Te Puia - Rotorua, NZ — Attraction in North Island

Te puia is a big visitor centre offering different visitor experiences depending on the type of ticket you purchase.

Located on the side of a busy highway on the outskirts of Rotorua,  it is easy to find and has a huge free car park with plenty of space for large motorhomes.

Te Puia is a well oiled machine, catering for large visitor numbers.

We booked the evening Hangai dinner. This does not include entry to the visitor park (that's a separate ticket), but what it does give you is dinner (inc tea/coffee/ water), a show and a look at/ short walk around site of their Geyser whilst enjoying a hot chocolate after dinner.

Dinner itself was not a small affair. Our group was easily 50+ people. We were served at the same time as others who had been on the earlier afternoon tour....bringing numbers up to 100+ people...all of which was catered for in the huge on-site restaurant (self service buffet style), almost like being at the dinner buffet of a chain hotel, so sadly there was nothing cultural about it, other than some of the dishes and the fact that they had been cooked in the below ground cooker. In order to cater for this many people the below ground cooker is a commercial sized sunken stainless steel affair.

The food, apart from a few dishes and the inclusion of some different ingredients was very Westernised. On offer were a cooked ham, ribs, lamb, chicken drummers, salmon, a selection of vegetables, rice and randomly some stir fried noodles. Also salad and pasta bar;  seafood section (inc king prawns and oysters);  commercial desert cart with everything from profiteroles to steamed pudding with custand, pavlova and tiramisu on it. Some nationalities appeared to be treating the all you can eat buffet as a challenge, seeing how much food they could shovel in before waddling out of the dining room.

The show itself was the best part, held in the large on site traditional building which is inlaid with carvings made onsite. The centre has an arts & crafts school. Money raised from tours funds the school. The show comprised of course the Hakka, but also other songs and dances. The group performing were very good.

Annoyingly, although people were told to be silent during the show,  there were a lot of very disrespectful nationalities present who chatted the whole way through the show ruining it for others. One of these disrespectful people even decided to answer his phone and have a full blown conversation during the show, until he was lambasted by another guest!  Te Pui really should make an announcement at the outset telling people to put their phones on flight mode.

After dinner the short 2 min walk to the Geyser in the setting sun was a good end to the evening, especially as the Geyser was busy performing for us. A lady there had a hot thermos and was serving everyone paper cups of hot chocolate.

On balance a good evening. For us as a family it was way too busy/  commercialised and had a "pile em high" bums on seats feel about it. However, if we had not booked this show, then we would not have experienced any Mauri culture at all during our month stay in NZ because although there are a lot of sites in NZ and plenty of information on boards everywhere,  you have to get involved in such an experience to immerse yourself  in the culture..It's not like being in e.g Thailand or Indonesia where its...

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We were passing through and wanted to visit one of the cultural village experiences, as it’s been a long time since the last visit. We ended up choosing Te Puia based on their website offerings and online ticket availability - other tours in the area had sold out for the day. We were also considering the buffet lunch as tickets were still available online. We weren’t quite sure if there was an option for a self-guided tour like some of the other experiences, so decided to head along and speak to their reception for all our options, before purchasing a more costly package. We didn’t have enough time to stay for the extended tours that day. Unfortunately we were told the buffet was sold out for lunch, but we had the other options explained to us and they were happy for us to visit the café before our tour began. I’m not sure what the café menu normally has on it - all the food looked really good, our drinks were well-made - but it could also be really cool to see more local ingredients and flavours used across the offerings, just a suggestion! Especially as a representation of Māori and New Zealand culture and heritage. Their buffet menu does have this and it sounded awesome.

We were a little surprised at the price of the standard tour (no extras) per person at $95 each, but were pleasantly surprised to learn that we had the New Zealander discount - much appreciated 😊🙏

Our tour group had around 15-20 people, didn’t do a head count but it was enough that at times it got scattered. Our guide was local, he presented really well - professional, informative, good sense of humour. The only slight disappointment was that the tour felt a little rushed, in the sense that we could have taken more time and learnt more from our guide at each stop along the tour. We didn’t really have enough time to read the signs at most of the stops, although again I can appreciate how this is too hard with big groups! It would have also been great to take a bit longer at each stop for questions, although again this can be much harder to manage with larger groups in general. Our guide did check in with us if we had questions most of the time!

Once the tour is finished, you do get to walk around the area again at your own pace - a good chance to read the signs in more detail. It really depends how much time you have to spend though, we didn’t have time to re-walk the tour. You almost need to take half a day to have a proper full experience.

Super cool to see the art school and learn about all they do. Sadly we missed the opportunity to say Thank You and goodbye to our guide at the end, he had disappeared by the time we had left the art gallery shop. Perhaps if the guides can stay around a little longer to answer questions and say goodbye to all in their group, that would be awesome. We appreciate their knowledge!

Overall, it’s a great site with so much history and great initiatives...

We wanted a total experience from New Zealand and this park looks like it had it all. It is pricey and was a bit upsetting getting there that you even have to pay extra to see the show, but the show is a big part if the experience (with the Haka), so we bought a ticket for that too.

There is a nice restaurant with good coffee. Toilets on different spots in the park, a school where you can see craftsman and woman at work. A really nice souvenir shop with amazing crafts and trinkets.

The most important thing offcourse is the park itself and what you can do. I would reccomend a tour (thats free, you probably paid for it anyway so better to do that haha).

First up are the geysers of whakerewakera, just amazing to see all the different ones, a surreal experience! Make sure you come back there again to the main part (you know where this is when you see it). There are usually a lot off people so coming back can mean there could be a bit less people and even thr view could be differt with the geysers shooting water/steam in the air. Also beautiful colours of the rocks. From a certain angle you almost get a bit of an idea what it could look like if you would be on the moon.

Next up the Mud Pools, really nice to see al the bubbles and you can almost see Sid from ice age sitting in there.

Than the small kiwihouse, don't go in if there are a lot off Asians, they really don't know how to be silent and they scare the kiwi away and ruin the experience. In others words just go when they left or when you are there just go again.

The Maori show with the Haka is really worth seeing. Already from the welcoming part it's a show. Important is that you stay seated or walk to the site if you want to make pictures so that everyone can enjoy, and see, the show. A lot of singing, some games and rituals ending with the Haka, really got goosebumps with the Haka, amazing!

Nice to see students at work at the school.

They also rebuilt a part of a town, how it use to look.

For the rest there are a lot more walks you can do and see more geysers, pools, learn a bit more about the area, plants etc. On the information boards all...