Ziptrek Queenstown: Three Zipline Tours and the Uplift Fare Nobody Mentions

Every tour checks in at the Ziptrek Treehouse, a short walk above the top of the Skyline lift, and every one of them includes harness and helmet fitting and two guides. Beyond that they diverge. The Kererū is a one-hour taster built around a controlled 21 metre descent to the forest floor rather than a long run.

The Moa is the four-line tour the operator points families and first-timers at, and its longest line runs 240 metres at up to 50 km/h. The Kea is the full course: six lines, twelve aerial platforms, finishing on a descent Ziptrek describes as the world's steepest tree-to-tree zipline, thirty storeys at up to 70 km/h, which ends at the bottom of the hill rather than back at the treehouse.

Which one we would book

The Moa, for almost everybody. Two hours is the length at which a zipline tour stops being a novelty photograph and starts being an afternoon, the four lines build in length and speed rather than throwing you at the biggest one first, and it is the only tour with a youth fare that is meaningfully cheaper than the adult one. The Kea is the better tour if you already know you like ziplines, and the finish in town saves the awkward second half of a return lift ticket.

The Kererū earns its place only in two situations: you have an hour between other bookings, or somebody in the group is not sure they can do this at all and a full commitment would be wasted. On that last point the operator agrees with us, since it markets the Kererū as the quick tour with a big thrill rather than the whole course.

What is included, and what is not

Included in every tour price: the ziplines themselves, all the aerial platforms on that route, harness and helmet fitting, and two guides. Not included: the ride up the hill, which is set out under the uplift fare below, and photography, which Ziptrek sells as a GoPro rental at $28.60 (NZ$49). Phones and cameras are welcome on the course provided they can be secured, so the rental is a convenience rather than the only way to come home with footage.

Ziptrek's four-line tour page is the only one of the three that states its prices are taxes-included; the other two say nothing about tax either way, which in New Zealand practice means the figure you see is what you pay, since consumer prices there are required to be shown with GST in them.

Ziptrek's tours page carries a checklist headed Know Before You Zip, and one of its lines reads that Skyline lift tickets are not included in the tour price. The treehouse sits above the upper terminal on Bob's Peak, and the operator's location page gives two ways to reach it: buy a lift ticket and allow 45 to 60 minutes, or walk the Tiki Trail and allow 60 to 90 minutes. Either way you are getting yourself up a 480 metre hill before the tour starts.

An adult return on the lift is $40.30 (NZ$69) and a child six to fourteen is $28.00 (NZ$48), and there is no one-way fare for walkers, so hiking up and riding down is not a way to save half of it. The whole fare structure is on the tickets and prices page.

• Booked direct, a Kererū tour with the lift comes to $109.80 (NZ$188) for one adult, a Moa to $133.20 (NZ$228) and a Kea to $162.40 (NZ$278).
• The three GetYourGuide listings state a lift ticket is included, and their prices land at $69.65, $93.07 and $122.33 — within twenty cents of the direct price with one adult fare removed.
• Guests who arrive holding their own lift ticket are given a stamp that lets them re-upload afterwards, so a Kea rider who bought a return is not locked out of the ride back up.
• From the upper terminal, exit left and walk about 100 metres; the treehouse is on the left with orange flags, near the Tiki Trail entrance.
• Over Christmas and New Year, Ziptrek asks you to allow a minimum of one hour to get from the base terminal to the upper complex, which is the clearest published measure of how slow that doorway gets.

Walking up instead

The Tiki Trail starts beside the lift base at the top of Brecon Street and climbs through pine forest to the top complex. It is free, it is public conservation land, and Ziptrek's own access instructions tell customers to allow 60 to 90 minutes for it, longer with children. The Department of Conservation prints the same track at 2 km and one hour one way in its Queenstown day walks brochure, and the lift operator's own FAQ calls it moderate to advanced with more than 400 metres of climb in one to one and a half hours.

