Myrtle Beach Things to Do: The Boardwalk, the SkyWheel, and 100 Golf Courses

The Myrtle Beach Boardwalk and Promenade: 1.2 Miles, Opened 2010

The Myrtle Beach Boardwalk and Promenade is a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) oceanfront walkway that opened in summer 2010 and was ranked #3 on National Geographic's "Top 10 U.S. Boardwalks" list. It runs through the downtown core and is built for a slow walk rather than a quick pass-through: shops, arcades, an oceanfront park, and nightly live entertainment that includes stilt walkers, jugglers, and bagpipers, plus a weekly fireworks display. This is the classic postcard image of Myrtle Beach, and the district around it leans heavily toward oceanfront condo towers rather than single-family housing.

Myrtle Beach SkyWheel: A Height Nobody Quite Agrees On

The Myrtle Beach SkyWheel opened May 20, 2011, built at a cost of $12 million by Koch Development Company and Pacific Development. It has 42 glass-enclosed gondolas that seat up to six passengers each - 252 riders per full rotation. At its opening, it was billed as the second-tallest extant Ferris wheel in North America (after Dallas's Texas Star) and the tallest observation wheel east of the Mississippi; it's now more commonly described as the sixth-tallest Ferris wheel in the US, reflecting how many taller observation wheels have opened elsewhere since 2011.

Here's the discrepancy worth stating plainly rather than resolving arbitrarily: Breakers Resort's own SkyWheel FAQ page states the wheel is 187 feet tall, while Wikipedia's Myrtle Beach city page separately states 200 feet. Both are real, current sources, and this page couldn't independently reconcile the 13-foot gap - treat the SkyWheel's height as "roughly 187-200 feet, depending on source" rather than a single confirmed number.

Broadway at the Beach: 23 Acres or 350, Depending on the Source

Broadway at the Beach opened July 4, 1995, developed by the Burroughs and Chapin Company. It began with just 30 shops and one restaurant on 23 acres centered around Lake Broadway - company chairman Egerton Burroughs recalled the board's reaction to the original plans directly: "it was a mammoth project." The complex later added the King Kong figure at the Hollywood Wax Museum and WonderWorks' upside-down house, and incorporated vintage rides carried over from the original downtown Myrtle Beach Pavilion, which closed in 2006.

The acreage figure is a genuine, unreconciled discrepancy: Wikipedia separately describes the complex's total footprint as 350 acres, more than 15 times the 23-acre core figure tied to the 1995 opening. The 350-acre number likely folds in surrounding parking, hotel, and outparcel development that grew up around the original entertainment district over three decades - but that explanation is this page's own inference, not a confirmed fact, so both numbers are reported here rather than one being silently chosen.

Broadway at the Beach's Palace Theatre, once billed the "Jewel Theater of the South," operated from 1995 to 2016 and hosted acts including Aretha Franklin and the Radio City Rockettes. Hurricane Matthew (2016) left damage the theater never recovered from, and it was never rebuilt - a real loss on a site otherwise defined by its long run of expansion.

Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach: Opened 1997, Inside Broadway at the Beach

Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach sits inside Broadway at the Beach at 1110 Celebrity Circle and opened in 1997, marking its 25th anniversary on June 13, 2022. It's a working research facility as well as a visitor attraction: its Marine Science Research Center opened in 2020, and the aquarium's team is credited with the world's first successful birth by artificial insemination of a sand tiger shark. Its African penguin colony has produced named chicks - Egerton in 2020 and Plyler in 2021 - and the aquarium's Penguin Playhouse expansion covers a 5,500-square-foot habitat.

Honest gap: this page could not independently confirm the aquarium's total gallon count, its current species/animal count, or the specific dimensions of its glass shark tunnel and moving walkway - all widely referenced by visitor-review sources but not confirmed here from a primary source this session. Confirm current exhibit specifics directly with the aquarium before relying on them.

Golf: The "Golf Capital of the World"

Myrtle Beach is widely branded the "Golf Capital of the World," with roughly 100 courses in the immediate area per the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce. Tiger Woods reportedly called it "the mecca of golf" during a 1997 visit, and the area has recorded a peak of 4.2 million rounds played in a single year historically. A separately dated 2014 industry source cited 102 courses (50 rated 4-plus stars by Golf Digest), roughly 3.4 million annual golf visitors, and the Myrtle Beach World Amateur Handicap Championship drawing about 4,000 golfers a year - broadly consistent with the current ~100-course figure, though this page couldn't independently re-verify a precise current-year course count from a single primary source. Treat "about 100 courses" as the honest current figure rather than an exact, freshly recounted total.

Family Kingdom Amusement Park and the Swamp Fox: A 1966 Wooden Coaster Still Running

Family Kingdom Amusement Park, on the oceanfront at 300 S. Ocean Blvd., opened in 1966 as Grand Strand Amusement Park; the Ammons family bought it and renamed it Family Kingdom in 1992. It covers about 13 acres and runs 37 rides, including three roller coasters.

Its centerpiece, the Swamp Fox, opened with the park in 1966 - a wooden coaster built by Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters with design work by John C. Allen, laid out as a 2,640-foot figure-eight course, 72 feet tall, with a 62-foot drop and a top speed of about 50 mph. It was refurbished and reopened in 1992 after Hurricane Hugo damage (1989), and the City of Myrtle Beach designated it a historic structure in March 2017 - a genuinely rare distinction for a still-operating wooden coaster. The park's Giant Wheel Ferris wheel, a separate 100-foot Chance Rides attraction, opened in 1990.

Myrtle Waves Water Park: 20 Acres, Opened 1985, "The Largest in the State"

Myrtle Waves Water Park opened June 1, 1985, and marked its 30th anniversary in 2015. It spans 20 acres with more than one million gallons of water across roughly 22 slides and attractions, and is described by multiple sources as the largest water park in South Carolina. The park is currently owned by Lazarus Entertainment Group and operated by Innovative Attraction Management. Its sister property, Wild Water and Wheels, closed permanently in 2022 and was demolished in 2023 - an honest note that not every legacy Grand Strand water park from this era is still standing.

What This Page Still Doesn't Cover

This page went deep on the Boardwalk, the SkyWheel, Broadway at the Beach, Ripley's Aquarium, the golf industry, Family Kingdom, and Myrtle Waves, rather than trying to catalog everything on the Grand Strand. It does not cover the area's other water parks, its dozens of mini-golf courses, dinner-theater shows (Pirates Voyage, Alabama Theatre), Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach, or a current events calendar. For that level of breadth, Visit Myrtle Beach's own visitor site and the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce are the better starting points - this page's job was depth on the market's real, dated, named landmarks, not a complete directory.