Fancy feeding a stingray? What about floating alongside a shark? You can, and in complete safety, beneath the tarmac on Auckland's Tamaki Drive.
You'll be in the hands of an underwater guide, a certified diver who will give you a personal introduction to stingrays (some weighing a whopping 200kg), whaler sharks, sevengills and wobbegong sharks.
You can thank Kelly Tarlton for this watery one-on-one interaction. It was his dream to deliver this kind of experience to the public and to display Southern Ocean marine life from a diver's perspective.
In 1985, his vision became a reality with the opening of Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World.
An amazing feat of engineering design, the facility includes a moving viewing platform which travels under an acrylic tunnel filled with sharks, piranhas, turtles, crayfish, moray eels, brightly coloured and poisonous fish.
Any aspirations of getting up close and personal with wildlife can also be fulfilled at the zoo.
ZOOM, which is basically the equivalent to a backstage pass at Auckland Zoo, lets you experience first-hand what it's like to help a keeper wash down an elephant, hand-feed the Madagascan ring-tailed lemurs and South American cotton-topped tamarins, or head into the cheetah's enclosure to feel first-hand the reverberations of that famously loud purr (which zoo keepers liken to the sound of a softly idling V8 engine).
Sea lions, hippos, rhino tigers, elephants, primates or African animals - these are all wildlife that you can interact with via the Auckland Zoo's ZOOM tours.
Wanna get crazy?
At Rainbow's End you'll get flung upside down, spun around, stuck in a runaway mine cart, swallowed by a big green robot, hurled down a five metre water chute, and dropped 18 storeys at 82kph! New Zealand's premier theme park celebrates 25 years entertaining families next year and offers crazy rides you won't find anywhere else in the country. The park's newest attraction Power Surge is the closest you can come to being in a washing machine without actually getting in a washing machine!
If that's too much for you there are the classic thrills of NZ's only corkscrew rollercoaster, the beautiful Cadbury Land Castle with heaps of crazy rides for the littlies or perhaps a round of mini-golf for those who like their fun a little more sedate.