, I suggest looking at the Te Papa page. The city page closest to complete is that for Wellington. I have created Templates based on each of these. Hopefully you will find the option to use one of these templates near the top of the editing section if you create a new page. The Templates to use are "ActivityImproved" and "City Template".
Greyed links are those which have not yet had a page created. Please click on these to provide new visitors with information.
We are particularly interested in places you have been to yourself, rather than just random bits and pieces picked up from the internet or the newspaper. Even if you don't want to make up a new page, feel free to comment on your experiences under the heading for "Visitors' comments". Alternatively, if you are unsure about entering data, send your comments to me and I will try and turn them into a new page or comments on an existing one.
Any computer whizzes out there, I would like to create a rating system similar to those used by Amazon and IMDB, so that people can rate the different attractions. Please e-mail me at the address below if you can help with this.
Please also note that this is a wiki intended for families with children from toddlers through to teens and do not add any inappropriate material.
To invite your friends to become part of the wiki community visit the invitations page.
Thanks
Bernard Woodhams
Wiki Administrator/Founder
ua.moc.oohay|smahdoow_dranreb#ua.moc.oohay|smahdoow_dranreb
Wiki organisation
The Wiki is organised according to regions, types of activities and costs.
Regions
Within the regions I have tried to organise activities by their nearest town. See the regions pages for more detail.
Northland
Auckland District
Waikato
Bay of Plenty
Taupo and central plateau
Taranaki
Wanganui District
Gisborne
Hawkes Bay
Manawatu
Wellington
Marlborough
Nelson-Tasman
West Coast
Canterbury
Otago
Southland
Types of activities
I have tried to organise the activities and places mentioned here according to several possible types of activity that we as a family enjoy. Some activities or places offer multiple possibilities, while others are more limited. Each of these activities is also a tag, so you may wish to go to the tags page.
- Museums - covers all types of museums, from the National Museum (Te Papa) through to small privately run museums. Museums provide fun and education for all ages, with some being aimed at all ages, and others being more specifically targeted.
- Walks - Our family enjoys bush walks. Pages describing walks should give an estimate of how long they will take, suitability for different ages and so on.
- Beaches - Everyone loves a beach, but which are the good ones, and what facilities do they have?
- Playgrounds - Which playgrounds are worth going out of your way to find? What facilities will you find when you get there?
- Favourite picnic spots
- Sporting grounds (especially free ones where you can have a family game of cricket or soccer)
- Swimming pools
- Hot pools
- Family friendly cafes and eating places.
- Commercial Activities. This heading includes activities such as mazes, amusement parks and so on. Most of these are likely to be privately owned, and may be more expensive, but we try to find the best value. Look for information about what is worth spending a little extra on.
- Other
Costs
Costs are categorised according to the cost to take a family of two adults and two children to the attraction. We realise that many families have more or fewer children, but this seems to be a useful summary. Detailed costs should be included on the pages. Cost categories are:
- Free - No cost other than the time and transport to get there.
- Under $20(<$20)
- $20-40
- $41-60
- $61-80
- Over $80 (>$80)
In general, anything over $40 would have to be very good value to be included.
