Waitomo Glowworm Caves
3.9 290 reviews
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Waitomo is genuinely hard to fault as a natural experience. Thousands of glowworms overhead while you drift through an underground cave on a silent boat is one of those things that actually lives up to the idea of it. The grotto ceiling really does look like a sky full of stars, just way closer and stranger.
The honest catch most travellers mention is the price versus the time you get. The standard boat tour is around 45 minutes and feels short for what you pay. If you can stretch the budget and the schedule, the longer cave options, including Ruakuri, give you a lot more and are worth the extra. Go in a smaller group if you can and be ready to turn your phone flash off before you get in there, plenty of people forget and the guides have to keep reminding them.
It gets busy, especially in peak season. Crowds can make it noisier than you'd like when the boat is at its best moment. Earlier in the day tends to be the quieter side if you have flexibility.
The Rankers code gets you 10% off, which helps offset what is genuinely a pricey ticket. Worth using.
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Information
Waitomo Glowworm Caves
Be amazed by the thousands of magical glowworms above as you glide gently by boat through the world famous Waitomo Glowworm Caves. For spectacular limestone formations and an intimate, up close glowworm experience Ruakuri Cave is accessible through an innovative spiral entrance.
Details
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Organisation |
Waitomo Glowworm CavesCommercial organisation |
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Location |
North Island ▷ Waikato ▷ Waitomo |
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Operating Season And Hours |
Waitomo Glowworm Caves: Open daily 8:30am - 5:00pm. Ruakuri Cave: Open daily 10:00am - 3:30pm. Aranui Cave: Friday to Sunday, 11:30am and 1:00pm. Pre-booking is essential for all tours. |
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Promo Code Save 10% |
Use discount code RANKERS with Waitomo Glowworm Caves and save 10%. |
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Caving
Google Maps
Reviews
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Very impressive.
Calum Penn -
Beautiful caves and glowworms.....
Mathilde Arp -
Interesting.
Alan Bellerby -
Never seen before.
SonjaG -
Informative but very large group.
Jonathan Tuthill
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Worth going Once and a humble request to please check your phone settings and turn off your flashes prior to it, because they do allow you to take some pictures and videos in the end but on a condition
that you keep your flashes off. But still many people do not understand this basic instruction.
I have Uploaded a HD quality Youtube video on my Channel named Somendra Solanki. Check that video for your reference before going.
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Beautiful cave!
Glowworms were magical, never saw so many in my life! Actual boat tour is short, but when you’ve read the information about the tour first, you’ll know what to expect.
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Really enjoyed this and the boat ride seeing the glowworms was great.
However, overall the guided tour felt a bit short for the price and we were a little rushed around the caves.
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Great tour we did with a discount, otherwise expensive.
If you can, do the 7 hour tour - you will get much more time in the cave.
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Perfect guide.
The cave is beautiful and the little travel on a boat in the dark was awesome!! The problem is the price, $51 for 45 minutes is obviously too much!
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Before we went to the glowworm caves, we stayed at a free camping spot where we had already seen glowworms.
Waitomo was nice, but very busy and too quick.
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I have done the caves a couple of times and keep coming back, but it has become more pricey over the years.
We did the Waitomo Glowworm Cave with our 8 month old baby.
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The glowworms are amazing but the visit is short, at some point it disturbs the glowworms and we felt it was expensive.
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Did the main cave should have done the three hour tour at different cave.
Havnt been to original cave in ten years got nostalgic shouldn’t have bothered rushed experience and where the hell had all the glow worms gone now there’s just pockets not continuous like stars in the night. Overpriced maybe they need to give it a rest .if you do decide go first thing before your buses get there
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Set in a beautiful valley, the cave is nothing really special, the glowworms are pretty nice.
$50 is way too expensive.
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I came for an immersive engagement with nature, and my stomach sank as soon as they shuffled us in front of a photographer and forced us to pose with a plush cartoon glowworm.
I had read about glowworm caves long before I came to New Zealand and it was one of the primary things I wanted to experience while there. For the advertised 45 minute tour, they led us on foot in large groups of ~50 people into a cave. Other groups were directly ahead of and behind us as we shuffled along trying not to bump into each other in the close quarters. This, in combination with the screaming infants and children present, made it difficult to impossible to hear our guide in the echoing chamber. What we did manage to hear, however, was predominately a feeble attempt at humor, or random bits of trivia designed to flush out the tour. Our guide highlighted various shapes among the stalactites, for example, which he said bore a resemblance to animals or celebrities. He also sang a traditional hymn to demonstrate the acoustics of the cavern, which might have been interesting had we not already heard preceding groups make the same demonstration, and had it not been eclipsed by the incessant peals of screaming children.
