We visited the Hobbiton film set on the weekend. Its about 2 hours south of Auckland. All of the set has been reconstructed again as they have recently been there filming the 2 new Hobbit films. I'm not a big Lord of the Rings fan but the tour was really interesting, unfortunately we had no hard core fans on our tour, apparently people go on the tours dressed up and re-enact scenes from the film. Had to watch the first film after going to see on TV what we had seen on the tour.