Three organisations, three different times for the same path, and none of them is wrong: they are describing different walkers. Add the walk to a three-hour Kea tour and you have committed most of a day, which is the calculation to make before you decide the lift fare is avoidable. The walks hub covers the rest of the district's tracks, and Ben Lomond starts from the same trailhead if you want to keep going.

The stepped pricing is published on each tour page and the operator adds that its prices are subject to change at any time, so the windows below are the ones on sale when we read them. The pattern is the usual New Zealand summer shape: a shoulder rate through the end of September, a standard rate from October, a peak fortnight from 19 December to 17 January, then back to standard for the rest of the season. Nothing in that structure is a school-holiday surcharge on top; the peak window replaces the standard price rather than adding to it.

The figure the operator does not publish

Youth fares are printed for the first window on every tour and for the later windows only on the four-line Moa page. The six-line Kea page prints an adult figure for each window and a youth figure only for the first, so a family booking that tour in January cannot read the child price anywhere on the site: it appears inside the booking flow. We looked on all three tour pages and on the overview page and it is not there.

If you are budgeting a family of four on the long tour outside September, treat the youth line as an unknown you will meet in the cart, and note that this is the same gap New Zealand ski operators leave, covered on the trip costs page.

The tour length Ziptrek advertises is time on the course, from the safety briefing to the last platform. It does not include getting up the hill, checking in, or getting back down afterwards, and on the two shorter tours the travel is a larger share of the day than the ziplining. That is not a criticism of the operator, which publishes every one of those allowances plainly.

It is a reason to treat the lift ride as part of the activity rather than a transfer, and to book the tour that suits the block of time you actually have.

The routing we would pick

Four-line tour, early afternoon, lift ticket bought as part of the booking. It leaves the top of the hill free afterwards for the luge or a drink at the terminal while the light is still on the lake, and it does not commit the day. If you want the six-line tour, book it as the day's single activity and put something indoors after it, because you will finish at the bottom of Brecon Street with tired arms.

Everything else on this hillside, including the walking tracks and the luge, is set out on the Skyline Queenstown page.

The floor is age six on every tour, and the ceiling is a strict 125 kg. Below that there are minimums that differ by tour: 20 kg on the two-line Kererū and 30 kg on the six-line Kea, because a light rider does not carry enough momentum to reach the far platform on a long line. Ziptrek asks you to tell it at the time of booking if your child is under 30 kg, which is the operator effectively pre-checking the rule for you.

Everything else on the list is about mobility and paperwork rather than size.

• Anyone under 18 needs a parent or guardian to sign their waiver, and a rider must be at least 15 to zip without a guardian present. A 16-year-old cannot simply turn up alone with a booking.
• Pregnant guests cannot take part on any tour, with no exception published.
• Sturdy closed-toe footwear is essential. The tours include stair climbing and uneven trail walking, and you must be able to walk unassisted.
• Weight limits are stated as strict: 125 kg maximum on every tour, 20 kg minimum on the Kererū, 30 kg on the Kea.
• Extra layers are required even in summer, and for winter tours the operator's own advice is to dress as though you are going skiing.
• Personal belongings should be kept to a minimum; phones and cameras are allowed if they can be secured.

Accessibility, which Ziptrek does publish

This is worth correcting, because it is commonly reported as unpublished. Ziptrek has an accessibility page, an email and a phone line for guests with complex needs or mobility limitations, and an access guide it produced with the MakingTrax Foundation, a New Zealand charity that works on accessible adventure tourism. What the page does not do is promise a specific outcome: it says the operator is working towards an inclusive environment and asks you to make contact so requirements can be discussed case by case, which is an honest position for an activity that involves climbing stairs to a platform in a tree.

The route to the treehouse itself is a 100 metre walk from the upper terminal, and neither operator publishes a gradient for it. The district's published access information is collected on the accessibility page.