The main event that we had paid to see was restricted to a single small cave which we drifted in and out of in under five minutes. After the torment of being crushed into an echo chamber for nearly an hour with shrill, disinterested youngsters and a young guide groping awkwardly for anything to entertain us with, a brief sip of splendor was not enough to restore the high spirits I'd arrived in.
This experience would have been significantly improved had they instituted an age limit and separated the crowds into significantly smaller groups. It could only have been saved, however, if they had spent more time on the glowworms and charged a more reasonable fee for the proportion allotted to the primary attraction.
-
Worth going Once and a humble request to please check your phone settings and turn off your flashes prior to it, because they do allow you to take some pictures and videos in the end but on a condition
that you keep your flashes off. But still many people do not understand this basic instruction.
I have Uploaded a HD quality Youtube video on my Channel named Somendra Solanki. Check that video for your reference before going.
-
Beautiful cave!
Glowworms were magical, never saw so many in my life! Actual boat tour is short, but when you’ve read the information about the tour first, you’ll know what to expect.
-
I came for an immersive engagement with nature, and my stomach sank as soon as they shuffled us in front of a photographer and forced us to pose with a plush cartoon glowworm.
I had read about glowworm caves long before I came to New Zealand and it was one of the primary things I wanted to experience while there. For the advertised 45 minute tour, they led us on foot in large groups of ~50 people into a cave. Other groups were directly ahead of and behind us as we shuffled along trying not to bump into each other in the close quarters. This, in combination with the screaming infants and children present, made it difficult to impossible to hear our guide in the echoing chamber. What we did manage to hear, however, was predominately a feeble attempt at humor, or random bits of trivia designed to flush out the tour. Our guide highlighted various shapes among the stalactites, for example, which he said bore a resemblance to animals or celebrities. He also sang a traditional hymn to demonstrate the acoustics of the cavern, which might have been interesting had we not already heard preceding groups make the same demonstration, and had it not been eclipsed by the incessant peals of screaming children.
The main event that we had paid to see was restricted to a single small cave which we drifted in and out of in under five minutes. After the torment of being crushed into an echo chamber for nearly an hour with shrill, disinterested youngsters and a young guide groping awkwardly for anything to entertain us with, a brief sip of splendor was not enough to restore the high spirits I'd arrived in.
This experience would have been significantly improved had they instituted an age limit and separated the crowds into significantly smaller groups. It could only have been saved, however, if they had spent more time on the glowworms and charged a more reasonable fee for the proportion allotted to the primary attraction.
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Did the main cave should have done the three hour tour at different cave.
Havnt been to original cave in ten years got nostalgic shouldn’t have bothered rushed experience and where the hell had all the glow worms gone now there’s just pockets not continuous like stars in the night. Overpriced maybe they need to give it a rest .if you do decide go first thing before your buses get there
-
-
Before we went to the glowworm caves, we stayed at a free camping spot where we had already seen glowworms.
Waitomo was nice, but very busy and too quick.
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Great tour we did with a discount, otherwise expensive.
If you can, do the 7 hour tour - you will get much more time in the cave.
-
Perfect guide.
The cave is beautiful and the little travel on a boat in the dark was awesome!! The problem is the price, $51 for 45 minutes is obviously too much!
-
-
Really enjoyed this and the boat ride seeing the glowworms was great.
However, overall the guided tour felt a bit short for the price and we were a little rushed around the caves.
-
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Set in a beautiful valley, the cave is nothing really special, the glowworms are pretty nice.
$50 is way too expensive.
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The glowworms are amazing but the visit is short, at some point it disturbs the glowworms and we felt it was expensive.
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I have done the caves a couple of times and keep coming back, but it has become more pricey over the years.
We did the Waitomo Glowworm Cave with our 8 month old baby.
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All three caves are worth visiting, but especially the glowworm cave.
Staff were really informative. Price was not bad and we had a good full day.
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Very enjoyable experience.
We wished the part with the glowworms had been a little longer.
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Awesome experience in the caves.
Abseiling and climbing through the cave and seeing the glowworms!
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The tour guide was very kind and explained everything about glowworms and the cave.
You could see hundreds of glowworms and not just a few which was quite impressive.