Aww this makes me sad, my camera literally bricked itself halfway through the tour and corrupted the SD card in the process. My cell phone camera was really crappy at the time, and all my surviving photos turned out really bad. I hope my wife and I get back to NZ one day to recreate the photos!
I remember reading somewhere the original film sets were abandoned.
Are these the same, rebuilt, or a different recreation?
They were rebuilt to be more permanent for the Hobbit movies.
iirc they had to remove them after the Fellowship came out due to environmental impact concerns, rebuilt them for Return of the King's ending, demolished them again, and then rebuilt them for the Hobbit, finally in a place that was accessible enough to maintain as a community but remote enough to match the film's landscape.
Hobbiton, Middle-earth*
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Love that this is a thing! Need to get down to NZ at some point
