FTC Disclosure: I was not asked to write this blog post, I was not compensated cash for this review, and no third parties had an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material incentive to attend the event by way of an exclusive pre-release tour invitation and VIP access. The public retail value of VIP access is worth US$65.00. All other expenses, including travel and lodging, were self-funded.
I’ve played Minecraft twice in my life—once to try it out over a decade ago close to back when it was first released, and once last year to participate in a charity event that had one segment of the associated show take place in-game. Both times, I got pretty severe motion sickness because my brain doesn’t do too well with first-person perspective games with fast movement and warped field of view around the edges.
Knowing that, you’re probably surprised to find out that I flew to the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex in Texas and headed over to the city of Plano… for a Minecraft event.
Together with my friend Aidan, who runs the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube, I had an opportunity to try “Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue” two days before it opened to the general public. Minecraft Experience is an interactive experience taking place in the Minecraft world during which you navigate in succession through ten different rooms ranging from the spawn point to the underworld and ending at the trading post (i.e., gift shop).
I feel silly saying this, especially because I’m known to be fairly critical and difficult to please, and because this entire thing looks like it was made for small children… but I actually had a great time.
The interactive experience revolves around an Orb of Interaction, a little cube that acts like a dynamic remote-control extension of your body that allows you to send commands via movement to the sensors placed throughout the rooms. You use this device, along with your body, to influence the Minecraft world around you in ways that resemble actual gameplay within Minecraft.
Each room has a different way to interact with your surroundings. The spawn point limits you to just the basics so that there is a smooth learning curve, while later rooms will require you to use the orb in conjunction with your feet to gather resources. Every room was also very immersive—it was clear that all the sets were built out with a 360° perspective in mind.
At first, I was a little bored and didn’t really know what was going on because of how unfamiliar I was with Minecraft, but within the first few rooms, I hilariously managed to get very invested into the storyline. My friends and I ended up doing three total rounds through the experience; each time, I would notice new small things that made me appreciate the production team’s attention to detail.
My favorite part of the experience was a room where you had to combine certain raw materials in a certain sequence in order to produce building blocks necessary for the construction of a gateway. The difficulty of this room had ramped up substantially relative to the spawn point, and albeit fairly easy to intuit, you still had to pay attention to what was going on if you wanted to participate properly. The part I loved the most about this is that the recipe for the building blocks was apparently something that actually exists in Minecraft, so this is an opportunity for children to feel good about their gaming knowledge and possibly teach their parents what to do to emerge from the room victorious.
I also liked how much physical activity was integrated into the experience. I had to constantly move my Orb back and forth throughout a majority of the rooms, and near the end during the final boss fight, I nearly broke a sweat throwing felt “snowballs” at the screen to help deal damage to the enemy.
I went into this expecting it to be something like an exhibit hall out of BlizzCon, where there would just be some life-sized models of in-game assets, some important and notable relics on display, and maybe some gaming stations to play some exclusive Minecraft content. As you would imagine, my expectations were far exceeded when I realized this was actually a real experience and not just a miniature museum.
Even though I had a great time, it was clear that I wasn’t really the intended target audience. I’m sure some adult Minecraft superfans would love this too, but I think the main demographic for this experience is children and their parents. I think most young Minecraft players would find Minecraft Experience to be absolutely magical, feeling like a real-life video game protagonist. This is also an opportunity for parents to get more involved in their children’s lives and deepen their connection through one of their kids’ hobbies.
It looks like the most affordable general admission ticket costs US$32.00 per person on a weekday, with bulk-purchase discounts knocking down the ticket price by a few dollars per person for groups of four or more. Everyone’s financial situation is different so I can’t really broadly comment on whether this would be worth it, but compared to some other similar attractions like this in other major cities, I think this pricepoint is definitely within reason.
Here are some photographs I took during the experience:
I’ve posted a lot of photos from tourism activities during my New Zealand trip with my friend Doug Wreden so far, but I haven’t shared what we’ve eaten, which may be surprising considering how frequently I blog about food otherwise. That’s mainly because most of the food we’ve gotten has been quick stops in between being tourists, and we didn’t really go to a lot of multi-course sit-down restaurants that would warrant entire blog posts for them. Instead, I decided to collect all my food pictures and do a photo dump at the end.
(As a side note, I took all these food photos with my phone out of convenience, so they won’t be quite as high quality as those in my other restaurant recap and review blog posts where I take my actual camera to take photos.)
