Dole Plantation is one of the most popular tourist attraction on the Hawaii island of Oahu. It is located on Kamehameha Highway and it is about an hour drive from Waikiki. It attracts thousands of visitor each year and parking lot fills up very quickly. So it is important to go there early.
We left Waikiki around 8:30AM and got to Dole Plantation at around 9:30AM since it opens at 9:30AM. When we got there, the parking lot is already 75% full, we were glad to find parking space to park our car. The location of Dole Plantation is really easy to find as well, so there is no way that you will miss it.
When we got there, the first thing is to purchase tickets. There were 3 different activities to choose from. The first was the train ride. The activity required you to ride the train and the train will go around the plantation farm and show you how pineapple is being planted. It also shows you how pineapple juice is made. The train ride is on first come first serve basis, so it will be the best to take the train ride first if you are going for this activity.
The second activity is the Pineapple Garden Maze. We were not quite sure why it is called Pineapple Garden Maze since we did not find a single pineapple in there! The maze activity involves you to find 8 hidden stations in the maze. Once you have located the stations, slide the game card under metal plate and stencil the shape of the figure on the game card. Once you find all 8 stations, rush back to the exit and find out how long it took you to complete. This was quite fun and challenging! We had a lot of fun doing this. Dole Plantation did provide a map of the maze indicating where all 8 stations are so that people can find them easily. Obviously, if you like the challenge, you can ignore the map and try to find all 8 stations yourself. We saw several kids and people ignoring the rules and taking short cuts under the trees. We recommend not to do that since it defeats the purpose of the maze.
The third activity is the Garden Walk. There is this nice small tropical garden at Dole Plantation. The garden has many different tropical flowers and trees planted very nicely around the pond. The pond has a lot of purple lily flowers in it. We found this to be interesting as well since we are from the great white North. We are used to see pine trees and pine cones, but have not experienced any tropical gardens ourselves. The garden is quite small though, so that is the down side of this.
After visiting all the activities, there are also several pineapple plants along the outside of the garden. It was just interesting to see how pineapples are grown.
Later we went into the food building to get some food for lunch. The first thing is pineapple ice cream of course! The ice cream is just so good! Unlike other ice creams that we have tried, this pineapple ice cream is not creamy at all. It had a very fresh taste of pineapple and we think it is non-dairy. Other than the ice cream, we ordered a pineapple pulled pork sandwich, which is very ordinary. Nothing really special about the sandwich. We were disappointed that there wasn't any pineapple juice available on that day and thus we could not try some.
On the way out, we grabbed few bags of dried mango and it was amazing! First, we love mango. Second, this dry mango is so sweet and refreshing! We loved it!
Overall, Dole Plantation is a must visit place for people visiting Oahu and pineapple ice cream is a must try here!
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