The Know Before You Zip checklist opens with a statement most Queenstown operators will not make: tours operate in rain, snow or shine, all year round. There is no published seasonal closure, no annual maintenance shutdown and no winter timetable, which puts ziplining in a small group of Queenstown activities that a wet forecast does not threaten. The forest canopy takes the worst of the rain off the platforms, and the operator's answer to a cold day is a clothing instruction rather than a cancellation.

That makes this one of the more reliable bookings in a town where a lake cruise, a fiord day and a paraglide can all be called off by lunchtime, which is why it appears on our wet-weather list.

• No departure times are published anywhere on the site. They exist only inside the booking calendar, so you cannot plan a day around a first or last tour without opening the cart.
• No cancellation policy of Ziptrek's own is published on the tour pages; the platform listings carry free cancellation up to 24 hours before the start time, which is a reseller term rather than the operator's.
• No sell-out window is published either. Ziptrek says its prices are subject to change at any time and says nothing about how far ahead the calendar fills.
• The booking office at 45 Camp Street is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00, and the operator notes those hours can change in busier and quieter periods.
• A twilight tour appears in the operator's news section without a price or a season attached to it, so treat it as something to ask about rather than something to plan around.

What actually stops a tour

Not rain, and not snow. In practice the two things that end a Queenstown zipline booking are lightning, which stops every cable-based activity in the district on safety grounds, and the lift itself: if the ride up the hill is not running, the treehouse is a 60 to 90 minute walk away and a two-hour tour becomes a five-hour day. Neither operator publishes a wind speed at which either happens.

If your booking is tight against a flight, that is the risk to plan around, not the forecast. Our booking-ahead guide covers which Queenstown activities genuinely sell out and which do not.

• This is the country's first zipline operation, not just Queenstown's. Ziptrek describes itself as the first zipline company to open in New Zealand, in 2009, and its Queenstown course is the original. (Ziptrek Ecotours, tours page.)
• The company is a three-site international operation, not a local one. The same brand runs courses at Whistler and Mont-Tremblant in Canada, which it lists in its own footer as its other operations. (Ziptrek Ecotours, site footer.)
• The steepest line finishes in town, not on the mountain. The six-line tour ends on what Ziptrek calls the world's steepest tree-to-tree zipline, thirty storeys at up to 70 km/h, and puts you out at the bottom of Bob's Peak rather than back at the treehouse. (Ziptrek Ecotours, Kea tour page.)
• There is an access guide, made with a disability charity. Ziptrek produced its access guide with the MakingTrax Foundation and publishes a phone number and an email for guests with mobility limitations to discuss requirements before booking. (Ziptrek Ecotours, accessibility page.)
• The minimum weight is not the same on every tour. It is 20 kg on the two-line Kererū and 30 kg on the six-line Kea, because the long lines need momentum to reach the far platform; the maximum is a strict 125 kg on all three. (Ziptrek Ecotours, Know Before You Zip checklist.)

Ziplining is the most weather-proof paid activity in Queenstown, and it is also the one most sensitive to how much of your day is already spoken for. On a first afternoon in town, jet-lagged and not yet acclimatised to the altitude of everything in this part of New Zealand, the four-line tour is a good use of three and a half hours and leaves the evening free. On a family day it pairs with the kiwi house at the bottom of the hill in the morning and the luge afterwards, and the six-year-old floor means a group with younger children needs a different plan.

On a trip where the lake cruise or the fiord day has been cancelled, it is the substitute that will still run, and the reason it is on the wet-weather list rather than the adventure list alone.

• Half a day, first-timers, no strong feelings about heights: the four-line tour with the lift, about three and a half hours door to door.
• A full adventure day: the six-line tour in the morning, finishing in town, then something indoors, because your arms will have had enough.
• A family morning with children over six: the kiwi house first, then the lift and a zipline tour in the afternoon.
• A spare hour between other bookings: the two-line tour with the drop, and nothing else on the hill.
• A wet day that has cancelled the lake: this, and the hot pools afterwards.