Being a Marriott loyalist, my hotel of choice upon arriving in Auckland was the JW Marriott Auckland. Unfortunately, they are undergoing renovations so basically every single amenity was closed, but luckily, that did mean that they were offering their rooms at fairly significant discounts and we did not have to pay regular JW prices.
Upon checking in, I often get a special welcome gift due to my Ambassador Elite status. We booked two rooms so Doug and I could each have our separate rooms, but the staff didn’t know who was going to take which room, so they put the cheese and nuts plate in Doug’s room instead. Because of that, he managed to swipe a few crackers before I managed to take a photo.
I ordered a margherita pizza and was a bit disappointed with what I got. Usually it comes with large round cuts of tomato and fresh basil on top, but it looks like this had some sort of basil paste under the cheese instead, and the presentation wasn’t very good. Flavor-wise, it wasn’t particularly delicious; I don’t think any of the ingredients were really that high in quality, so it tasted like I was eating a bread-cheese-tomato porridge instead of a pizza.
Before we set off on our coast-to-coast walk across Auckland, we stopped by Best Ugly Bagels where I ordered a Butter Up!, which was advertised as a toasted bagel with a “lick” of butter. Instead of a lick, I received a bagel absolutely drenched in butter.
I’m usually not a fan of using an insane amount of butter or otherwise using extreme amounts of fats when cooking, but surprisingly, the Butter Up! was great. I later came to find that New Zealand butter in general seems to be pretty mild, so this went down smooth and did not leave a greasy aftertaste in my mouth. The apple, lemon, ginger, and turmeric juice was also great—it had an interesting flavor profile and was not too sweet.
As an added perk, I got to enjoy the bagel at a table-side window with a nice view of the Central Business District.
After our walk, we went to Eden Noodles on Dominion Road in Mount Eden. The noodles weren’t anything particularly special, but it was a solid dish that served as a good meal. I think I did a poor job at mixing everything together, because it got pretty spicy near the end.
For dessert, we went to Wheatz Bakery on Lorne Street in the Central Business District. I got an almond croissant and a taro waffle.
The almond croissant was good, but I especially liked the taro waffle because the waffle had medium sweetness while the taro filling had fairly mild sweetness, so they complemented each other well and allowed for the true waffle and taro flavors to shine through without being too overwhelmingly sweet.
Before we started our day at the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, we stopped by the on-site café for breakfast. Doug and I each ordered a breakfast roll, which included bacon, eggs, potatoes, and greens. The potatoes were prepared in a unique way that I hadn’t seen done in a sandwich in the United States before; I thought it was decent, but Doug did not like it.
In between the Waitomo Cave and Ruakuri Cave tours, I took a quick break at the on-site restaurant and ordered a BLT.
My favorite part of the sandwich was the bread—it was crispy on the outside and very soft on the inside. The rest of the sandwich was passable, though I think they put way too much ranch, because it sort of just tasted like a ranch sandwich with toppings of bacon, tomato, and mixed greens.
My favorite part of the meal in general was the drink. I got a bottle of apple black currant juice because I don’t really see that being sold too frequently in the United States, and it was delicious. Not only was it a flavor that I don’t get to try often, but I noticed that New Zealand beverages have substantially lower sugar in general, so the juice tasted like I was drinking actual real fruit juice, as opposed to just flavored sugar water like in the United States.
Afterwards, we stopped by the General Store Waitomo to get snacks and dinner. Doug and I shared a pizza, which hardly tasted like a pizza and was more like thin, cheesy bread.
We also each got a plate of fish and chips, which was much better than the pizza. The fish was tender, the ratio of breading to fish was reasonable, and the breading didn’t leave an excessively greasy aftertaste.
On the day we arrived in Rotorua, we went to The Fat Brother for lunch.
We got an order of Monster Nachos to share, which contained nacho chips, slow-cooked beef, meat lover’s mixed cheese, salsa, and sour cream. It lived up to its name when it came out and was comically gigantic. The nachos were surprisingly good—the cheese had a uniquely meaty flavor to it (which I imagine comes from the “mixed” aspect of it as described by the menu), and the beef was tender. The shell tasted like a healthier and less greasier version of Taco Bell’s Chalupa Supreme® shell.
We also each got a chicken sandwich. Doug ordered a “Fat Girlfriend,” which came with fried chicken, lettuce, American cheese, and signature sauce on a brioche bun. I ordered a “Fat Chick,” which came with grilled chicken, lettuce, tomato, and red onion on a brioche bun. My sandwich was fine, and it tasted like a fairly average grilled chicken sandwich.
