Originally Posted by
splatnz
I love Queenstown in winter and spend as much time there as possible. But this is only because I really enjoy skiing and wine. There's some great ski fields and many wineries (particularly good Pinot Noir) so if it's good weather I'll ski and if it's not so good we'll drive around the wineries and replenish our stocks of wine.
If you aren't into either of these then maybe you could remove a day. You do want a good day to goto Milford Sound and the weather can be a little variable so a couple of days to choose from would improve your odds (Arrowtown is a good option for a dull weather day).
There are plenty of adventure sports available year round - Bungy Jumping (if you aren't that adventurous there's a bungy-swing too), Jet boating is good, quad biking (or snowmobiles in winter).
My favourite restaurant there is the Bunker and I really like the Sofitel if you're looking for accomodation (not a great view but stunning rooms).
PS Try and fly on NZ rather than QF - QF seems to divert flights to ZQN at the hint of a cloud in winter.
Thanks for all the advice. I was able to keep it at 5 days, 4 nights. I would like to do a day trip to Milford. Skiing or snowboarding would be fun, but we're trying to figure out how to get our equipment there as this is part of a RTW trip and we don't want to lug things like our gloves and goggles around the world for one day of skiing in ZQN. We may send the stuff from home to the hotel so it's waiting there for us. Wine tasting/tours is right up our alley! Any particular places you recommend?
Thanks for the hotel advice, but I'm leaning toward the Queenstown Park Hotel. The reviews on Trip Advisor make it sound wonderful, and it is not too costly.
Big thanks for the advice on airlines. ^ I was contemplating QF to get the miles, but it's not worth the hassle if QF is unreliable. The AKL-ZQN flights are nested within the AONE5 and not a part of it, so I don't want to deal with a canceled flight. I have a little buffer on either end, so not cutting it close, but I still just don't want to be bothered by it. I suppose I'll just go with NZ.