Description: This was our first stop after our long flight to New Zealand, so I have to say, no matter what the quality of the hostel, it would have been a welcome sight. Luckily, we had picked well.
ACB was very well located, right in the centre of Auckland and only a few blocks away from the Sky Tower. Queen Street had all the transportation you needed to get anywhere else in the city, along with plenty of shopping and fast food. Shuttles from the airport take you directly to the door, so all you have to do is get up the elevator to the third floor. This is the only place you are allowed to go to without having a key, which gives the place some security.
There are plenty of very helpful staff at the huge front desk, which must have had at least six or eight cash registers, although not quite that many staff to work them. The front desk staff were efficient and got us checked in quickly, and also took care of my baggage that was brought over by the airline the next morning.
There was a huge lounge area (and might I say, a massive Internet cafe with the most computers I've seen in a room outside a uni computer lab). The lounge area had lots of couches and also a counter in which you could get information about pretty much anything in New Zealand. We liked the couches since we got there a few hours early, and plus, they provided us a good place to organize luggage before putting it in storage. They had convenient and rather cheap baggage storage (~$8 a day for up to 3 weeks), so we could keep our huge bags there and not lug them around the rest of New Zealand.
The beds only cost about NZ$20 a night, and were coed, eight-bed dorms. Each bed had a locker underneath for your personal belongings, as long as you had a lock to do it up with. The atmosphere was much like a huge city of backpackers. It had a bar and a PA system in every room to announce stuff going on at the bar. Because of this, it was very loud. We were a few floors below the bar and not only got the PA announcements, but could also hear the bar itself. The bathrooms were clean and easily accessible.
Overall, I thought it was a good hostel for a large city of backpackers, and chose to stay there again on a future visit, although it was lacking in the community found in a smaller hostel. My only problem was with cancellations. Because of a flight cancellation, I could not make it to Auckland one night, and let them know. They assured me that I would not be charged for the night… but I was anyway. When I called I was told to call back at some other time on two or three different occasions, and I finally gave up.
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