A really cool place, with a rather hilarious (and somewhat off the wall) owner who cracks some good jokes!

he showed me a cool place to pitch my tent and helped me with my laundry. There are lovely farm animals to pat, a pool, a nice, clean kitchen with a bunch of appliances and free food shelf. Definitely a highlight staying at this place during my trip.

Reviewed almost 6 years ago

Good value for a powered site.

Very friendly and helpful owner. Well stocked kitchen. Friendly piglets and a deer next door! Excellent location for black water rafting (opposite!).

Reviewed about 10 years ago and experienced in March 2014

We had a great time during our stay!

Everything is so tidy are clean, staff is amazing. The pool with salt water is good, water was clean and warm. The manager introduced us to animal family in the farm. Location is great, close to all caves and walks. Amazing experience,  would highly recommend!

Reviewed almost 3 years ago

Loved this place!

It has 4 powered sites at the back, Dave on the front desk was very kind. The lounge is very comfortable and feels like home. Lots of DVDs for rainy days and a fully equipped kitchen. Dave even has fresh coffee for you in the morning and did our laundry for us! He let our two young kids feed the baby lambs and we had lovely unlimited hot showers. Our favourite place that we have stayed at over the last month travelling around NZ. Free unlimited Wifi which was fast.

If you want to see what it looks like, you can watch our video review on youtube, just search the camp site name and 'The Flip Flop Family'

Happy Camping from The Flip Flop Family

Reviewed about 6 years ago

We loved our stay here.

I think maybe the staff had changed since the other reviewers stayed. The facilities were clean and the (male) receptionist was extremely helpful. Our kids loved interacting with the animals. There were lots of people staying there and everyone seemed pretty happy.

Reviewed over 10 years ago

YHA Waitomo is underwhelming at its best.

Where to begin?

1) Hostel receptionist was one of the rudest people we have ever encountered in our lives. Clearly hates her job, extremely unhelpful, and made us feel like we were asking the world of her after simple questions like, "Where can one get a bite to eat around here?". She was extremely pissed off when we presented our coupons for a free stay after getting our YHA NZ memberships, and said it was a really annoying thing to change on the computer because we had already booked online. Then she scolded us for arriving at the hostel 'ridiculously early' (~10am, because we took the only available bus from Rotorua), and told us to go sit on some couches for a while. Later, we bought a day's internet pass for $10, only to find that our laptop could not connect to the wifi network. We used the hostel computer instead, and when it started charging us $1/15 min we asked her what was going on and she told us the $10 day pass was only for the wifi network (which didn't work), and that not only would the $10 buy us only 2 hours on the computer, but we had to use it all in one session. When I asked about logging off and getting a refund because we didn't want to spend 2 hours on the computer right when we arrived, she said it was our fault and we should just deal with it. Very, very unpleasant.

2) The kitchen was the most disgusting thing we'd ever seen. The counters were dirty and wet with bugs crawling all over them, dirty dishes were strewn about, covered in flies, and the garbage was overflowing to boot. Gross.

And we have only been here for a few hours (sitting on the computer, trying to make use of the ridiculous $10 we just spent). This hostel is NOT recommended! Stay at the Rotorua YHA, which is fantastic, and come out here for a daytrip to see the caves. Someone should take that gumtree branch out of the receptionist's ass.

Reviewed almost 13 years ago