If you’re going abroad, it only makes sense that you’d be tempted to track down the best hidden gems where you’re visiting. You want a memorable and authentic food experience while knowing you’ll be getting some quality grub. But if you’re looking to keep the menu a little closer to home while also looking to find new cool and fun food destinations, all you’ve got to do is make your way down to New Zealand.
While the world is full of must-visit food destinations, there’s one dining experience you’re unlikely to get anywhere else, and it’s at a McDonald’s of all places. In Taupō, a town on New Zealand’s North Island, you can eat your McDonald’s burger and fries in a decommissioned DC-3 military transport plane. You can access this unique dining room through the garden area of the restaurant, ascending the staircase and entering a fuselage lined with two-person tables. It turns out then that you don’t need to pay big bucks for a one-of-a-kind dining experience. There’s plenty of interesting food to try in New Zealand, including a unique McDonald’s burger, so now you have even more justification to head there and try this out.
A dining room filled with history
Historic dining settings are usually iconic buildings or locations where historically important events took place. Most importantly, these locations were intended to be completely earthbound. But this is evidently not a convention this McDonald’s chose to adhere to. While the “dining in an old plane” concept is a cool one on its own, the fact that McDonald’s makes a point to outline the history of the aircraft makes the experience all the more enriching and even more meaningful.
This DC-3 was originally built in the 1940s in the United States during the Pacific campaign of World War II, operating as a transport craft. After the war’s conclusion, the plane stuck around in the South-Pacific, bouncing from the Philippines to Australia and finally, in the 1960s, to New Zealand. It flew for the final time in 1984 and found its way to the parking lot of a car dealership of all places. As it happened, that location would be purchased by McDonald’s in 1990 to build a new restaurant location. The plane stuck around on the lot and is now adorned in McDonald’s-branded livery. Much of this information is supposedly available inside the aircraft’s dining area, an endearing move by McDonald’s to honor this piece of history.