On the day of our departure from Rotorua, we stopped by Ambrosia Restaurant and Bar after checking out of our lodge. I had already eaten free breakfast at our hotel so I wasn’t too hungry, but Doug slept in and needed food.
We ordered a bread plate to share. The garlic bread was good, but everything else was fairly average.
Doug ordered some lamb as his meal, and I tried one cut of it. It was the most delicious lamb I had ever tasted. Usually in the United States, a majority of lamb’s flavor comes from the fat, and the leaner portions are generally milder. However, from the very small sample size of New Zealand lamb I tried, it seems like it is far more flavor-packed as a whole—not only in the fat, but also in the muscle as well.
After looping back around and returning to Auckland, we had dinner at Kajiken Auckland on O’Connell Street in the Central Business District. The expected 15-minute wait time for a table for two ended up being over half an hour, while it seemed like many people who arrived after us got seated first. Food service was slow and strange—we added a strawberry cheese cake for dessert, and it was the first item to come out, as if it was supposed to be an appetizer instead.
I ordered “The Original,” which was noodles with chashu, menma, nori, and scallion. I wanted to add a half soft boiled egg or two, but the ordering system they had with a QR code did not make it seem like it was possible to do so. The dish was way too salty, up to the point that if I had gotten this as takeaway instead, I would’ve rinsed off the noodles before eating them.
I got white peach cider as my beverage, which was very strong, but still had good flavor.
Doug ordered two bowls. The first was noodles with mayonnaise-flavored crab meat and fish roe, deep-fried prawn, nori, scallion, and corn. The second was tonkotsu, which came with thin noodles in pork broth topped with pork belly chashu, soft-boiled egg, menma, nori, and scallion.
And now, for the grand finale. As our final dinner in Auckland, Doug and I went to Depot Eatery.
While we were deciding what to order, we received some bread with a delicious sauce. I couldn’t tell what the sauce was, but it was as if it almost had undertones of curry without any of the pungency.
For our first appetizer, we ordered three Orongo Bay oysters and three Mahurangi oysters for NZ$6 each, and I ate two of each. All of them had clean, rich, deep oyster flavors, and I enjoyed them all.
Our second appetizer was trevally sashimi with soy syrup, wasabi peas, kewpie mayo, and basil for NZ$25. There was a little bit too much soy syrup, but otherwise, this recipe was incredible. Not only did it have a great flavor profile that I haven’t seen done before, but the contrast of texture was also very satisfying to chew.
From the charcuterie board, our next dish was wild rabbit and pork rillette with cherry relish, cornichons, and sliced baguette for NZ$24.
I’ve had rabbit a few times before, and each time, including this one, it has tasted fairly similar to turkey, regardless of how it was prepared. Doug was not a fan of this dish, so I ended up having most of it; it wasn’t my favorite either, but I still thought it was fine.
As an intermission, we got a small dish—snapper sliders with pickled lemon mayo and watercress for NZ$24.
The fish was melt-in-your-mouth good, the sauce was perfect, and the bread was incredibly soft on the inside but had the perfect amount of resistance on the outside. The flavor profile was pure, clean, and minimalistic so that there weren’t any excess tastes interfering with the core fish.
This was the best fish sandwich I have ever had in my entire life.
Our first main dish was wood-roasted Fergus’ bone marrow with parsley and shallot salad for NZ$29.
This was pretty underwhelming. One of the three bones barely had any marrow on it. The vegetables weren’t diced small enough to be able to effectively mix in with the bone marrow. We also wouldn’t have been able to even if we wanted to, because we did not receive a side bowl.
Our second main dish was Freedom Farm pork hock with apple and horseradish salsa verde and parsnip purée for NZ$45.
I tried some of the pork meat, which was much more tender than I expected. I also tried some of the pork skin, which I usually don’t like, but this dish’s pork skin had a much cleaner flavor and wasn’t gamey at all. Overall, I thought the dish was fine. Doug loved this, so I let him eat a majority of it instead.
To go along with our main entrées, we got grilled fennel with macadamia romesco and bitter greens for NZ$16. This was the only dish that I actually disliked.
We ordered two desserts. The first was a cookie with ice cream and chocolate for NZ$15.
The cookie tasted like a gourmet cookie made from high-quality ingredients, but there was such an egregious amount of chocolate on it that it completely destroyed the overall flavor profile. I had a bite of it to try it out, but Doug finished the rest.
