Here are some details about our July 7th - July 14th 2023 trip to Myrtle Beach. We stayed at the Myrtle Beach Resort through Global Discovery Vacations.
We left on Thursday morning at 6:30am, and stayed the night at the Hyatt in Greensboro. We got there around 2pm, and expected to swim and hang out for the day. However, their pool was closed and it was raining outside so that made for a boring day sitting in our hotel room. We got our traditional pizza and wing delivery for the night from Papa John's across the street. It did feel like a waste of time on Thursday to be staying at this hotel, and I'm not sure how we would change things in the future. It was nice to get to Myrtle Beach early the next day, and have the whole day to do what we wanted. Cody was saying that maybe next time we would stay in Chapel Hill instead which might be a more interesting city.
Friday morning, we got up and had breakfast and then headed out to our timeshare place and got to the Myrtle Beach Resort by 1:30pm. Luckily, we were able to check right in when we got there. Kayla and I went inside the condo, and Cody handed up stuff to us from the car. We then ran around and put stuff away. Afterwards, we went to the beach for a few minutes so that Kayla could play in the sand. The whole car ride she kept saying how excited she was to see the beach.
Kayla was very excited to get to collect some shells, and off we went to find some.
We walked by the water and Kayla was a little bit excited at first about the ocean. She was squealing and laughing as the water hit our feet. But she ended up getting a bit afraid when the bigger waves came in and pulled back down into the ocean hard. She felt like she was going to get sucked in and she was scared about it.
For dinner, we got to Bubba's Seafood Shack at 4:30pm and the inside tables were already full! So we ended up eating outside. Kayla loved the honey butter that they had, and we had a hard time convincing her to eat a hushpuppy along with the butter. She had a butter packet and was just licking/eating it.
Cody got grouper and gulf shrimp, Kayla had popcorn shrimp, and I got crab cakes. This location wouldn't let me get a combo platter with crab cakes on it. But their food is really good and we enjoyed it! Afterwards, we ran to Walmart to get some groceries for the week. We got back to our place right before some storms rolled in, so we just settled in and hung out for the night.
The next morning we decided to go pool hopping. It's a good thing that we didn't get up too early, because our favorite pool didn't open up until 10am. The bigger pool by the beach opened at 9am, but we basically never went over to it.
Kayla loved the area by us. It had more kid things to do and a lazy river. Here is Kayla posing like a silly goose in the smaller 1 foot pool. We had a great morning hopping around the various pools in this area, and Kayla had her floaty on and was excited to get to swim by herself a little. We had a small McDonald's toy called Wade that she had gotten, and she had a great time playing with him. There was also a guy walking around saying that he was Santa at the beach and was passing out little toys to kids. So Kayla got a Lol Suprise Doll and she played with it quite a bit too.
We had a great system of swimming for a few hours and then running back to our room to cool down and get lunch. This is her... I can swim on my own!! She was so proud of herself in her floaty. We all had so much fun playing with each other in the pools.
Around 2pm -3pm, Krista and fam had gotten settled into their camp ground. So we went to visit with them for a bit. Their camp ground was RIGHT next door to us. It was about a 5 minute walk to get to the beach, and then a small walk across the sand to get to their area. They had rented two golf carts, so Krista usually met with us to pick us up and bring us by them. When Kayla saw Aunt Sissy, she ran across the sand and gave her a big hug.
Quick family picture on the beach.
Kayla was so excited to see Davey! Her favorite!! She talked and talked about how much she liked him.
Kelsie giving Uncle Coco some love!
Aunt Sissy let Kayla help drive the golf cart. Kelsie definitely warmed up to Uncle Yum Yum on this trip too! I think the nickname Uncle Yum Yum sold her. We hung out with them for a few hours visiting the various Newman's that were arriving at the camp ground, and we drove around their HUGE camp ground.
Afterwards, we went to Toffinos for pizza and desserts!! They definitely had a huge wait, but they have really good food. This is another Myrtle Beach tradition for us it would seem. After eating pizza, we went back to the camper to hang out with the gang for a bit before getting ready for bed.
