My husband turned 50 back in June 2022 and for his birthday I splurged out and surprised him with VIP tickets to see Elton John in Auckland, NZ!
Back stage tour, photo in front of Elton’s piano, goodie bag, front row seats right smack bang in the middle, in front of Sir Elton himself… Excited much… Hell Yes!!
After I purchased these tickets, Elton released concert dates for Newcastle. Now let me explain the irony here, we have an apartment on Newcastle Harbour which is a 5 minute drive to the stadium where Elton was playing 🤦♀️
Anyway, we decided to make a little mini get away to Auckland, concert and 4 days of site seeing. I see no negatives here LOL. Fly out on a Thursday to Auckland and back home on the following Wednesday. YEAH!!!!
Now my husband loves Elton John, seen him 6 times already so he loved his present. Super excited to be that close to such an amazing artist.
The time finally came… Concert Time!!!
We were booked to fly out with Air New Zealand on Thursday 26th January, again quite ironic Australia Day LOL
We had some family medical issues I needed to be home for quite urgently so we had to delay our flights by 24 hours… Costly to change out flights but worth it for family and peace of mind.
Now that was the first of our dilemmas on this little trip and it wasn’t going to be the last…
We made it to Sydney Airport all excited, knowing everything was good at home, smooth transition through security… Hello Airport Bar!!! boarded and now on our way…..
Here is a HINT for flying with Air New Zealand… your ticket does not include a meal… you must pay extra when purchasing a ticket for this….
Hmmmm thought we must have been flying Jetstar for a minute there.
We were almost at Auckland when the captain announced….
We will be starting our descent into Auckland but we will not be descending very low as there is a lot of rain, wind and there are issues with runway lighting. We will be moving into a holding pattern and awaiting further instructions… I hope everyone read that in an offical Captain sounding voice LOL
OK, so that doesn’t seem so bad, hmmm lets see how we go!
The next announcement was we were diverting to Christchurch!
WTF! That is on the South Island, we needed to be on the North Island! Oh Gosh…. What is going on down there?
Then another announcement… we will be refuelling in Christchurch then heading back to Auckland! YES!!! Ok, this is good, big sigh of relief…
But that relief didn’t last long as another announcement was that we will be disembarking and not heading back to Auckland… Oh gosh! Talk about mixed signals 😂
Now, as you know you can’t just pop a text out mid flight and find out what is going on. We were lucky to be sitting next to where the cabin crew were chatting so we got some further information.
- Auckland is flooded!
- The airport is flooded!
- The roads to the airport are cut off!
- Cars are underwater!
- Houses are flooded!
OMG
We landed in Christchurch, disembarked our flight. All flights into Auckland were being diverted to Christchurch Airport so you can imagine how many people were in the Airport trying to get their bags, go through Customs and get the hell out of there!
Not only that but an announcement was made that there was no available accommodation in Christchurch being organised so we were advised to search for our own accommodation. Thankfully my husband was already onto it and he had secured ourselves a room at one of the airport motels, Sudima.
Lucky! Now this was to be one of our first lucky breaks…
Standing in line with thousands of others trying to navigate security, baggage collection and customs, you start chatting to those around you… well I do anyway LOL
I found out that most people on our flight were only transiting through Auckland, some to the Cook Islands, Los Angeles, Honolulu. Others were diverted to Christchurch were flying in from Honolulu, China, Sydney. I also heard that a flight from Dubai almost got here then was turned around to go back to Dubai, same with a flight out of the USA. Can you imagine flying 13 hours or so to go nowhere!!!!
I guess we weren’t so bad after all….
After finally leaving the airport at 10:30pm (NZ time) we walked 5 minutes to Sudima to have some food, definitely a drink and hopefully a good night sleep.
We made it, walking as fast as we could… bloody hell it was cold, the wind blowing and of course I wore a short flowing dress for the flight…
So imagine this, I have my bag, its raining, its windy, its cold and I am trying to run… trying to hold my dress down… trying not to go faster than the stupid wheels on my bag are built for… trying not to laugh or cry what that was going on LOL. It would have been a sight to see that’s for sure.
We got to our accommodation and there was a line upon of about 15 deep trying to check in… Thankfully we were all in the same boat and were just pleased we all had a place to sleep that night… Well some were definitely whinging more than others… like a lot!!! But hey people deal with things differently… well that is what I was telling myself to get through the wait LOL
All of a sudden I remembered the accommodation I had booked in Auckland at Four Point by Sheraton. These guys were amazing! I had chatted to them via the Bonvoy Marriott app before leaving to change my arrival date. No charge… thank you! Now I messaged again to say that we would not make it tonight but were still hoping to arrive the following day. All good, not charge again!
After securing our room key… I said to my husband, we are going straight to the bar first before we head up to the room…
Sat down and said bring me something strong to my husband LOL. He came back… the bar was closed WTF!!!
It was admittedly 11:30pm but hey there were hundreds of people coming in from the airport, no food, no drinks, tired… keep the bloody bar open!!!
So we head to the room, NO MINI BAR…
Ok, so I did not get upset or annoyed at anything we had been through so far but this was texting my patience… The restaurant was closed as well but room service was available, albeit with at least a 2 hour delay, which I could fully understand.
So off we went for a couple of minutes walk to McDonald’s… midnight Maccas oh I felt like I was a teenager again!
Sleep Time…
Up we get, refreshed, off for our morning walk!
Breakfast in our Motel… Now, the Sudima staff were amazing, from check in, breakfast service and the staff waiting on us while we hung around the lounge area waiting for instructions from Air New Zealand. Daniel went above and beyond to help not only us but everyone else that was here as well… he could pick out a great wine too LOL thanks Daniel! Yes it was well before noon but I didn’t care LOL I am on holidays right??????
Then back to the realities of the situation….
Ok, so here we have it… It is Saturday morning, Auckland Airport is closed, Auckland has now been declared a state of emergency, AEG Presents keep telling me that Elton John is still going ahead… So we decide to sit it out until lunch time to decide, either…
- We hopfully get a flight to Auckland, although we have resigned to the fact that we will miss the VIP tour but may still get to the concert.
- Hire a car, do a little tour of the top of the South Island, then drive back to Auckland arriving on Wednesday for our flight home
There was not point in us heading to Auckland if the concert was off as Auckland was a mess.
At 12:15pm we got notification that the Elton John Concert had been cancelled…
We both have mixed feelings about the cancellation…. Firstly, we obviously really wanted to go, have the VIP experience and just immerse ourselves in the moment. Secondly, the reality was we were not going to make the VIP tour and if it was cancelled we would at least get our money back… and these tickets were not cheap!
Hire car it is then…
So again I had to message Four Points by Sheraton in Auckland to say that we were definitely needing to cancel our entire stay. I can not express how grateful I was for them. They actually held our room the previous night just in case we somehow managed to arrive, at no charge!
Ok, we were now a couple of drinks in but at least it was after noon now LOL
We booked a hire care for a 2pm pick up, rough schedule of our road trip from Christchurch to Auckland set…
What could possibly go wrong???
