Dreading a Ride on the Pineapple Express

The Worst and Best of the Oahu Dole Pineapple Plantation

Some tourist traps are awesome, just too much fun too pass up.  Some tourist traps suck.  The Dole Pineapple Plantation on Oahu in Hawaii has aspects covering both ends of this spectrum.  Some parts of the tourist trap that is the plantation suck and other parts are awesome.  In this post I am going to list one awesome for every sucky quality of visiting the plantation, located in the middle of the island, all of which can be encountered in a one hour visit.  

The Pineapple Express turns around at the end of the track to head back to the station and the gift shop.

The Suck: The Pineapples

Pineapples are not even native to Hawaii.  They are native to Central America.  Yet Dole charges $10-15 per pineapple to bring anywhere from one to a crate of pineapples home.  Want to ship those? Oh that's another $30.  Pineapples are best eaten as soon as they are picked, which means by the time those pineapples purchased at the plantation get home, they are well past their best by date.  It's just better (and cheaper) to buy them from the store at home.  I regularly buy pineapples at home in Florida for less than $3, and they are from a place pineapples actually originated in, Central America.

The Awesome: Pineapple Carving Class

Okay, I know that I could have just looked on youtube for a class on how to pick a fresh pineapple, carve it into a beautiful presentation, and wash away all the acidic nastiness that makes your mouth feel sore for hours, but presentations are always more captivating in person.  This class actually changed my entire view about pineapples.  I always thought pineapples were a pain to eat, because I wound up scraping the stringy flesh off the skin with my teeth while my face got covered in sticky juice.  I hate getting food on my face, which is why I avoided cantaloupe and mango until I learned how to carve the skin off easily.  The Dole Pineapple Plantation carving class taught me carving and eating a pineapple could be a no mess endeavor.  More on this later.

My boyfriend David and I enjoy our seats on the caboose of the Pineapple Express.

The Suck: The Food at the Grill

This issue may only be a problem for vegetarians as just about everything had meat on it.  I am pretty sure I subsisted off of french fries and BBQ sauce for lunch.

The Awesome: Pineapple Soft Serve

I love soft serve ice cream.  At so many places the specialty ice cream is hard ice cream scooped out of a five gallon jug and onto a cone.  Hard ice cream is just ok to me.  I am probably biased since my teeth are sensitive to cold and hard ice cream is more difficult to eat, but soft serve is always the way to go in my opinion.  Not since my childhood trips to Orange Blossom Groves distribution centers for orange soft serve ice cream I have seen specialty soft serve ice cream.  That is until I went to the Dole Plantation and ate a cone of deliciously fruity pineapple soft serve on a patio in the middle of summer.  So skip the grill and just get the soft serve.

My brother Alex and his fiancé Bethani ready to learn about pineapples on the fifteen minute ride.

The Suck: The Pineapple Express

My boyfriend so wanted to do this that we all agreed.  He was so happy, he bought tickets for everyone.  This little attraction which I feel should be free in the interest of good marketing cost $8.50 per person.  The ride, which is a miniature train, carries visitors on a fifteen minute narrated ride around the plantation.  Some natural plants and pineapple fields are pointed out by the recorded narration, but this is split with ads to buy the CD sold in the gift shop of Hawaiian music played intermittently on the tour.  Probably the biggest disappointment was the lack of pineapple plants on the tour.  This may have just been bad luck, but all the pineapple fields on the train route were completely torn up.  We were just looking at fields of dirt as ads for Hawaiian music played.  David loved the train though, which I guess is a plus.  

The Awesome: Buying a Pineapple Knife

Durring the pineapple carving class I learned two secrets to carving a pineapple.  (1) Wash the pineapple after the first cuts to get all the acids that burn the inside of your mouth off (2) use a curved pineapple carving knife to cut the skin off.  I was hesitant to buy the $7 knife sold at the gift shop.  I wondered if I would actually use the 8 inch knife or if it would just take up space in my kitchen.  Now I want to buy one for all my family and friends.  Unfortunately the only place to buy such a pineapple knife is at the Dole Plantation, not even Amazon sells them.  So I won't be giving these as gifts until I go back to Hawaii or my brother has a bunch of extra room in his suitcase to bring some back for me.  

Blending in with the bushes in one of the many cutouts at the end of the Pineapple Express.