On Sunday, we decided to spend the day at the beach with Krista and everyone. Here is Kayla getting ready to go to the beach. She looked so cute but ended up ditching the hat and glasses pretty much after this picture. We definitely spent a lot of time putting on sun tan lotion on this trip! The sun and heat were brutal. The one day I looked at 6:30pm and it STILL felt like 100 degrees out!
Kayla ran straight to playing in the sand.
Here we are in our beach chairs.
Kayla sat right down next to Davey and played with him.
Cousin love!! Kayal liked being at the beach for about an hour or so... after that she was covered head to toe in sand and was completely drained of energy. She looked so pitiful and sad looking. We tried to get her to go by the ocean again, but she was not having it. She was definitely scared and not liking the waves at all. So we ended up leaving and going back to our room for lunch. Once we got inside and she ate some food, she came to life again.
We ended up going to pool for a few hours and we all had SO much more fun there. The beach was so hot and sandy... and the pool was much more our speed and style. The pool by the beach was closed because the pump went out on it, so our little pool was PACKED, but it was still a lot of fun. In our pool, Kayla was starting to get really brave with the sprinkler/kids areas. She was jumping off of the side of the pool to have me catch her a bunch too. One thing that annoyed me was that people consistently did not watch their kids in the water! There were so many 5-8 year old kids that were drawn to us, because we were showering Kayla with attention and their parents weren't giving them any attention. I felt bad for the kids who were so obviously craving attention from someone, but it also annoyed me. There was one woman sitting on her phone the entire time we were there, and she had a little kid... probably like 2 years old in a swim diaper and life jacket swimming in the pool on his own. He was even jumping in the 8ft section and swimming. It was just unbelievable... but it happened literally every day it seemed. After swimming for a few hours, we ran back to the beach to get our stuff and say bye to everyone. We took Kayla in her stroller this time, because it seemed like the walk was a little long for her and she'd want to be carried. This was the WAY to go, because she was in her stroller and it could help carry some things for us (even though it was our umbrella stroller which isn't as stable as our big stroller).
Cody went out to the Boathouse for the night with his friend, Bo for a concert. So it was a Kayla and mommy night. We decided to go to McDonald's for another happy meal toy It was a whole thing... because I forgot my wallet. I went in and the woman ahead of me was being really nasty about her order not coming out, and I waited for our turn to ask if they could take a check instead of cash. That girl looked at me like I had 3 heads... She was like a check?!? Like what's a check haha. So I said ok... never mind. So we ran back to our room, grabbed it, and went back out. There was a McDonald's across the street from us so we went to it, but they had the same Wade toy that Kayla already had. So we went BACK to the other McDonald's with the pink toy. I had asked the girl when we were originally there what toy they had, so when we ordered (I think because we were nice to her in comparsion to the woman ahead of us who was really rude), she goes here you sweet heart! Here's your toy. And then in Happy Meal she got another one! She was SO pumped to have sisters and she played and played with them. Afterwards, we ran to Walmart to grab some ice creams to share with everyone. We were going to go to Savannah's Playground, but it still felt like 100 degrees out and a storm was rolling in. Instead, we went home and Kayla had a nice long bath and played with some of her toys and we had fun together. Then we watched some Gabby's Dollhouse, and I got some work in after Kayla feel asleep because I was working two half days on Monday and Tuesday to make up some time.
Monday was a totally rain filled day! It rained the entire day, but it wasn't too bad, because we had been out in the heat for 3 days and needed an air conidtioned/indoor break. So it was the perfect time to go to the Ripley's Aquarium. It is expesive to go to the aquarium, it cost the 3 of us $100 to get in. But Kayla was excited to watch the mermaid show, so we went right there and got seats for it.
Silly girl excited for the mermaid show! She liked it a lot better this year than previous years.
After the mermaid show, we walked through the shark area. Kayla LOVED the shark area at Sea World earlier this year, but she seemed a bit nervous about the one here.
