Broadway at the Beach

Broadway at the Beach is the commercial heart of Myrtle Beach's entertainment offering: a 350-acre complex built around a man-made lake off Kings Highway, ringed with restaurants, chain retail, nightclubs, and attraction buildings including a Ripley's Aquarium, mini-golf courses, and a wax museum. It looks like Las Vegas designed a family resort, which is essentially what it is.

The evening crowds are enormous in summer — expect congested parking and full restaurants from June through August. The waterfront walkway is pleasant enough at dusk when the lake reflects the lights of the complex. In late spring or early fall, the place is considerably more manageable. The aquarium inside the complex is genuinely good.

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Broadway at the Beach opened in 1995 on what had been a largely undeveloped stretch of land inland from the commercial strip. It was built around a man-made lake — there was no lake there before — and designed from scratch as a pedestrian entertainment district at a time when most American beach resorts were simply adding more strip development. Whether it works aesthetically is debatable; whether it works commercially is not. It draws over 15 million visitors per year.

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