Greetings From New Zealand.

[johnboy-SKO]

Good on you for sticking to your guns.

Thank-you.

And, by the way, from what little I have seen, it seems like half the folks in NZ live in either House Trucks or House Buses. And some very cool ones, but are they really as prevalent as they seem to be?

Nope.
I seem to recall that the NZMCA (NZ Motor Caravan Assoc.,) has just lately signed up member #60,000
But...as members drop out their number is not reallocated, so even if 60% of that number were still 'live'; that would mean around 36,000 actual members...many of whom do not own an actual 'motor home'; but a caravan. Locally that figure would be around 25%.
Then too, there are many that don't do very much mileage; it's on the road perhaps once a year.
But having said that, motor homes are extremely popular with tourists; so most of the homes that we see on the road are o/s visitors...who are not used to driving on the left, don't pull over to let faster traffic through, and generally get so far up your nose they lift your cap.

 

[johnboy-SKO]

Ya...long flight. But the Hobbits are worth it.

Yep...it is a long flight...about twelve hours from California.

Hobbiton itself most probably is...we've been past it several times, (it's just outside Te Poi, where a lot of the engineering on Baby Elephant was done,) but we've never had the time/opportunity to go look.
But I've heard good things about it.

We have however been to Sir Peter Jackson's Weka Workshop, (that's in Wellington,) and on a 'value for money' scale of one to ten (ten being the highest,) I personally would rate it 5.5.
I wouldn't go back, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.