Spring Break 2006: Revenge of the Geeks
3/22/2006 9:12:02 PM by Mike Petrovsky
Top watersport destinations for families, students
Spring Break, like most things associated with college life, started back in ancient Greece. As the story goes the idea behind the annual collegiate rite of passage came from, who else, Socrates, who couldn’t help but notice at the end of winter his young Athenian understudies’ minds weren’t on studying. So the great philosopher concocted the idea of letting his youthful charges take a vernal break. The idea caught on and evolved into a week or so of debauchery in the coastal communities near Athens – oh, and no doubt there were water activities calling for a looser, skimpier dress code that led to, well, more debauchery.
In the 21st century things have almost come full circle – minus a letter and a capitalization – because, according to one observer of collegians, the young Greeks of antiquity have morphed into young, timid, techno-savvy geeks seeking a release valve from the modern pressures of university life.
“They want to leave their laptops at home,” says Harlen Cohen, who writes a column for King Features Syndicate aimed at people in their late teens and 20somethings. “Spring Break is the equivalent of older people going to Las Vegas to forget and to decompress.”
Yes, what happens at Spring Break stays at Spring Break – unless, of course, some videographer is documenting your lapses in inhibition for “Girls Gone Wild.”
Yet getting rid of inhibitions is difficult for today’s young adults, says 32-year-old Cohen, who a year ago authored the book “The Naked Roommate,” a hit on college campuses.
The information age, Cohen says, has resulted in less face-to-face communication, and he says young adults are so petrified of carrying on a conversation with the objects of their affections – who most of them know only as photos and profiles posted on websites and message boards – that they need alcohol, lots of alcohol, to get up the courage for interpersonal contact. Cohen adds the coeds also rely on the partying that goes hand-in-hand with Spring Break to forget the economic pressures they’re under.
“They’re scared to death. So they get really messed up,” says Cohen, who derives his opinions on Spring Break from the letters and e-mails he gets from youthful readers.
OK, enough history and sociology. After all, Spring Break is about partying on the beach – and Wave magazine is about having
fun in and around the water. So let’s get to it.
Wave used a unique combination of interviews, deductive reasoning and coin tosses, many coin tosses, to determine our Top 10 List of Spring Break Destinations. If you want to get scientific, then maybe you should spend Spring Break in the lab at I’m Not Gettin’ Any U.
The first criterion we used is water temperature. We reason the warmer the water the more spring breakers are likely to take advantage of it. Sorry Myrtle Beach, S.C., but that’s why you appear at No. 10 on the list.
Second, we thought the legal drinking age of a potential top Spring Break destination should be a consideration. Wave in no way promotes the mixing of alcohol and water-related activities. The people we interviewed and common sense tell us the two are a dangerous, if not deadly, combination. Yet it’s hard to realistically rank Spring Break
destinations without considering booze. And, wouldn’t it be safer for young adults to go to a place where they can drink out in the open on a crowded beach or in a night club than to get plastered in some remote, obscure location? Not to mention that a night or two in some Southern coastal town’s jail hardly would make a fond Spring Break memory.
So Florida and Texas, our first two criteria were big reasons none of your big Spring Break destinations made it into our top two spots.
The third factor we used was a Spring Break destination’s popularity. What’s the sense of going someplace to play if there’s no one to there play with. To determine the relative popularity of each destination, Wave spoke to Spring Break tourism experts David Ostrowsky and Lee Patterson.
Ostrowsky is a spokesman for marketing and sales at Sun Splash Tours, a company founded in 1987 by three college friends from the University of Vermont whose goal was, and is, to provide students with travel to exotic locations. Sun Splash also carries what you might consider a pedigree in handling travel plans for the large corporations affiliated with Spring Break. Among them are The Travel Channel, MTV and The Guinness Beer Co.
Patterson is a regional sales manager with Spring Break Travel, an agency based in Chapel Hill, N.C. Like Sun Splash, the company was founded in 1987 and boasts an affiliation with Spring Break mainstay MTV. Spring Break Travel seems to appeal to those who want to see celebrities and want to be seen. The Spring Break Travel website states: “This Spring Break we have partnered with some of the biggest names in entertainment. … No other tour company offers you the chance to rub elbows with celebrities, attend the hottest concerts and be on TV.”
Ostrowsky and Patterson agree that where MTV will be airing its live Spring Break coverage – now the music channel carries live feeds from several Spring Break destinations – is a determining factor for attracting Spring Breakers.
