Secluded Island of Australia Tour: Lizard Island, Cairns & More

Zicasso’s travel specialist was great to work with. She anticipated our needs and was quick to respond with information and to answer questions. She set up a great trip for us and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Australia. We had a couple of issues with the tours that were set up for us and they were quickly resolved, with great results.

On our visit to Kangaroo Island, the small-group tour subcontractor mishandled our connection on the island; their recovery was to send a personal guide to spend the day with us and also provide us with dinner! It ended up being one of our best tours. Many of our small groups were just my wife and myself, sometimes with one or two others.

We also had a very rainy and windy day the day we were supposed to go out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was a weekend and the travel specialist was on vacation. That said, the on-call person was amazing in rearranging one of our other small-group tours for that day and we were still able to go to the reef two days later.

All in all, I would highly recommend the travel specialist and her company. They were great up front and great during the trip.

Our trip to Hamilton Island and the Whitsundays with Zicasso was absolutely incredible! From start to finish, our travel planner made the entire process seamless and stress-free. He was extremely helpful and communicative throughout the planning stage. He took the time to understand what we were looking for and tailored the itinerary perfectly to our interests. His recommendations were spot-on, from the beautiful accommodations on Hamilton Island to the amazing boat tours around the Whitsundays. Every detail was handled with care, making it easy for us to relax and enjoy the breathtaking scenery. 

Snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and exploring Whitehaven Beach were unforgettable highlights, and it was clear our agent’s expertise ensured we had the best possible experience. We are so grateful for his attention to detail and support. We highly recommend Zicasso and our agent to anyone planning a trip to the Whitsundays!

I really thought the Zicasso travel partner was fabulous and so thorough and easy to use. I would rate it the best travel app. It had my itinerary down to the minute detail, info on how to contact various people if there were any questions, and was so easy to navigate.  I would rate my trip to Australia my favorite so far. I recently went to Japan through a different travel agent and was able to compare the difference. Our travel team was so much better! 

My husband and I went to Australia to drop off my daughter, who was doing an exchange study in Sydney. We started in Melbourne and had a full-day tour to Phillip Island, with a moonlit animal sanctuary and penguins. I would recommend the penguins. I saw thousands of penguins. What an experience! I did not like the sanctuary part. Tickets were sold out for the koala petting and there were not very many animals to see. I have heard there are other sanctuaries/zoos in other parts of Australia that are much better.  

The Melbourne food tour was fantastic! Our tour guide did a wonderful job of explaining Melbourne's history with the food. We flew to Cairns, to Port Douglas, and had two excursions: a boat ride with snorkeling in the Great Reef Barrier and a Daintree safari.  The full-day cruise with snorkeling was wonderful, with so much food! The Daintree tour was a bit long and could have been condensed into half the time. I probably would not recommend that tour. 

Finally, we went to Sydney to drop off my daughter. We did the bridge walk, which was fantastic. Each person was so well protected and the safety checks were top-notch! 

Our trip went without any problems and our drivers were well-coordinated and on schedule. I would use this company for future trips to Australia. I plan to visit New Zealand and would use them again.

For my mom’s 70th birthday, I gifted her, “You pick the location, I will plan.” That was the first time I learned that snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef had been on her bucket list for the last 26 years.

I have been blessed to travel to many countries through my job, but never to Australia, so I started researching travel companies to help me plan the trip.

My research led me to Zicasso. I was impressed from the start. I was immediately contacted with a request to better understand the trip that I was hoping to take. This is where I met our travel specialist. She is amazing and very patient. Over the course of a couple of weeks, her and I discussed and refined the opportunities in Australia for the trip.

The website that Zicasso used to communicate was clear and easy to use. Our travel specialist was responsive and clear in the information and options she provided. She was knowledgeable about Australia and did a wonderful job listening to what I wanted to accomplish with my mom and providing me options for ways we could achieve everything. She was also honest when she thought the agenda was too tight and if anything happened with weather or travel, what would be at risk. She was detail-oriented and made sure we had our visa information well in advance of travel.

Two weeks before our trip, we received an email detailing how to download and use a travel app. The app shared a day-by-day itinerary, complete with details for the day and contact information along the way. For an “old-school” traveler who is used to printing all itineraries, the app made the trip easy and the details were accessible at all points during our trip.

The guides and events that our travel specialist partnered us with to make all of my mom’s wants come to life were professional; they were on time and they delivered amazing experiences.

The ultimate outcome was exactly, if not more than, everything my mom hoped it would be. And so for me, it was incredible.

My wife and I wanted to attend the Australian Open and snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef, but we weren’t sure how best to spend the rest of a two-week vacation in Australia. We reached out to Zicasso and they put us in touch with two travel planners. We had telephone conversations with both planners and both submitted preliminary ideas for our trip. Both planners were very professional and had great ideas, but the agent we chose recommended an itinerary that more closely matched our interests, abilities, and budget. She continued to work closely with us to fine-tune our adventure. The trip was fantastic! Everything our agent arranged ran very smoothly and all the people she put us in touch with were wonderful to work with. We cannot say enough nice things about her and Australia!

Our trip included three couples from Massachusetts. We worked with Zicasso's travel agency to customize a trip to Australia. In general, the trip was excellent. Most of the travel logistics were perfect. All transfers were on time. All of the guides were on time, passionate about Australia, and were very good to excellent. All the hotels were also very good to excellent. The travel app was very helpful for keeping us updated on trip logistics. Most logistics worked out well. Most of the tours arranged were excellent. The fly nets the agency provided were a godsend in Uluru. Seeing Australia's unique wildlife, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, going to a footy game, walking around cities, meeting indigenous guides, and simply being in Australia is an experience we will never forget. The Great Ocean Road excursion in Melbourne was beautiful, but eight hours in a tour bus was very long. The geographic size of Australia is something visitors have to deal with.

I would have rated the trip five stars except for the following minor issues. We arranged travel between the US and Australia ourselves (not using the agency), which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Therefore, most of the travel headaches we experienced are not included in this review. The one miss they should have caught was informing us that a New Zealand ETA is needed for transiting through Auckland, New Zealand (even though we did not clear New Zealand customs). We were able to apply and get the ETA at the Houston airport just before boarding the plane, but the stress could easily have been avoided had we realized we needed this document before the trip began.

The instructions for where to meet for the backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House were a little off. We were told to meet the tour at 6.45am, downstairs by the information booth. This turned out to be the meeting place for the outside tour. By 6.55am, fighting jetlag and the early hour, we figured the meeting place for the backstage tour was upstairs and, luckily, we made it in time for our 7am tour, which was excellent.

The selection of wineries we visited in Adelaide wasn't ideal. Several did not ship their products to the US, which meant, for practical reasons, we could only purchase a bottle or two. Ideally, we should only visit wineries that ship wine to the States.

Communicating with the agency during the trip was more challenging than we expected. For some reason, we didn't always get their emails or text messages. It wasn't clear how often they checked up on us during our journey. Last year, we arranged a similar trip to Greece and the company we worked with provided us with a mobile phone for the duration of the trip to facilitate communications. They regularly called us to see how the trip was going. In our opinion, this capability and handholding would improve the service this agency provides.