Dole Plantation on Oahu with a Toddler
The Dole Plantation is a very popular tourist attraction for people coming to Oahu. I believe it is also a great place to take your toddler! I visited the plantation first when I was 38 weeks pregnant with my daughter, then again when my daughter was about four months old. This most recent visit, my daughter was 14 months old, and this by far has been my favorite visit!
The Dole Plantation has a few different activities to do. You can take a 20 minute train ride around their gardens. The wait for the trainride can get long if you go in the afternoon so I suggest you go right when it opens up at 9:30. Because my husband is in the military we get a slight discount, but tickets are about $14 a person. My daughter loved sitting on our laps and looking at the different plants, trees, flowers and pineapples!
The grounds have pineapple, banana, cacao, papaya, jackfruit, plumeria trees and more! While you are on the train, there is an audio recording pointing out different things to look at and explaining how pineapples got to Hawaii. It was informative, fun and educational.
The two other activities to do is go into their pineapple maze or walk through their flower garden. We chose to walk through the garden and that was the best decision!
My daughter loved running around the paths, pointing out every bird, gecko, butterfly and flowers she liked. She would pick up leaves that fell on the ground and walk with them for a bit. My husband and I just let her explore the grounds and followed her lead. She really enjoyed looking at the pond that is in the center of the garden. In the pond were huge orange koi fish, black fish, frogs, lily pads and butterflies.
The frogs were very active and very vocal. It was fun to hear them ribbit and hear my daughter try to imitate them. Since she is 14 months old we are reading a lot of toddler books with animals in them. It was fun to point at the fish, frogs and birds and imitate what they sound like. We were in the garden for about 20 minutes! The cost to walk through their garden was cheaper than taking a ride on their train. We went during the first week of June and early in the morning. By the time we were finished with both the train ride and the garden it was close to 11 a.m. and getting pretty warm. At the Dole Plantation they have a huge gift shop full of everything you can think of. Water bottles, shirts, hats, candy, fresh pineapple, frozen pineapple, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and more!
They also have a fairly large food court with their world famous dole whip! You can get their dole whip with toppings on top or on the side. We gave my daughter a few bites of the dole whip but she was more interested in the stray cats that would come up to our tables.
Overall spending our morning at the Dole Plantation was a 10 out of 10. It was so nice to explore the gardens chasing a 14 month old around, to see what excited her while riding the train and to basically be a big kid once again! Thank you so much for reading!
-Kindly Kaile
