It's been a while since we stayed at the Ocean Reef, but I guess better late than never on the review! My fiance and I stayed there in July 2006 for a much needed week long vacation. I had been to Myrtle Beach many times before with my family, though we always stayed further south and I felt it was beginning to get kind of dumpy. We also had originally booked with the Boardwalk Beach Resort. After checking out the reviews for it on here, we promptly canceled the reservation and booked the Ocean Reef...vacation definitely SAVED! It was my fiance's first time to Myrtle Beach and he didn't have very high expectations b/c he had heard stories from people he knew. He ended up loving it though and the Ocean Reef definitely played a part!

We found a pretty good deal on their website for a 1 BR queen oceanfront efficiency and it was perfect for us. The room was nice and clean (as clean as you can get for a hotel on the beach) and it was definitely worth the little bit of extra money to get the efficiency and oceanfront! Loved the view! We are both in our early 20's, so all we really did the whole week was lay on the beach. It was nice being able to run up to the room, grab a sandwhich, and then head back to the beach! It was also great for a couple college students on a budget!

I guess you could say we are a couple big kids, b/c we loved playing in the water park as much as the little kids did! Loved the lazy river, and the pool was a decent size.

The hotel was in the perfect area, convenient to pretty much everything! It was also nice b/c the beach wasn't too crowded..and a down the beach to a few VERY CROWDED hotels made me even more thankful for this place!

While we were there they were still doing the construction on the parking garage and the condos. We were towards the end of the hall where they were doing the construction, though we didn't seem to notice it much. Apparently they are finished with all this, can't wait to see it next time we go back! We didn't mind having to park across the street and walk though.

There were only a few somewhat negative things we could think of, one being the SLOW elevators. The other was, unless you are out at the crack of dawn, forget getting a chair at the pool! This didn't bother us, as we spent all our time on the beach, but just a warning if you like to hang out by the pool.

The staff was wondeful too! It was pretty much chaos when we went to check in, though I wouldn't blame this on the staff, it just happened to be right at check in time and there were an INSANE amount of people there trying to check in. They handled it great and efficiently, given the circumstances. They were also very helpful in directing us to places and providing little maps (the city has changed a LOT since the last time I was there!) Also, one of the days we decided to sit out on the chairs in front of the restaurant for a little while. Unfortunately, some very immature kids thought it would be funny to dump water and cokes off their balcony onto us and a few other people laying there. I promptly walked to the front desk fuming, and they seemed concerned about the situation and got on the radio to someone right away. I'm not sure if anything came of it, but the kids weren't on that balcony much longer!

Since we hung around the hotel most of the week we knew it could make or break our vacation. My fiance keeps asking when we are going back and told everyone that would listen about the hotel! We are going to the Caribbean next summer for our (delayed) honeymoon, then after that it's back to the Ocean Reef! We had such a wonderful vacation...and I guess it didn't hurt that he proposed out on the beach here :)