Around The Basin | Ride. Explore. Discover. | Queenstown NZ — Local services in South Island

VISIT: end of February 2020 TOUR: Bike the Bridges - Arrowtown to Gibbston Supported Tour VIEWS: 5 stars HELP FROM TOUR GUIDE: 5 stars SUITABLE FOR ALL ENDURANCE LEVELS: 4 stars DEALS: I found them through Chase Ultimate Rewards and several other sites MEETING SPOT: close to Fergburger and Fergbaker

This tour was an honest pleasant surprise for us. The videos online looked cool, but mostly we got to experience so much that I don't think we would have seen. I would have never made a special trip to Arrowtown or Gibbston just based on the research I did, but what a beautiful way to view this amazing country!

You meet at their meeting spot where the tour guide will drive you to your starting point. The tour guide stayed with everyone until they were comfortable on which path they were following and made sure that bikes and helmets were all sized appropriately. Our tour guide even gave special care to someone in our group that didn't speak English. You can leave items in the van, if you'd like, but my husband and I just had everything in our backpacks as the van is only there during certain check points.

After that you are pretty much on your own with the bike tour, which was refreshing that you could go at your own pace. You see your tour guide at regular intervals along your track and that's always refreshing, in case you get tired you can always hop in the van. Along the way, you ride by the AJ Hackett bungee jumpers which was a nice stop to watch and use the restrooms and grab snacks, if you need. Then our tour ended at the Gibbston Winery which was just a nice treat after a good workout.

ACTIVITY LEVEL: one of my biggest tenets is that the company dubs the Bike the Bridges tour a relatively easy ride and although it was, I was personally surprised at how much of a workout was. There was a good amount of inclines/declines and I workout regularly and have an active job, so I was relatively surprised. However, I realized after being in New Zealand that many of their residents are so active that I'm sure this would be an easy ride. For those on the fence, they do have electric bikes for rent, so that might be the way to go.

NAVIGATION: the navigation is very easy and the trails are clearly marked. As mentioned above, your tour guide also makes sure he's waiting at regular intervals along your trail, so I wouldn't let that deter you

I WOULD 100% DO THIS AGAIN: I am not a typical tourist that would return to do things again, but I cannot begin to explain how magical this was. Plus the tour was a half day, so we actually booked this the afternoon of our first full day in New Zealand to give us time to adjust to jet lag and the long tour...

Our family was in Queenstown for the last leg of our southern island road trip and decided to do a spontaneous bike ride. Called almost every bike shop in Queenstown but they were mostly booked out given it was high season (just after Christmas) and we had a 4yo, 5yo, 7yo with us and needed a trailer or tandem bike of some sort and/or junior bikes with trainers. Around the basin was also booked out but gave the suggestion that we could pop by after lunch to see if any of the morning rentals returned their bikes early. Really appreciated their suggestions for us to work around instead of an outright no. We did that and they managed to scramble up 1 e-bike with a trailer for 2 kids, and 1 junior bike (no training wheels), and 1 regular bike. It was a fantastic idea for us to go for 1 e bike with the trailer and 1 regular bike instead of 2 e bikes or 2 regular bikes. My husband took the e bike with the trailer and younger two kids in it and it worked out to be about the same speed with my riding a regular bike without the extra trailer weight. The only problem left was that my eldest, the 7yo had to take the junior bike without trainers as there wasnt much of a selection left. Being city folk from Singapore, we didn’t get him a new bike ever since he outgrew his toddler bike with training wheels about 2 years ago. He was extremely rusty and not confident about riding without training wheels on dirt paths around the lake no less. One staff in particular from Around the Basin, I think her name is Jessie (sorry if I got it wrong, he remembers it starts with a J) was super encouraging and even took time to run along side him down the hill right outside the shop to get him started on the big boy bike. She gave excellent advise of looking straight ahead instead of down and would run ahead of him telling him to look at her and ride toward her. When we eventually set off he was still wobbly, but 2 hours and 2 rounds around the lake later, he peddled back into the shop and excitedly gave her a hug saying he did it! Great service and fantastic staff. Was a wonderful end to our travels in New Zealand. And special thanks to J for giving our boy a confidence boost. We’re gonna pick out a new bike...

Extremely poor customer service.

I booked a tour with Around the Basin that started at 9am. We thought that we were required to meet at the start point at 9am due to the correspondence that we had received. However, this was apparently a misunderstanding and the meeting time was in fact 8.50am, with a 9am sharp departure time, even though the 8.50am time was not in any correspondence that was provided to us.

We arrived at Around the Basin at 9.07am due to transport delays that were out of our control, and the tour had departed without us. We would have had no issue with this at all - after all, we were seven minutes late - but we were met with a very frosty reception from Around the Basins. The lady at reception was incredibly patronising and reprimanded us multiple times for being late, even though I had apologised as soon as I entered the store. I have never been spoken to so badly by someone in a customer service position, and I had paid $300 for us to be there. She reluctantly put us on a 10.30 am tour which we would have been very happy with had she not told us off in front of the entire store - it was very humiliating.

I would encourage Around the Basin to make clear that the meeting time is 8.50am to avoid any confusion. We did book through a third party (Viator) so I suggest that they liase with them to make sure that this is clear on any tour advertisement. It would have been nice if there was some understanding about how this had happened - I tried to explain this to the lady at reception but was interrupted and told that we were seven minutes late regardless.

It’s such a shame because I had been most looking forward to the day with Around the Basin out of all of our time in QT. Due to recommendations I had made extra plans to be able to do the tour with them, including organising luggage storage in the town for the day and transport to and from their office.

We were paying customers, we were polite, and we did not deserve to be treated as we were. Unfortunately I will not be returning nor recommending...