Great Barrier Reef Tours and Vacations

Our trip included three couples from Massachusetts. We worked with Zicasso's travel agency to customize a trip to Australia. In general, the trip was excellent. Most of the travel logistics were perfect. All transfers were on time. All of the guides were on time, passionate about Australia, and were very good to excellent. All the hotels were also very good to excellent. The travel app was very helpful for keeping us updated on trip logistics. Most logistics worked out well. Most of the tours arranged were excellent. The fly nets the agency provided were a godsend in Uluru. Seeing Australia's unique wildlife, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, going to a footy game, walking around cities, meeting indigenous guides, and simply being in Australia is an experience we will never forget. The Great Ocean Road excursion in Melbourne was beautiful, but eight hours in a tour bus was very long. The geographic size of Australia is something visitors have to deal with.

I would have rated the trip five stars except for the following minor issues. We arranged travel between the US and Australia ourselves (not using the agency), which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Therefore, most of the travel headaches we experienced are not included in this review. The one miss they should have caught was informing us that a New Zealand ETA is needed for transiting through Auckland, New Zealand (even though we did not clear New Zealand customs). We were able to apply and get the ETA at the Houston airport just before boarding the plane, but the stress could easily have been avoided had we realized we needed this document before the trip began.

The instructions for where to meet for the backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House were a little off. We were told to meet the tour at 6.45am, downstairs by the information booth. This turned out to be the meeting place for the outside tour. By 6.55am, fighting jetlag and the early hour, we figured the meeting place for the backstage tour was upstairs and, luckily, we made it in time for our 7am tour, which was excellent.

The selection of wineries we visited in Adelaide wasn't ideal. Several did not ship their products to the US, which meant, for practical reasons, we could only purchase a bottle or two. Ideally, we should only visit wineries that ship wine to the States.

Communicating with the agency during the trip was more challenging than we expected. For some reason, we didn't always get their emails or text messages. It wasn't clear how often they checked up on us during our journey. Last year, we arranged a similar trip to Greece and the company we worked with provided us with a mobile phone for the duration of the trip to facilitate communications. They regularly called us to see how the trip was going. In our opinion, this capability and handholding would improve the service this agency provides.

I am very pleased to have worked with Zicasso’s travel agent and her company. I wanted to travel to Australia and New Zealand, and our agent’s suggestions on what and where to go and see were great. Where does one begin in planning for the trip and all the logistics to make it happen? I depended on your group and found the results exceeded my expectations. The trip flowed well and the experiences were great. Thank you for making the trip about seeing and experiencing rather than worrying about the logistics!  

There were many positive experiences, but the little details, like choosing the right rental car for the NZ roads and having a great limo service, made the difference. What was the highlight?  I wish I could distill it to one or two. I would rate Milford Sound and the Great Barrier Reef highly, but it was the overall experience that stood out. My personal thanks and those of my travel mates.

The process was straightforward and Zicasso's trip planner was very easy to work with. She came up with an itinerary that we were able to tweak and work with to fit our timeline and expectations.

In planning our trip to Australia and New Zealand, the representative for this travel company listened to our desires and incorporated them into an itinerary that met our needs. All of the tours, guides, transfers, and drivers were very good. Most of the tours were small group, which we prefer, although a couple of tours were as large as 24. The guides on all of our walking tours were incredibly informative. We learned so much.

We have traveled with our companion on nine trips through Zicasso. This is the first time we have felt that the partner travel company did not take all of our circumstances into account. We clearly stated we were older travelers. However, changes to our accommodations after the initial proposal had us walking 20 minutes to town in one place and uphill on the return. Staying in apartment-style lodgings, we were a mile from the nearest store to get breakfast supplies. Another of our hotels had an incredible number of stairs. When we expressed our disappointment in one of these to our agent by email, we got no response. Our planner was on holiday and no one else seemed to be checking her emails.

The recommendations for suggested activities on our free days were also generic and frequently were for activities that required a car to reach. It seems this company plans a lot of self-driving trips and the fact we were not driving was not reflected in our suggestions.

The trip planning was excellent and we were able to cover Australia and New Zealand in two weeks. The Zicasso travel company was owned and operated by our travel agent, who was our primary contact in terms of planning and communication before, during, and after the trip.

Everything went great with our trip. A couple of small, unforeseen hiccups were well managed by Zicasso's travel agency. We had a flight cancelled due to mechanical issues that would have set us back by a day. The agency was able to reroute us via a different airline so our trip itinerary could stay intact. Also, there was an issue with our Sydney Opera House tour (due to a Sydney Opera House issue) and they were able to send us the necessary information very quickly so we could go on the tour.