The second dessert was strawberry panna cotta topped with rice crispies for NZ$14. This was strangely sour and tasted more like raspberry than strawberry, but it was still a good sweet treat to close out the meal.
Depot Eatery was an interesting experience. Usually, there is some degree of consistency with regards to how “good” a restaurant is, i.e., the dishes are on a certain level and all share a similar style or theme of preparation. However, Depot Eatery didn’t seem to have that kind of consistency at all whatsoever, and instead, was sort of all over the place. Some dishes were orgasmically good (e.g., the snapper sliders), while others made me question whether it was edible (e.g., the grilled fennel).
I didn’t really go into New Zealand expecting world-famous cuisine like one might when traveling to a place like Japan, and New Zealand met that fairly middle-of-the-road expectation. I will remember those snapper sliders forever, but for everything else, I would say that, when averaged out, my New Zealand food experiences met my level of contentment.
My trip to New Zealand with my friend Doug Wreden is soon coming to a close, and we just wrapped up our final full day in Auckland. He wanted to have a relaxing day in the city before leaving, so he went for a run, which is an activity that is calming and therapeutic for him. My stamina is nowhere near as good as Doug’s and running is just exhausting for me, so instead of joining him, I decided to go off on my own for a few hours and visit the New Zealand Maritime Museum.
In case you missed it from prior blog posts, the reason Doug and I came to New Zealand to begin with was because his annual charity event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation raised US$625,376.68, and the stretch goal for surpassing half a million dollars this year was for Doug and me to go to New Zealand to fulfill an inside joke that he has with his live streaming community. Part of that was to go to the aquarium in Auckland, and I figured that further visiting a maritime museum was also fairly fitting of the theme. As an added bonus, the New Zealand Maritime Museum seemed to have a lot of great reviews as well.
Those positive reviews were well-justified. Even though I don’t really have much of a personal interest on the topic, I can confidently neutrally say that the New Zealand Maritime Museum is one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. Not only does it have a lot of text, multimedia, and items on display like most other museums, but it also has a lot of immersive and highly interactive experiences.
I, as someone who wasn’t particularly attached to the topics and skipped a lot of the reading, still spent three hours taking a look at everything. Someone who is a true enthusiast on the matter could easily show up when it opens, go through the ground floor, take a break and eat lunch at the café, then return to the top floor and stay until closing time.
On the note of topics, even though this is a maritime museum, it covered a lot of adjacent subjects as well. The ground floor had exhibits on landfall, discovery, and settlement of New Zealand; early immigration; and yachts. The top floor had exhibits on maritime art, Kiwi identity, and model ships. Even within those broader categories, there was a lot of granulation of subtopics that helped widen the scope of what museum-goers can learn.
Admission is free for Auckland residents. As an out-of-city visitor, my admission fee was NZ$24, which is right around US$15. I think that is an amazing deal; from my past experience visiting museums, I feel like most major cities would charge around US$30+ for admission to a museum of this size and quality, and I’d imagine places in California would try and get away with charging US$50+.
If you’re in Auckland and want to spend some time doing a peaceful activity indoors, I recommend checking out the New Zealand Maritime Museum.
Here is a collection of photographs from my visit:
The various different sections of the museum are connected via outdoor pathways, and some indoor sections of the museum have windows with great views; here are some photos I took of the Viaduct Harbour surrounding the museum:
After our stop in Tūrangi, we started heading north towards Auckland so we can be back in time for our return flight to the United States. On our way to the city, we took a one-night stop in Rotorua to check out the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland.
Wai-O-Tapu is a collection of hot springs and geysers showcasing the results of New Zealand’s geothermal activity. To put it in simpler terms, it appears like the Earth has really bad flatulence in this area, and to relieve itself, it is fuming copious amounts of stench and steam from every available hole in the ground.
I was a bit disappointed at how absently dim the glowworms were in the Waitomo Glowworm Caves compared to the marketing materials on their website, so I adjusted my prospects and went into Wai-O-Tapu with fairly low expectations. However, Wai-O-Tapu delivered on its promises, and the thermal park exceeded what was featured online.
It was overcast and raining on the day we went, so there was poor natural lighting and some of the colors weren’t quite as vibrant as they seem to usually be. Even then, it still had very interesting sights. The closest thing I could think of that I’ve seen before was the bubbling tar from the La Brea Tar Pits, but otherwise, Wai-O-Tapu was a completely novel experience for me.
