Commemorate the 15th anniversary of New Zealand’s role as the film location for the Lord of the Rings trilogy with the new Middle Earth Travel portal from Tourism New Zealand and Middle Earth-themed itineraries from Zicasso Handcrafted Travel. Begin with a fun website quiz that allows you to customize your itinerary choices based on whether you’d travel as a wizard, elf, dwarf or hobbit (characters in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books by J. R. R. Tolkien and the movies by New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson). A new anniversary tour from the luxury travel planners at Zicasso allows you to then tailor your travel experience with a character-inspired journey based on your quiz results.

Highlights of the 15-day tour include visiting the silversmith and shop where the rings from the film were crafted, exclusive access to behind-the-scenes filming locations and a private, after-hours tour of the design studio responsible for creating the costumes and weaponry used in the films. Along the way, the route takes in a vineyard visit near Queenstown, an off-road adventure tour, a scenic helicopter flight above the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, a tour through the hobbit holes and pubs of Hobbiton, walks beside the gurgling mud pools and geysers in Wai-O-Tapu and Waimangu Volcanic Valley and a jet-boat excursion along the glacier-fed Arrow River. Prices, based on double occupancy, begin at $5,935 per person. Along with all activities described in the itinerary, this fee includes round-trip flights between Los Angeles (LAX) and Auckland (AKL), internal flights from Queenstown (ZQN) to Auckland, full-size car rental and inter-island ferry crossings.