Make Your Next Trip Extraordinary

James Masi and Holly Hansen at the Blue Mountains in Australia.

James Masi and Holly Hansen enjoy a sunny day in the Blue Mountains.

We had a trip to New Zealand & Australia which was partly a cruise and partly land. The land arrangements were handled by Sarah Farag’s and Stuart Rigg’s offices in each country. This is a review of the Australia office, which is headed by Stuart Rigg, but our contact throughout the process was Jacki Lang. Jacki planned our February 2024 dates, which involved 3 days in Melbourne and 4 days in Sydney.

There are not enough superlatives to describe Jacki Lang. We worked with her for probably 2 years because the trip was cancelled once due to Covid closures, then our replacement cruise was cancelled by the cruise line. We finally made it this year and poor Jacki had to revise our itinerary 3 times to get there. Furthermore, we decided to disembark from our cruise early, so our 1 day in Melbourne became 3 days at literally the last minute. Even though she had no notice and it was the weekend, Jacki was able to come up with itineraries for 2 additional unplanned days in Melbourne. She even met us at the Sydney airport when we arrived there! This is just above and beyond the call in my book.

We did interesting things every day in both Melbourne and Sydney and had fabulous guides/drivers throughout. Our visit was perfect, including the hotels, the great WOW Moment on the Yarra River, the fun water-taxi ride to one of our restaurant dinners and the helicopter trip over Sydney Harbor. All her ideas, like everything else. I felt like I knew her as a personal friend at the end. She is professional, thorough and responsive—everything you want when planning a trip like this.

My wife and I went on a 3+ week journey around Westerrn Australia and Tasmania. We worked with Jacki Lang. She put together a very complex itinerary that included tickets to the Australian Open (which is awesome), a weeklong driving and hiking trip around Tasmania in its National Parks and winery visits in the Margaret River Valley, as well as the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. She found us great inns and lodges throughout this trip, along with wonderful guides in Tasmania and around Perth and Margaret River and Mornington Peninsula. It was great to be with her drivers to see the wineries with no stress and in all cases she found unique restaurants associated with the wineries that we really enjoyed. She was very responsive to all our requests via email. Overall the trip was a delight and we would recommend visiting Tasmania as well as the winery regions of Australia.

The Bengtzen family on a private yacht at Great Barrier Reef, Australia.

The Bengtzen family spent a day snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef from a private yacht.

New Year’s in Australia had been a dream of mine since I was 14, and the trip that Stuart and Jacki put together for us did not disappoint! We began in Sydney, where we stayed at the Shangri-La hotel. It gave us an amazing view for the fireworks, which were absolutely incredible. It was perfect for us and our adult kids to watch and not have to fight the crowds. The hotel breakfast was also amazing every morning, with an incredible view as well. Stuart’s office also made amazing dinner reservations, so we ate well.

From Sydney we went to Hayman Island in the Whitsunday Islands. This was a one-of-a-kind experience. From here we were able to have a private snorkeling trip to both the Great Barrier Reef inner and outer reefs. The company they booked us with, Ocean Dynamics, was wonderful. Restaurants on the island were fantastic and the beach is heaven.

From Hayman we went to Noosa, where we had an incredible experience kayaking on the ocean. Our guide was amazing. The shopping and food were wonderful and gave us a great end to our trip.

None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t found Wendy Perrin and her referral of Stuart. Stuart and Jacki then took our dates, our family info, and planned a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us. I can not recommend them enough and will use them again in the future!

We chose Jacki Lang to plan our Tasmanian adventure, but before heading to Tassie, we had an incredible evening enjoying the excitement of a Sydney New Year’s Eve Celebration that could have only been orchestrated by a true professional like Jacki. Jacki made all the arrangements and everything fell into place without even the slightest hitch. She even arranged for a day tour with an excellent guide, Peter, our first day in Sydney. Although we have been to Sydney several times, Peter showed us places we had never seen, answered our questions, and explained so much about Australia and Australians to us. That evening, we boarded Sydney’s newest super yacht, The Jackson, for a night of dinner and music right in the harbor. I mean, seriously, we were front and center for the show. Dinner was a multi-course extravaganza with an open bar and Veuve Clicquot flowing as a live band played. We first were treated to the 9pm family fireworks show and then witnessed the grand finale (I should say great beginning of 2024) as the most amazing fireworks we’ve ever seen exploded above us. We fell into bed in the wee hours of 1 January 2024, but were up again before long to catch a flight to Tasmania. There we picked up our rental vehicle and began our six-day adventure around the island. We are confident that we saw places we would never have known existed without Jacki’s detailed plan. Jacki handled all our dinner reservations and you can believe me when I say that we had some mighty fine food and wine, as well as super-fun wine tastings. We even had a vodka tasting of vodka distilled from sheep whey. Our adventure ended in Hobart, where we had an excellent tour guide. Our fellow travelers had never used a member of Wendy Perrin’s WOW List, but they quickly declared Jay, our guide, as the best guide they had ever had on any tour.

There is no way that we could have planned our incredible Australian adventure without the help of an experienced professional. When people tell me that they like to “discover places themselves” and don’t want help planning a trip, I think about how misguided this approach to travel is and how much they are missing, but some people firmly hold on to this idea and can’t be swayed. Too bad for them. We’ve had the most memorable trips with the help of The WOW List.

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