Admission was done on a flat-rate basis. There were three sections to the geothermal park, and your ticket allows you to explore as few or as many of them as you prefer, so we walked through all three. Here is a collection of some photographs I captured during my self-guided tour:
I know basically nothing about The Lord of the Rings, never really found it that interesting or compelling, and have consumed neither the books nor the movies. With that being said, when people found out that I was taking a trip to New Zealand, an overwhelming number of people insisted that I do activities related to The Lord of the Rings, because apparently the country of New Zealand was used as a set for the movie (or something like that, I don’t exactly remember).
I’m sure it’s no surprise that I did not partake in those recommended The Lord of the Rings activities. However, I happened to come across a crater that was used to produce sound effects for one of the movies, so I figured I’d post a photo of it to soothe the fanatics and be able to say that I technically did see something related to the franchise.
After spending a long afternoon at the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, we continued our New Zealand trip by heading east to Tūrangi, a small town on the North Island Volcanic Plateau situated on the west bank of the Tongariro River.
If you didn’t catch it from previous blog posts, I’ve been traveling together with my friend Doug Wreden and doing all our tourism activities together. However, this was the first day where we explored separately—Doug did a strenuous hike across the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, while I opted to do a lighter trail in town because my stamina is not as good as his and I was exhausted from the previous three days of physical activity.
After preparing some bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, Greek yogurt, and orange juice for breakfast in our lodge, I headed out to the Tongariro River Trail, one of the entrances of which was right outside our door.
The northern side of the trail had an incline and some switchbacks that went up a few hundred feet in elevation, allowing hikers to get a nice view of the town and its surrounding areas.
After taking in the scenery, I descended the hill and made my way down and under the bridge and overpass of New Zealand State Highway 1 going over the Tongariro River.
While continuing on the path, I saw a man fishing in the river.
On the way back, I took a more residential route so that I could also see the town.
It wasn’t very busy, so the residential areas made for a very calming and peaceful walk with a nice mountain view as a backdrop.
Most of the inns, lodges, and motels in Tūrangi looked fairly dated and in need of renovations, and a lot of the better spots were farther out in the outskirts, so we had somewhat limited options for nice accommodations.
During my search, I came across River Birches and saw that it looked very well-maintained and had a good balance of modern touches while still sustaining a cozy cabin mood. They had an option to book out an entire three-bedroom cottage to ourselves; it was obviously much pricier than any of our other options, but because both Doug and I are financially comfortable, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to splurge for two nights to enhance our vacation.
The owners of the cottage made sure that we had any and all of our wishes fulfilled. There was incredible attention to detail in every aspect of the hospitality experience, and they provided a wealth of conveniences that made our stay feel seamless and pampered.
Our next overnight stop will be in Rotorua before looping back up north to Auckland.
After spending a few days in Auckland, we continued our New Zealand trip by driving south to Waitomo to explore their cave system. We booked two tours—one of the Waitomo Glowworm Cave and one of the Ruakuri Cave.
Photographs were not permitted inside the Waitomo Glowworm Cave, but I was able to snap this shot from outside after the boat tour was over.
In between the tours, we took a quick break and I had some lunch at their café.
The Ruakuri Cave was in a different area from the Waitomo Glowworm Cave, so we took our rental car over and met up with the tour guide at the Ruakuri entrance.
We descended into the cave through a long, winding ramp.
Our tour guide took us through the cave, explaining the history of the rock formations and teaching us about the biology of glowworms.
You may be wondering where the glowworms were. If you’re not familiar, glowworms are bioluminescent insect larvae. The marketing materials for the Wiatomo Glowworm Caves made them seem extremely bright and vibrant… but this is basically the best that we saw:
Keep in mind that this photo is from my camera’s raw sensor data with everything enhanced right up to the point where leveling it any higher would cause static to appear in the image. They were barely visible, and to make things worse, I have astigmatism so I could hardly see the lights and couldn’t really get my eyes to focus in on them.
In case it wasn’t obvious from the photograph, no, those are not real climbers—they set up those mannequins to demonstrate what people had to do a long time ago to enter and map out the cave.
The glowworms were disappointingly underwhelming. To give them the benefit of the doubt, there are certain seasons during which the glowworms are brighter and more visible, but based on what I saw, the photos that they show on their website seem outright deceptive.
With that being said, the cave system was interesting and I enjoyed seeing all the rock formations. I have been to Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota in the United States of America before, and it was nice seeing the difference in rock structures between the two.
