Rotorua: Attractions set to thrill

Families' eyes will light up with excitement as they experience new attractions in Rotorua, including the Rainbow Springs exotic bird show and Big Splash ride, the colourful Jelly Belly store at Skyline Rotorua and the variety of animals at Paradise Valley Springs and Agrodome.

The Rainbow Springs Kiwi Wildlife Park's new Big Splash ride opened earlier this year and is an incredible 430 metre long water ride which showcases New Zealand's ecological evolution.Using intriguing stories, the ride brings New Zealand's history - and extinct dinosaurs, moa and the Haast eagle - to life while providing a fun ride with an adrenalin-boosting Big Splash finale, where you may just get a tad wet.

The family will also enjoy the freeflight exotic bird show, as the colourful parrots entertain with engaging antics. A show filled with fascinating facts, the feathered entertainers don't just fly, some of them will also show off their amazing intellect with a range of games and tricks. Rainbow Springs has also just opened a new interactive playground for the little ones.

If you're heading to family favourite the Luge, your sweet tooth will be excited to see a new Jelly Belly gourmet jelly bean store and gallery. The kids can also spin the Bean Boozled winning wheel and see a jelly bean gallery featuring artworks made from thousands of jelly beans. From Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa recreated using more than 17,000 jelly beans to Van Gogh's Starry Night with more than 11,500, the large-scale artworks in the jelly bean art gallery are incredible. There is even a gondola cabin partially covered in jelly beans - a spectacular sight moving up and down Mount Ngongotaha.

The family can also race down the Luge tracks, experience Skyvue (a 4D simulator) and the Skyswing for an adrenalin rush over Lake Rotorua.

At Paradise Valley Springs you can see the pride of African lions being fed, as well as kea, kakariki and possum. Set among 20 hectares of native bush, the family can get up close to alpacas, goats, sheep, deer, pigs, thar and wallabies.

For those wanting to learn more about farm life, you can't go past the worldfamous Agrodome. This sheep show introduces nine breeds of sheep, has a live sheep-shearing demonstration and gives you the chance to bid on a sheep in a lively auction. The family will be amazed by the remarkable dogs as they show how they keep the sheep in line in a live dog trial and kids can even have the opportunity to feed the lambs or hand milk a cow.

On Rotorua Duck tours, the family can learn more about Rotorua city on an amphibious WW2 vehicle which dips into some of Rotorua's lakes and aMAZE me is focused on providing good old-fashioned fun for families at an affordable price where children can find their way through a 1.4km hedge maze, pet animals, see the monarch butterfly house and play 1m x 1m board games including ludo, checkers and snakes'n'ladders. Other games include sack racing, tug'o'war, quoits, swingball and volleyball.