Before beginning Wave’s Top 10 List, there are two Spring Break destinations worth mentioning that we didn’t pick. Our most notable omission is Acapulco. Given top ratings by both Patterson and Ostrowsky, we didn’t put the Mexican West Coast resort town on our list because it was described more as a hot nightclub spot with a greater emphasis on dress up in the evening than dress down in the afternoon. And, though Acapulco meets all three of our Spring Break criteria – great water temperature, an 18 or younger drinking age and popularity – we figure it is too out of the way for our East Coast and Gulf Coast readers.
Also not on the list is Key West. We thought the quaint Conch Republic to be too small to handle big crowds. Still, there are a lot worse places to spend your Spring Break than barhopping along Duvall Street. The island also has a nude boardwalk for sunbathing.
From here, we’ll commence with our top 10.
No. 1 – Negril, Jamaica
“Bath tub warm” were the first words out of Ostrowsky’s mouth when describing the 75-degree water of our No. 1 Spring Break hangout. Known for its laid back, casual atmosphere – the place is said to have been frequented by hippies and flower children in the early 1970s – its ocean waters are relatively
shallow making it ideal for land-loving Spring Breakers, many of whom will be trying watersports for the first time.
And the beach…
“The beach is seven miles of white sand,’’ Ostrowsky said.
He adds a reef off the coast is “great for snorkeling with some good scuba sites.” Parasailing, banana boat rides, kayaking and other touristy water activities are available.
Ostrowsky says Negril’s shallow waters are not great for surfing, yet Jamaica has some great surfing in the deeper waters on the island’s east coast. Negril is in the south.
For those who just like to watch, Negril’s West End features cliff divers and fine western sunsets. “People in Negril are sunset happy,” Ostrowsky says.
The West End, composed mostly of cliffs behind the town’s 1894-vintage lighthouse, is where most of Negril’s restaurants, nightclubs and hotels are. Although the West End has no beach, the cliffs have many crevices for spelunkers to explore.
Besides the West End, points of interest for water and beach enthusiasts are Bloody Bay, a horseshoe-shaped cove so named because whales were slaughtered there, and Long Bay. There is also horseback riding along the beach. And, the Negril Yacht Club offers a
trip to the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston.
If hippies and Bob Marley get you thinking of marijuana, forget it. Ostrowsky says pot is illegal on Jamaica and authorities have been known to throw away the key in some cases. So, if smoking the ganja is your thing, better try Amsterdam or maybe Boulder, Colo., this Spring Break.
Perhaps Negril’s most popular bar is Rick’s Café. Richard Hershman, the original owner of Rick’s, described Negril this way: “Your body has suddenly arrived where your mind has always been.”
Ostrowsky’s Sun Splash Tours was the first student travel company to introduce Spring Breakers to Negril — an introduction at least one Negril businessman wishes was never made. Wave spoke informally with a Negril hotelier, who preferred not to give his name. He says since Spring Breakers started coming Negril’s traditional tourism business has dropped from 18 to 20 percent per year because the noisy youthful revelers and the large corporate Spring Break sponsors accompanying them are scaring off the older customer base – a customer base he says took Negril nearly 50 years to develop. If so, Negril would not be the first Spring Break destination to find the influx of young people to be both a blessing and a curse.
Negril.com, the town’s website, however, seems to embrace the formerly low-profile destination’s recent hotel expansion after what it calls “a flood of visitors.” (Even the disgruntled hotelier Wave spoke with was in the process of remodeling.) As for spring breakers, Negril.com seems to embrace them and their habits as well: “Thoughts of Spring Break immediately conjure up images of white sand beaches and turquoise seas filled with tanned, toned bodies, partying away their semester stresses — and Spring Break in Negril is no exception!”
And, with one of the town’s leading resorts bearing the moniker Hedonism (Hedonism II to be precise), who are we to argue.
Hedonism II, the first in the SuperClubs chain of island resorts, is so named for its two private beaches: One nude. One not.
Speaking of nude, Negril has daily nude cruises. There is also a water taxi to take you to the beach (fully
clothed), glass bottom boat tours and deep sea fishing charters.
No. 2 – The Bahamas
The Bahamas is the top choice for Spring Break Travel’s Patterson, whose company has a lot invested in the destination. As its website states: “mtvU is our official Spring Break partner and will be shooting in the Bahamas during Spring Break. Our customers only will be eligible for mtvU’s casting calls for Dean’s List, VJ hits and The Soundtrack of My Life video shows for Uber.”
