Much of the "excitement" is usually as a result of the weather - Wellington is notoriously windy and the approaches can be quite wild.

My view is that for arrivals you want a right hand side seat (ie an F seat in a 737), and for departures you want a left hand side seat (or an A seat). My reasoning? For arrivals, you either approach from the south which comes in over open sea so there's not much to see until very close to arrival (in which case both sides get decent views of rocks, surf etc very close to the runway threshold). The northerly approach, however, gives you a great view of the city centre from the right side of the plane - Wellington is not a large city, but it is crammed in among steep hills around the harbour so the downtown is an attractive sight from the air.