I've never seen a bigger waste of beautiful space ever. After paying $14.00 I arrived at 11am. The rides were not open until 12pm. Neither were any of the concessions. (hello? this is the summer. Anyone have toddlers that nap in the afternoon? so stupid.)

All I saw were ugly, dated buildings and wasted boardwalk space. Who runs this place? I suppose if you're just going to the beach it's fine. But I won't be back.

For $14 in parking and then $5 in tokens, we and our 2-yr-old twins were able to do the carousel (the only ride for kids under 36" beware), swim at the beach, go searching for crabs in a big tidal pool, use the playground, and run around the sprinkler park.

This was the highlight of our trip to the mystic area. It was about a 30 minute drive. I included photos of crab hunting. To find that area, you have to walk all the way down the beach and go to the back. You can't miss it; dozens of people were back there doing the same thing. Look under the rocks!

While my husband and I paid $12.00 to enter the park, we walked onto the beach, turned around and left. We are acustomed to the clean beaches of southern New Jersey. Ocean Beach Park was nothing near clean. The sand was littered with cigarette butts and the buildings show their age. While this may be an OK place to bring a family with kids who have never seen a beach, it is not recommended to anyone who has ever been to a beach on the East coast and has pre-conceived notions of what a beach should be. This was nothing more than an out dated amusment park sitting on the beach. Also, in order to get there from I95, you must drive right along some pretty shady housing projects.

What a fantastic place for the whole family! For only 12$ US dollars for parking, you get to enjoy the beach, which is warmer than Maine and other places because is the Long Island Sound and not the wide open ocean BUT there are all the advantages anyway: Waves, tons of seashells for kids to collect, a little lake FILLED with many species of crabs and baby hermit crabs everywhere the kids can pick up by their shell to look at. We are from Montreal and it is only a 6 and a half hour drive to an ocean you can swim in. We will definitely be doing this again! I would suggest you be careful though on your way there as even mapquest directions seem to make you go through a ghetto-like neighborhood to get there so be vigilant, but Ocean Beach Park itself is clean and safe, we left our stuff unattended many times and people were even bringing us back things that had blown away. Although, of course, you never know. The sand is beautiful as can be seen on their website. There is a restaurant (maybe two?), a small gift shop and arcade, a gym, an Olympic size pool and a big water slide (a big expensive though at 3$ a ride or 15$ for the day), a free kiddie spray park and playground, a mini golf course and rides. The rides are a bit old (carnival type) but surprisingly, they are very fun. Both my daughters (age 4 and 9) enjoyed them and those work with tokens you must purchase but they aren't that expensive. On wednesday night, there is a magic show and on other nights, it's "movie in the park" night. While we were there, they were showing Harry Potter. All staff we encountered were very friendly and I would recommend to anyone to go at least once. If you don't want to spend much and do all the other things, for 12$ you (and the kids?) can have fun at the beach all day. You don't get the feeling they are there to rip you off like many other places. You can bring your own cooler and have a picnic. If you get there in late afternoon, the price is only 5$ a car. Enjoy...