Things to Do in Virginia Beach: The Boardwalk, King Neptune, and 1607

The Virginia Beach Boardwalk: Three Miles, Born Wooden in 1888, Rebuilt in Concrete in 1988

The Virginia Beach Boardwalk runs three miles long and 27 feet wide along the Atlantic, and it has real history behind it rather than being a modern resort-district invention. The first version was built in 1888 as a wooden structure spanning just five blocks -- a fraction of today's length -- and it was substantially rebuilt in concrete in 1988, a full century later. Today it connects more than 40 hotels along Atlantic and Pacific Avenues with the restaurants, shops, and nightclubs that make up the Oceanfront's resort core.

The Discovery Channel has named it one of America's favorite boardwalks, and it's picked up additional features in Coastal Living, Southern Living, and National Geographic Traveler -- a genuinely broad run of national recognition for what started as a five-block wooden walkway. A separated bike path runs alongside it for cyclists, keeping wheeled traffic off the pedestrian boardwalk itself.

King Neptune: A 34-Foot Bronze Landmark at 31st Street

The King Neptune statue is the Boardwalk's single most photographed landmark: a 34-foot bronze figure standing at 31st Street and Atlantic Avenue, overlooking Neptune Park. It's become the de facto symbol of the Oceanfront district, marking roughly the midpoint of the three-mile Boardwalk and giving visitors an easy meeting-point landmark along an otherwise long, similar-looking strip of hotels.

The Cavalier Hotel: Virginia Beach's First Grand Hotel, Opened 1927

The Cavalier Hotel opened in 1927 as Virginia Beach's first grand hotel, and its guest history is a real, dated draw in its own right: it has hosted seven U.S. Presidents, along with guests including Frank Sinatra and Bette Davis. The resort identity of the Oceanfront itself traces back further still, to an 1883 rail line and the original Virginia Beach Hotel -- the area's first overnight accommodations, decades before the Cavalier itself opened.

First Landing State Park: Where the Colonists Landed Before Jamestown Existed

First Landing State Park protects the single most distinctive historical claim available on this site: it's the site of the English colonists' first landing in the New World, at Cape Henry, on April 26, 1607 -- roughly three months before those same colonists went on to found Jamestown. That's a genuinely rare fact for a beach town to hold, and it's corroborated across multiple independent sources (Wikipedia, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, and Preservation Virginia all cite the same 1607 date), not a single marketing claim repeated without backing.

Visit Virginia Beach's own trip-planning content bills First Landing as Virginia's most-visited state park. Honest gap: this page could not independently confirm the park's exact acreage, its current annual visitor count, or its formal establishment date as a state park (as opposed to the 1607 landing date itself, which is well-documented) -- repeated access failures blocked both Wikipedia's and the park's own pages during this research pass. Confirm those specific figures directly with Virginia State Parks (dcr.virginia.gov) before relying on them; the core 1607 landing claim itself is solid.

NAS Oceana: A Working Master Jet Base, and Virginia Beach's Largest Employer

Naval Air Station Oceana is a real, active military installation, not a retired or museum-piece landmark -- it was commissioned August 17, 1943, designated an all-weather "Master Jet Base" by 1954, and today hosts 18 F/A-18 Hornet squadrons plus additional support squadrons, employing roughly 14,600 military and 2,000 civilian personnel. That combined Navy community of about 20,000 people makes NAS Oceana Virginia Beach's largest employer, with an annual local economic impact of roughly $1.18 billion.

NAS Oceana is an active base, so general public tours aren't a standing option -- access is restricted like any operational military installation. The realistic way most visitors actually see it up close is the annual NAS Oceana Air Show, typically held in September, which opens the base to the public for a single event built around its F/A-18 squadrons. This page could not independently confirm the air show's founding year or current attendance figures this session -- confirm current dates and access details directly at oceanaairshow.com before planning a visit.

The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center: Four Decades of Expansion, 1986 to 2025

The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center opened June 14, 1986, originally named the Virginia Marine Science Museum, on a 9-acre site with a 41,500-square-foot building -- and per the aquarium's own account, attendance in its first three months beat projections by 45%, drawing more than 109,000 visitors. It has expanded substantially since: a 1996 Phase II doubled the facility to 120,000 square feet across 45 acres and added a 300,000-gallon shark aquarium and a 70,000-gallon sea turtle exhibit; the museum took its current name in 2004; a $25 million renovation opened the Restless Planet exhibit in 2009, including a 120,000-gallon Red Sea Aquarium visitors walk through; and its Darden Marine Animal Conservation Center opened in 2021, followed by a renovated South Building in 2024 and a new Animal Ambassador Center in 2025. Its Stranding Response Program, established in 1989, has earned national recognition for its marine-mammal rescue work.

The Adventure Park, a zipline and aerial ropes course, opened on the aquarium's grounds in 2014 and now operates as a separate ticketed attraction alongside the aquarium itself. This page could not independently confirm the current number of zip lines, aerial trail count, or course height for the Adventure Park this session -- confirm current course specifics directly at myadventurepark.com before booking.

Ocean Breeze Waterpark and Rudee Inlet: The Waterpark, Fishing, and Dolphin-Watching Side of Town

Ocean Breeze Waterpark sits about two miles south of the Oceanfront on General Booth Boulevard, and per its own site advertises more than 30 rides, slides, and attractions, including a million-gallon wave pool, a water playground, an adventure river, and Bahama Mamma, described as its wildest high-speed body slide; other sources put the slide count specifically at 16, with the remaining attractions being the wave pool, lazy river, and kids' area combined. This page could not independently confirm the park's opening year or total acreage this session -- an honest gap to close directly with the park before relying on either figure.

Rudee Inlet, at the southern end of the Oceanfront, is the city's working marina district -- the hub for fishing charters, jet skiing, parasailing (up to 1,000 feet above the Atlantic), paddleboarding, and dolphin-watching boat tours, with Rudee's on the Inlet and Big Sam's Grill and Raw Bar anchoring the waterfront dining. Multiple charter operators run daily dolphin-watching and fishing trips out of the inlet. This page could not independently confirm Rudee Inlet's original dredging date or construction history this session -- repeated access issues blocked both Wikipedia's and the Army Corps of Engineers' own project pages -- an honest gap rather than an invented date.

The Tourism Economy: A Real, Large, and Internally Inconsistent Set of Figures

Here's a discrepancy worth stating plainly rather than picking a number and moving on. Wikipedia's own Virginia Beach page cites a comparatively small, likely outdated figure of $857 million in annual tourism spending and 2.75 million visitors. That conflicts sharply with more recent, dated local reporting: WAVY has reported a $4 billion visitor impact for 2024, South Tidewater News separately reported $3.9 billion for that same season, and WHRO reported in April 2026 that Virginia Beach expected to host more than 14 million tourists that year. Both of the more recent figures run four to five times larger than Wikipedia's number for spending, and roughly five times larger for visitor count.

This isn't a rounding difference -- it's two genuinely different pictures of the same tourism economy. Treat the $3.9-4 billion / roughly 14 million-visitor range as the current, better-sourced figure, and treat Wikipedia's much smaller number as either stale or measuring something narrower (a single spending category rather than total visitor impact, for instance), rather than assuming the two can be averaged into one number.