Her new thing is to make silly faces while taking pictures. After walking through, we sat down and ate a lunch that we packed.
Kayla wanted to play in the climbing/slide structure, but she was terrified of the bigger kids running through it. And she got stuck up inside of it and was crying and scared. She was really sad that she was too little to go in it, and I was kind of surprised because we go to Jurassic Mountain all the time and she's in climbing structures with bigger kids and is just fine... but maybe because this was a new environment and she didn't have a friend with her... But I moved her over to a different kid play area with water and balls and she had a bit more fun.
She didn't want to put her balls into the tubes because she was worried she wouldn't get another ball. I kept telling her not to worry and that we would get her another ball...
Next ball going in the tubes.
Our traditional penguin picture. Kalya said that she was waddling like a penguin in the picture.
Kayla INSISTED that we wait in the long time to go into this tube. She 100% was set on doing it. It was pretty cool!
We had a penguin stand right by us and that was pretty neat. It was also fun waiting in line because a lot of the penguins were walking over by the glass to us.
After seeing the penguins, we ran over to get a spot for the penguin parade. I was surprised that no one was around or seemed to know anything about it, except one worker getting ready to section the area off. I was a little disappointed that they only paraded the penguins around in their little cage instead of letting them walk on their own during the parade. They have had some type of penguin injury or mess that made them discontinue that.
Kayla was still excited to see them quickly go by us though.
We had a nice time at the aquarium, but left within a few hours to go to our timeshare presentation. Global said that they had some new things to show us to get us to come in, but in truth they really didn't have anything to show us and wasted some of our time. We did get the name of an agent that is good to work with though so that's good. All they were trying to do is sell us another $9,000 worth of stars to get us to the highest level of VIP in their organization, but Cody and I both agreed that it wasn't worth the money.
For dinner that night we went to Bubba's Fish camp and smokehouse, which is the brand new verison of Bubba's fishshack in Broadway at the beach. It is waaaay bigger and nicer at this version! They also let me put crab cakes on their combo platter which made me really excited. I think this is going to be our Bubba's of choice in the future... there's no hassle to find parking and it's large enough to be able to get a table.
That night, Kayla really wanted to go swimming so we went out to the pool, but it was kinda chilly after having rained all day. Most people were hanging out in the HUGE hot tub (seriously... they had the largest hot tub I've ever seen). We didn't end up staying out too long.
But never fear, because the next morning we were back out there swimming! Kayla was getting braver and braver touching the water splashing elements.
Here she is giving her toys a bath.
We were out there for the morning and then had some leftovers for lunch.
Afterwards, we met Krista at the Tiki Bar for a drink. I mostly got strawberry smoothies so that Kayla could share with me... plus I don't really care about alcohol that much.
After the drink, we ended up going to the beach for a few hours. The rain had cooled everything off just slightly so that it was nice enough to be out there for a while. After hanging at the beach, we came back and Krista made dinner for us at her camper.
Here is Kayla being silly with Kelsie's boyfriend, Joel. He got to come on the trip with them, and he seemed to make a really good impression on everyone.
Afterwards, we went to the Tiki Bar with the Newman group and listened to karaoke. Kayla really didn't want to sit there and hang out, and someone had some leftover french fries.... so she was ALL about feeding the turtles.
We had about 50 turtles show up right below us. I think people regularly feed them, so when they saw us standing up there they all swam over to look at us.
Here's Kayla with one of her fries to feed the turtles...
Look at all the turtles!!
My happy girl!
So much fun feeding the turtles. We kept going back to get more and feed them.
Mommy and her girl!
This is Kayla's "Please let me have some more french fries" look. She was literally begging to go back to those turtles to feed them again...
Soooo back we went....
When we ran out of french fries, I bought her an ice cream and that helped distract her from the turtles.
Then she was off to the side dancing to the singers.
We were dancing and playing with each other, while daddy was able to hang out with the Newman group.
She was too bored just sitting there, so I asked her if she wanted to see the ocean at night. We grabbed her bucket and went on a sea shell hunt. We found quite a few!