Yes, if you want your MTV, then the Bahamas is the place to be this Spring Break.
The Bahamas offers much of the same water activities – snorkeling, diving, parasailing, etc. – as Negril. Except Patterson says surfing is a plus along the open Atlantic coast.
As to where in the Bahamas Spring Breakers are heading, Patterson says, “A lot of kids go to Freeport and there’s a large contingent that goes to Nassau.”
Speaking of Nassau, a destination resort that wouldn’t be a bad bet for Spring Breakers is Bahama Breezes, another in the SuperClubs chain of resorts. Breezes, which offers weekly Toga Party and Pajama Party nights, is along the white-powder sands of Cable Beach. A stroll down the beach will take you to Nassau’s casino, where perhaps a spring breaker could get lucky and win back the money he or she charged on a credit card for the Bahamas trip.
No. 3 – Panama City, Florida
More thrift-minded collegians are most likely to drive to our No. 1 domestic Spring Break destination,
the Florida Panhandle’s Panama City. Rumor has it that Spring Break is so important to the coastal town, where Spring Break starts the last week of February and ends the first week of April, that there is a special Spring Break tax – but don’t believe it.
True, Panama City officials have a lot riding on its annual Spring Break business – it represents a third of the beach town’s annual revenue from tourism. But Bob Warren, president and chief executive of the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau, says it’s not true the area has a tax levied specifically for Spring Break-related projects.
Yet, he adds, that’s not to say the town doesn’t have a vested interest in keeping the estimated $60 million in revenue taken from some 350,000 college students the small coastal community attracts annually. At any one time, spring breakers take up about 8,000 of the town’s 19,000 hotel rooms.
Warren says the community spends $40,000 marketing itself to about 150 college campuses east of the Mississippi.
Panama City takes pride in its 7.5 miles of public beach; the re-nourishment of which Warren says takes about 1 percent of the revenue generated by the destination’s 3 percent room tax.
The destination’s water temperature in March is in the 60s. Yet Warren says though the water is way too cold for Floridians, college students from up North seem to love it.
Panama City, like all Florida beaches, last year adopted a five-flag system to warn beachgoers of potential threats.
A purple flag, for example, warns there is hazardous marine life (sharks and jelly fish) in the water, and other colored flags warn of rip tides and hurricanes – but conditions can change within minutes. And, Warren says, city and county officials have coordinated their efforts so that it takes only an hour or two to change all the flags along the beach to react to water conditions.
Unlike other Florida Spring Break destinations that have passed laws seemingly to discourage Spring Breakers from coming, Panama City espouses a much different approach.
“Spring
Breakers are not only the college students of today, they are the families of tomorrow, and the empty nesters of the future. We want them to spend a lifetime using our beach,’’ Warren Says.
No. 4 – Cancun, Mexico
The top Spring Break destination in the 1990s, Cancun took the crown from Florida’s Daytona Beach, where the drinking age had been lifted to 21.
Cancun would have appeared a lot higher on our list, possibly No. 1, had it not been for Hurricane Wilma, which devastated the destination and stranded tourists there last fall. The Spring Break travel experts we interviewed seemed divided over Cancun’s current state. Ostrowsky says over the December/January holiday season only half the hotels in the Yucatan’s most popular tourist spot were operating. But Patterson said the 50 percent figure has been exaggerated and that he expects most of Cancun’s major resorts to be fully up and running by the time most Spring Breakers arrive in mid-March.
Patterson adds, although Cancun’s water activities mirror those in Negril and the Bahamas, it is also a popular deep-sea fishing destination.
No. 5 – South Padre Island, Texas
How much does the South Padre Convention and Visitors Bureau value the spring breakers who drive down from 198 colleges and universities in Texas and the Midwest annually? The group has hired someone full-time to coordinate the annual spring rite. Hey, Southwest and Midwest Spring Breakers, who’s your padre!
Mary K. Hancock, the bureau’s special event and Spring Break coordinator, is certainly in the know. “Our prime Spring Break time is about March 6 to 18, with the majority of spring breakers coming mainly between March 11 and 18. They all drive here.”
And, when they get there, there’s plenty to do, Hancock says.
