I am not a die-hard fan of LOTR, though I have seen all the films, but have not watched all the movies in their extended versions or with commentary. However, I am friends w/enough people who would have disowned me had I not made the “pilgrimage” here.
I drove and parked at the “Shire’s Rest” where there are restrooms, a café, a giftshop, and where the big fancy buses pick you up to actually take you to the tour of the sets.
It was raining when I went, which I guess worked in my favor because apparently tours sell out mad crazy and they highly recommend you book online and well in-advance. Thankfully, because of the weather, I was able to just walk up, by a ticket, and then jump on a waiting bus. I am told this is an atypical experience, so win for the wet!
The bus trip is a few mins and you drive through the pastoral landscape, past sheep and cows, and Peter Jackson says his hellos via a tv screen on the bus. Our bus driver was amazing and quite funny and honestly, had she not been at the helm, I probably would have gotten bored on the drive.
When you get to the beginning of the tour, you are assigned a guide and he accompanies you everywhere and gives you tidbits about the films, the shoots, and the references to what you are seeing. They also provide you with huge umbrellas, which was nice since I just had my pancho.
Our guide, Liam, was great and engaging, but I missed a lot of what he was saying because the tour moves fast as there are preceding and proceeding tours, literally on top of each other. There were a few times I lost our group and just kinda listened to the tour guide I had fallen in with. Also, though they do their best to accommodate pictures, there is not a lot of time allotted, so for a big group like ours (like 12 people, which I was told is a small one for them), stopping for 12 people to get their pics caused a bit of a log jam.
It was neat seeing all the little hobbit-holes and the immense attention to detail. Seriously, the detail in each and everything we saw was utterly astounding!
You end your tour at the Green Dragon w/an included beverage, which can include cider or beer. I chose the Southfarthing stout, which was actually pretty decent to my surprise. They also offer food options and after walking in the cold and rain, the steak pie sounded delicious and was! It was quite well w/the stout too!
You get about 20mins or so in the Green Dragon before regrouping w/your guide and getting back on the bus and going back to the Shire’s Rest.
Even though the weather was bleak, it seemed to work in my favor since many of the people who work there said the place was really “slow”. If that was the case, I would hate to be there on a “busy day”. That being said, I think for the price, this tour was a bit lacking. I’m sure for the hardcore fan, it would be incredible and the price would be auxiliary to the experience. But, for the casual fan such as myself $79NZ($55 US) was a bit much for what you got. I wish the tours were spaced out a bit more so that you didn’t feel rushed through walk-through and it would be nice to have smaller individual groups to really get to hear and relate the experience to the films via the stories relayed by the guides. In the end, I was glad I did it, but felt a bit jilted as the experience seemed to focus on moving the herds of tourists through as quickly as possible to the gift shop.
I will say the highlight of the tour was one of our group dug out what she initially thought was a lost wedding band from the mud. It turned out to be a gold ring w/an elvish inscription. Whether it was one of the lost rings from the set or the gift shop, maybe we’ll never know, but it was cool to witness someone leave with such an memorable souvenir found in such an...
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