Glow worm caves -Auckland or Tauranga?

We will be arriving in Auckland on April 3rd and leaving for our cruise April 5th. Was trying to plan a tour for the 4th and maybe even the morning of the 5th. We are very interested in Seeing the glow worms and thermal springs. If I am seeing this correctly it is ~2hours from Auckland and 2.5 hours from Tauranga. Does one place have an advantage over the other? Any other recommendations for good tours? Thanks in advance! :)

Check out this thread, it might answer some of your questions. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2096756&highlight=glowworm

If your cruise has a port day in Tauranga you could go to the Rotorua thermal areas on that day. Rotorua is only an hour from Tauranga.

Then you could do the Waitomo glowworm caves on your free day in Auckland.

Both are very interesting. I'd have a slight preference for Rotorua over Waitomo if you could only do one thing as you can also learn something about the Maori culture in Rotorua.

We will be arriving in Auckland on April 3rd and leaving for our cruise April 5th. Was trying to plan a tour for the 4th and maybe even the morning of the 5th. We are very interested in Seeing the glow worms and thermal springs. If I am seeing this correctly it is ~2hours from Auckland and 2.5 hours from Tauranga. Does one place have an advantage over the other? Any other recommendations for good tours? Thanks in advance! :)

We were in Auckland 3 years ago and did a private tour to see the glow worm caves one day, and had a great experience using Spellbound. The website is: http://www.glowworm.co.nz/. Then we did the thermal springs from our ship's stop in Tauranga. It worked out very well.

We did both during our ROS March 2014 cruise and found the Glow Worm caves very interesting. The history on the worms was very interesting, then for any who chose to continue thru the caves, a short distance was enjoying. Some went back with the guide due to mobility problems.

As a two day trip. It's a 2.5 hour drive to the caves from Auckland, then an hour to Hobbiton, and from there an hour to Rotorua where you could spend the night. Do Rotorua the following day and then a 3 hour drive back to Auckland in the evening.

NZ is super easy with a rental car; there will be plenty of tourists doing the same thing. There is an Avis outlet at the airport and another near where the ship docks so there's no complication with getting and returning a car.

Thank you all for the input!