“There is parasailing, jet skiing in the Gulf and in Laguna Padre Bay, along with kayaking, kite boarding, banana boats, windsurfing, surfing – the best surfing on the coast, boogie boards,” Hancock rattles off as if she has the spiel memorized, and probably does.
No. 6 – Barbados
“It’s the Spring Break destination where people go to get away from Spring Breakers,” Patterson says.
And, Ostrowsky says during Spring Break Barbados mostly attracts college seniors and surfer dudes and dudettes, who take full advantage of the gnarly surf on the island’s east coast.
No. 7 – South Beach (Miami Beach, Florida)
Is Spring Break the right time to be in South Beach? Ostrowsky says anytime is the right time to be in SoBe, always a year-round destination for the young and the young at heart.
So we hope we don’t show our age by calling on the specter of Jackie Gleason to say, “How sweet it is” that South Miami Beach is our No. 7 Spring Break destination.
No. 8 – Daytona Beach, Florida
In the 1980s Florida’s Daytona Beach was the place to spend Spring Break. The destination inherited its lofty Spring Break perch from Fort Lauderdale, the South Florida town that reinvented Spring Break in the 1970s and developed the interesting to watch but deadly to participate in Spring Break sport of hotel balcony climbing.
For the Spring Break uninitiated, balcony climbing is the practice of swinging from one hotel balcony to another, which would normally take a great amount of concentration and coordination except that one of the activity’s requirements seems to be that you first must gulp down at least half a bottle of Jose Cuervo.
Balcony climbing was one of a number of reasons Fort Lauderdale businesses and residents thought the idea of having thousands of drunken college kids invade their town once a year was as silly as, well, balcony climbing.
Now it seems Daytona Beach is coming around to the same realization.
Lori Campbell Baker, communications director for the Daytona Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, says last year the bureau initiated Spring Family Beach Break – if you guessed she means Spring Break light, you’re not too far off the mark.
The idea behind the Spring Family Beach Break is in part to promote water-related activities the whole family can enjoy: Fishing excursions, a boating cruise and jet skiing on the Halifax River, an ecotourism-related
kayak or canoe trips along the St. John’s River.
“We found that (families) was the business that was coming in,” Campbell Baker says. “We think we offer a great value destination to families.”
So, college spring breakers, read between the lines. Go to Panama City.
9. – Clearwater/St. Petersburg, Florida
The Tampa Bay Area is slowly emerging as a hot Spring Break spot. Why slowly? Driving to and from the destination’s two most popular beaches, Clearwater and St. Petersburg is quite a haul, as is the drive inland in often bumper-to-bumper traffic to the Tampa area’s top young-adult nightclubs in Ybor City. The Tampa Bay area should become more accessible when it completes much-needed road construction (hopefully within the millennia). Until then, if you don’t mind long drives on congested roads, Tampa Bay can be a decent place to spend Spring Break – in your car.
10. – Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Should your car break down on your way to Panama City, you can avoid making your Spring Break a total loss by shagging down a bus bound to Myrtle Beach.
“We are not at the top of the list when it comes to Spring Break,” admits Holley Aufdemorte, public relations manager for the Myrtle Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau.
With the water temperature in March holding at an all-but-balmy 57 degrees, visitors can walk along 60 miles – yes that’s 6-0 – of public beach interrupted only by one or maybe two inlets, Aufdemorte says.
Primarily a family destination, she adds that surprisingly Myrtle Beach does “get a lot of college Spring Breakers.”
“It kind of spreads out and is hard to peg, of course, (what time in March or April spring breakers arrive). But, we do appreciate the spring breakers who come here,” she said.
As for water-related activities, Aufdemorte lists sunbathing, fishing off the pier in one of the area’s two state-operated beach parks, year-round kayaking, and sailing and fishing charters.
For this article, Aufdemorte says she found one seaside business offering parasailing, scuba rentals and jet ski rentals, but she was quick to add that those types beach-related vendors don’t usually start operating until April 1.
For night life, Aufdemorte lists the House of Blues and the Alabama Theater, a country music venue.
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quicksplash TOP 10 SPRING BREAK WATERSPORT DESTINATIONS Here are Wave’s Top 10 Spring Break watersport destinations for 2006: • Negril, Jamaica • The Bahamas • Panama City, FL • Cancun, Mexico • South Padre Island, Texas • Barbados • South Beach (Miami Beach), FL • Daytona Beach, FL • Clearwater/St. Petersburg, FL • Myrtle Beach, SC |