Here she is proudly holding her bucket!
Our haul! We ended up leaving a bit earlier than Cody, and threw her into the bath and then she was out!
The next day, we decided to finally make our way to Savannah's Playground but we were so disappointed that it was closed for maintenance for the rest of our trip! So we ended up going to a small playground called the All Children's Playground in Surfside.
It was definitely on the smaller side and geared towards toddlers, but it was great for us. And it was nearly empty so we had it mostly to ourselves.
She liked playing with her baby on everything. Here they go down the slide together.
Pushing her on the big swing now.
Afterwards, we were right by the Seven Seas Seafood Market. They have fresh sea food at decent prices!
We picked up a dozen crab cakes, 2 lbs. of fresh gulf shrimp, and hush puppies for dinner the next night.
That night we went out with all the Newman's to the Original Benjamin's buffet! We were all squeezed into a corner in a couple of tables, but it ended up working out better than I expected. The food was really good, and I was happy to get my crab leg fix in!
They also had a really cool play area downstairs that I never knew about. We went down to check it out, and then had the HARDEST time getting Kayla to leave... she wanted to play on everything.
Foam pit to jump in, make believe boat behind it, a kitchen with all kinds of play food, water/fish themed book shelf, and little merry go rounds that didn't work. It was actually really neat!
Bunk beds and play clothes.
Every time we came to our room, Kayla wanted to put the key in and open the door. I wish that they would update this door to a keypad, because it would be much easier. We did try to go to the pool that night, but there were a lot of little bugs out that were really freaking Kayla out. She would scream whenever a little bug came around so we didn't stay out all that long.
Our last day was a pool day! We had a great system throughout the week of going swimming for a few hours in the morning, going in for lunch, and then coming back out for a bit. Kayla was REALLY starting to get brave in the water by our last day. She LOVED jumping into the water. She'd jump in, run out, and jump right back in.
A lot of times she wanted us to catch her, but by the last day, she was sitting down on the edge and scooting in and jumping in by herself.
Playing motorboat with daddy! We had such a good time swimming on this vacation.
Kayla and daddy!
Cody had a game where he was holding her up with one arm, and Kayla thought it was so funny. He'd also throw her up and catch her and she loved that.
Getting out with one hand!
Since it was our last day, we wanted to spend some more time with the fam... So hung out with Krista and them while they were eating lunch at their camper, and then went back out to the beach with them for a bit. I don't have any pictures of it, but I actually went out into the ocean this time! I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever swam in the ocean. I liked swimming and jumping with the waves. It was pretty fun. I went out probably 3 times to play in the water.
Silly Keslie taking selfies with my phone!
Kayla and Kelsie!
We came home and Cody made our crab cakes and shrimp for dinner. Then we started working on packing up to leave the next morning. Everyone came over to see our place and hang out with us one last time. It was nice that they all came over to visit.
I love that these three got to spend some time together. Davey is by far her favorite! She woke up one morning and the first thing she said was DAVEY!!! She was so excited to get to see him. She had a lot of fun with Kelsie on this trip too.
This trip FLEW by!!! It went SO fast. We really got in a nice rhythm of going to the pool in the morning, eating lunch, swimming a bit more, and then visiting with family. It was SUPER nice being right next to Krista and fam... it was cool to get to see them. We were able to hang out quite a bit, and it was actually more than I originally expected, and it was great. I'm so glad that we had this opportunity to spend this time with them. I can definitely see the appeal of family vacations... it's times like this that make me sad that I'm an only child because I'd love a big family vacation like this every year! We definitely like Myrtle Beach but next time I think we'll try a different resort this one wasn't bad because it had decent amenities right on the beach, but I think we could do better, it had a lot of minor things wrong/not updated in the unit itself. We also think that we'd probably try coming in September/October time frame so that it wasn't so hot. But we had a great time swimming and hanging out with everyone. Hopefully the beach will grow on us more... but for now... it's just not us. We are 100% more pool people for sure! This was a great little break for us and a nice time to get to spend some time with family!
