Wellington, New Zealand - November 8, 2023

Our next port of call was Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, is from Wellington. His fame has brought many jobs and economic growth to the area.

We booked an excursion through Princess to visit the Weta Workshop studios, a tour of the city, and some of the Lord of the Rings film location sites. I had booked this tour well in advance as the popular tours tend to sell out even before boarding the ship. A month before our trip, Princess cancelled the tour. Then they made it available again at a higher price. We still went on it as we wanted to see the sites.

Our first stop was the Weta Workshop where many special effects are created. These include such items as weapons, masks, costumes and sets. Weta in the Maori language is an ugly spider and means god of ugly things. The creators of the business felt this was a very fitting name as they create many monsters.

There was no photography allowed on the tour, but I did take some photos in the lobby and gift shop of characters from The Lord of the Rings movies.

Here are two pictures I found on the web from the tour itself. It was a very fascinating look into how movie special effects are created. 

While we were there, the newest Avatar movie was supposed to be filming. Due to the actor's strike, that was not happening. We did see the outdoor sound stage that was built for filming. Here's a photo of it, as I couldn't get a good picture from the bus. Notice how it is constructed out of large shipping containers piled on top of each other. They paint the background green or blue depending on what they are filming. It was massive!

We passed the large Wellington sign. Soccer is very popular in New Zealand, and Wellington has a large soccer stadium. The soccer ball in the sign reflects that passion. It is very windy in Wellington, so the sign reflects that at the end by being blown upwards.

Here's the port with our ship and the soccer stadium.

As you can see in the photo above and below, houses in Wellington are built into the surrounding hills, and access can be very steep. Many of the homes do not have roads to them, so they have cable cars and tracks to get to their homes with parking at the bottom. 

Our tour took us to Mount Victoria where some of the scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring were filmed. We were shown the location and then photos of scenes from the movie at that location. It didn't always look quite the same. 

Here's where the group of Hobbits tumbled down a hill on their journey. Click on any photo to enlarge it for better viewing.

Here's the path where the Ringwraith was hunting the Hobbits at night. It looked quite different during the day.

The Ringwraiths are supposed to be dead, so there should not be any breath visible from the rider (notice the breath from the horse in the photo). To keep the rider's breath from showing, they put a snorkel tube in his mouth and pointed it down into his shirt. No breath was visible.

Our guide told us that the trees in this forest grow in odd directions and shapes due to the wind. This tree looked like it had the letter E in its branches; must be for Evelyn!

These beautiful peace lilies were growing all along a path.

We decided to get off the tour bus in the downtown area and have a look around. There was a free shuttle bus for the cruise passengers to get back to the ship. This is a Parliament building referred to as The Beehive.

We had a very enjoyable day exploring Wellington and learning about the movie industry.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!