Waiheke Island Tour

A Waiheke Island tour from Auckland is, for most people, the ferry to Matiatia plus a way round the island: a hop-on hop-off bus, the local buses, an e-bike or a guided coach. The usual pick is Fullers360’s ticket that pairs the return ferry with a day on the Western Explorer bus, from US$59 a person, rated 4.6 from 3,904 reviews (checked October 2026): the 9:00 ferry, the bus from 10:00, and a loop of 16 stops you get on and off all day. Its calendar is on this page.

Check dates for the ferry and bus day →

Pick by the day you want:

Prices and ratings from GetYourGuide, checked October 2026; operators change prices, so treat them as a guide, not a quote.

Getting there

Fullers360’s ferries leave from Piers 11 and 12 at the Downtown Ferry Terminal, 99 Quay Street, a short walk from Britomart, and reach Matiatia in about 40 to 45 minutes; a few sailings call at Devonport and take about 10 minutes longer. There are up to 22 sailings a day on peak days, from 06:00 on weekdays and from 07:00 at weekends. A Standard adult return is NZ$65 and a child’s (5 to 15) NZ$29; Priority, NZ$75, books a set sailing and boards ahead of the Standard queue. The cheaper NZ$48.50 Off-Peak return is only for leaving Auckland from 1 pm and Waiheke from 7 pm, so it does not fit a morning day out (Fullers360, October 2026). The ferry cost guide has every fare, and the zipline and the 30-minute flight below need a ferry ticket of their own; the guided day includes it.

On the ferry and bus ticket, swap the voucher at the ticket office at least 60 minutes before sailing; the ticket is not valid on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday or ANZAC Day.

Getting around once you land

The Western Explorer is the hop-on hop-off bus on the ferry and bus ticket. It leaves Matiatia daily from 10:00 and loops through 16 stops in about 80 minutes, every 30 or 60 minutes depending on the day and the season, with an on-board host and live bus tracking in the Fullers360 app; stops include Mudbrick, Cable Bay, Stonyridge and Batch, the Allpress olive grove, Oneroa village and Onetangi Beach. The Eastern Explorer is a separate Fullers360 loop to the far eastern end, Man O’ War and a craft distillery among its 10 stops, about 110 minutes, Wednesday to Sunday only.

Auckland Transport’s buses are the cheaper way to move between the villages: routes 50A and 50B run from Matiatia through Oneroa, Surfdale and Ostend to Onetangi, the 501 runs to Kennedy Point and the 502 via Palm Beach to Ōmiha, and most connect with the ferries. E-bikes can be hired at Matiatia with Fullers360’s ferry package, NZ$184 with the ferry and a helmet, collected before 2 pm; they are for sealed roads only, not the unsealed roads out east to Orapiu, Man O’ War and Stony Batter. The bus guide compares all of them, with the times that catch people out.

See the ferry and bus day's calendar →

What to do in a day

Walk from the ferry. Te Ara Hura, Auckland Council’s walking network, joins about 100 km of tracks around the island in four areas, Headlands, Beaches ’n’ Baches, Forest Heart and Far End, marked by its own posts; you can start anywhere and go either way. From Matiatia, the headland track runs to Cable Bay, Owhanake Bay and Oneroa village, and back.

Swim. Oneroa has about a kilometre of sand below the main village, with Little Oneroa next door at low tide; Palm Beach is the next bay east; Onetangi, on the north coast, is the island’s longest beach at about 2 km, with bars and restaurants along The Strand. The beaches guide says which suits what, and Auckland’s Safeswim service shows live water quality for each of them on the day.

Fly a zipline. EcoZip’s day is three dual ziplines of more than 200 m each over a vineyard and native forest, then a 25-minute guided bush walk back, about 3 hours with pickup at Matiatia, from US$84 a person, rated 4.9 from 784 reviews (checked October 2026). Waiheke zipline compares it with Man O’ War’s Forest Flight at the eastern end.

See it from the air. Waiheke Wings flies a 30-minute scenic flight from the island’s aerodrome, from US$112 a person (checked October 2026), weather permitting.

Stony Batter. At the far eastern end, the Stony Batter Historic Reserve holds one of New Zealand’s largest Second World War coastal batteries: built from 1943, two guns installed, each fired twice in a 1951 training exercise and never in combat. Guided tunnel tours are temporarily unavailable while Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki and Man O’ War Vineyards, the new kaitiaki, settle arrangements with the Department of Conservation; the reserve itself is open (October 2026). It is 35 to 50 minutes’ drive from Matiatia, the last stretch unsealed.

Saturday morning. The Ostend Market runs every Saturday from 7.30 am to 1 pm.

Things to do on Waiheke without a car puts these together by bus, on foot and by e-bike.

Wine, if you want it

Waiheke’s vineyards are a stop or two on the Western Explorer, and a guided day does the driving: Fullers360’s Taste of Waiheke takes a coach to the Allpress olive grove, a two-course lunch with a glass of wine at Batch, and tastings at Casita Miro and Mudbrick, from US$163 a person with the ferry (checked October 2026); it is for adults, with 16- and 17-year-olds allowed alongside a parent. For choosing between the wine tours themselves, waiheke-wine-tour.com compares them one by one.

Day trip or a night

Most visitors come for the day: the ferries run from early morning to late evening, so you can stay for dinner. Plan the way back, though. Guests on the ferry and bus ticket in June and September 2026 wrote that restaurants and vineyards had closed by mid-afternoon or early evening and that they had waited for buses that did not come, so check the last bus in the Fullers360 app or Auckland Transport’s timetable before a late meal. A night lets you take the island slowly and walk the beaches before the first ferry arrives. Is Waiheke worth it? weighs a day against a night, and summer against winter.

Hotels in Oneroa Hotels in Onetangi

How these facts were checked

Written 29 October 2026. Tour prices, ratings, review counts, inclusions and the bus loop on the ferry and bus ticket are from the GetYourGuide listings, read in US dollars on 29 October 2026. Ferry fares, crossing times, sailings, piers, the island’s size, the Explorer buses and the e-bike package are from Fullers360’s own pages; the local bus routes from Auckland Transport’s Waiheke timetable effective 25 October 2024; Te Ara Hura from Auckland Council; the beaches’ lengths and the coastline from Auckland Unlimited; live water quality from Safeswim; Stony Batter’s history and the tour status from the Stony Batter Tunnels site; the zipline comparison from EcoZip’s and Man O’ War’s own pages; the vehicle ferry from SeaLink. The two guest reports are from the newest 350 GetYourGuide reviews of the ferry and bus ticket. All read in October 2026.