One final trip - Day 2 (Weta Workshop to Isengard)

December 28, 2014

We managed to get a lot done on our first real day of sight seeing as we embarked on our tour of the bottom half of the North island. We'd seen most of the top half with Mom & Dad a year ago, so when we had to cut down the route, we decided to focus on places we hadn't yet been.

Weta Workshop
To start off, we were in Wellington. Yes, we came here a couple months ago for our anniversary, but it was only about a 36 hour trip and we (and by "we" I really mean me) really wanted to go to the Weta workshop. Weta is the company that did the special effects for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, among others.

We got to the workshop early to take pictures and get souvenirs. We had a blast.

First we introduced ourselves to the Trolls: William, Bert and Tom

Troll feet are really big!

Here's an expanded view of the exterior of the workshop. It's literally in a neighborhood called Miramar - we laughed that we were going to Top Gun. So cool!

Random picture of a tree that we saw a lot of in this area. It was interesting because it's partially green and partially red. Reminds me of Christmas.

We also made sure to take care of the sign visibly posted not to touch the trolls. This is for you Sister Crankshaw (who did not follow the sign in her pictures).

Inside, Gollum looked a little wary as I prepared to give him a little kiss...

There was a whole cave of miniature figurines of every character from the the six movies you could possible think of. It was pretty cool.

We then went inside the workshop, but sadly no pictures were allowed in there. It was a really interesting tour that lasted a little over an hour because we asked so many questions. Our tour guide was an actual Weta employee, so she could explain how everything is made. 

She told us how she spent several months making chain mail for LotR battles. So Brian asked her if she added that expertise to her resume. Funny thing is she said her dad had asked her the exact same question. She also told us how on her first day of work she almost introduced herself to a dummy because it was so life-like. That would have been embarrassing!

We saw weapons, full size renderings of animated objets, armor, skulls, plasterings, even a life-size and life-like dummy of Sam Neill, etc. Here are some of the movies that were represented on the tour:

• Lord of the Rings trilogy

• The Hobbit trilogy

• King Kong

• District 13

• Can't remember the movie Sam Neill's body was in nor the giant stuffed bunny that looked like it came from Donnie Darko

Isengard
Once we completed our tour, it was time to get on the road and see some more sights before the end of the day. Our next stop: Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt.

Harcourt Park is an amazing, enormous and beautiful park. It also served as the sight for the grounds of Isengard in LotR (with a superimposed tower).

If you can tell, Brian is taking the picture from up on a hill about 5m high. This is because the park is built on a fault line. The Wellington Fault goes through the park and a large earthquake during the 19th century lifted the ground 5 meters and diverted the course of the Hutt River. Pretty cool story.

This post took us until about dinner time. Luckily its summer, New Zealand is very far south and there is going to be several more hours of light. Since this post is waxing long, I will include the remainder of our day in another post. Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the places from middle earth!