Well that brings to an end our first Cruise/Disney Cruise. We awoke this morning to find that we had arrived in Auckland. Debarkationn day was so well organised. The nigt before yo are given a bag tag with a character and that is the order you leave the ship. You are also rostered into a breakfast. We spent the last few minutes in our room looking at Auckland and watching the bags get taken off the ship.
After a quick breakfast we waited in the lounge to disembark. It wasnt long and then we were off the boat and through customs. We were then in dry land in Auckland. We put our bags in storage and headed off to explore the city.
Our first stop for the day was to go up the sky tower in Auckland. We did debate not going up as it was super expensive ($75 for 2 adults) but we decided we might as well and headed up. Auckland is a really pretty city and it looks amazing from up high. There are 2 levels you can get to and have a 360 degree view of the city.
We had booked into the Weta Unleashed tour so we made our way over to there. Weta Unleashed is a movie-making tour where you explore interactive and immersive make-believe film sets, focusing on the worlds of horror, fantasy and sci-fi. We were really looking foward to it. The start of the tour took us into the storeroom and the office before we headed into the sets. We met the animatoric security guard who was the most amazing animatronic i have seen and then entered our first section of Horror.
The description of the Horror area is : The animatronics and prosthetics department are working on the horror film Fauna. Visitors who dare, may enter the claustrophobic horror film set, where something lingers in the shadows..
It was very cool and had great props you could play with. There were also makeup stations you could play with and get a computer monster makeover. There was also a very spooky lamb slauter house walkthrough.
The next area was the Fantasy movie : Enter our very own Artists’ Shed, a peaceful haven that shows the process of fantasy world-building through the imaginations of concept artists, who dream up a world designed for the epic movie Age of the Ever-Clan. Step through the curtain and enter their fantastical world…
This place was so pretty. It had amazing props and wax figures. The attention to details here was crazy.
The last section was Sci-fi: It’s time to walk onto a film set of the science fiction adventure movie Origins. Projected light plays across the stage and a stunning light display with an epic intergalactic soundtrack begins. A gigantic robot and epic spaceship immerse you in an atmospheric sci-fi wonder.
Pictures do not do this tour justice as you cannot see the scale of everything but wow I think it is one of the best tours I have ever done. If you are in Auckland you need to do this!
It was then to the airport and back to Melbourne.