20 Wonderfully Weird & Unique Things to Do with Kids in Myrtle Beach
Myrtle Beach is packed with family fun, but some experiences go beyond the usual, the kind of only-here adventures kids talk about long after the tan fades. From a pirate-ship treasure hunt on the salt marsh to forging your own sword, making your own slime or teeing off on a five-story mini-golf course, here are the most unique experiences for kids along the Grand Strand.
Jump to an Experience
- Black Flag Forge
- Children’s Pirate Adventures
- The Crazy Mason Milkshake Bar
- DinoLand Cafe
- Downtown Flavortown
- Family Kingdom Amusement Park
- Fun Plaza
- The Gay Dolphin Gift Cove
- Hollywood Wax Museum
- Interactive Experience Unleashed
- Jack’d Up Games
- Mount Atlanticus Minotaur Goff
- Pirate’s Table Seafood Buffet
- Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show
- Ripley’s Attractions
- Savannah’s Playground
- Shark Wake Park
- Slime Kitchen
- Tupelo Bay Golf Center
- WonderWorks
The Quick Answer
What are the most unique things to do with kids in Myrtle Beach?
Unique things to do with kids in Myrtle Beach include a Children's Pirate Adventure in Murrells Inlet, exploring the upside-down WonderWorks, dining among animatronic dinosaurs at DinoLand Cafe and playing a unique multi-level ocean front mini golf course Mt. Atlanticus (one of 30+ courses in Myrtle Beach).
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How often can your kid say they forged a sword on vacation? At Black Flag Forge inside Broadway at the Beach, a real blacksmith guides you through hammering out your own souvenir, from a copper coin or hairpin to a knife or full-on pirate cutlass, usually in under an hour. Heads up: it’s a working forge with hot steel, so it’s best for older kids and teens, with littler ones watching and helping.
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Ahoy, little buccaneers. On this interactive cruise along the Murrells Inlet salt marsh aboard the Sea Gypsy, kids get in costume, hunt for sunken treasure and blast rival pirates with water cannons. Add face painting and a whole lot of make-believe and you’ve got a morning tailor-made for the youngest crew members. It’s a favorite for birthdays, too.
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Part dessert, part art project, The Crazy Mason serves outrageous milkshakes in a souvenir mason jar you get to keep. Each one comes rimmed and piled high with candy, whole slices of cake or donuts, cookies and towers of toppings, and the lineup rotates with fun seasonal and holiday themes all year long. It’s a guaranteed jaw-dropper for kids and grown-ups alike, with locations by Coastal Grand Mall in Myrtle Beach and on Main Street in North Myrtle Beach.
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Half restaurant, half prehistoric adventure, DinoLand Cafe on South Kings Highway lets kids dine among life-size animatronic dinosaurs that roam the floor, hang from the ceiling and even stop by the table. The over-the-top setting piles on a smoking lava mountain and a flying dragon bar overhead, so the theming is the main event. For dessert, crack open the signature Dragon Egg, a giant chocolate egg filled with fruit. It’s a full sit-down dinner, so come hungry.
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Guy Fieri’s Downtown Flavortown brought a giant helping of family fun to the former Myrtle Beach Mall. Skip the shoe rental and roll a few frames of duckpin bowling across 14 lanes, with smaller balls and pins that are easy for little hands, then turn the kids loose in Guy’s Real Deal Arcade, a 10,000-square-foot room with more than 100 games from classic cabinets to the latest VR. Load up a G-Bucks card and go. It’s built for families and birthday parties, and the only grown-ups-only zone is the tiki bar.
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Myrtle Beach’s classic oceanfront amusement park, Family Kingdom is home to more than 35 rides right on the sand. The star is the Swamp Fox, a wooden roller coaster that has been rattling and thrilling riders since 1966, with ocean views from the top of its 72-foot lift. Don’t miss the Great Pistolero Roundup either, an interactive Wild West dark ride where two riders shoot at animatronic targets for points. It helped pioneer the interactive shooting dark ride, and it’s still a blast for all ages.
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Right on the Boardwalk, Fun Plaza is the kind of place grandparents and grandkids can love together. This family-run arcade has been a Myrtle Beach tradition since the 1940s, and its signature is a whole wall of vintage 1957 Williams baseball machines, still in their well-worn original condition, where the goal is to score 28 runs for a prize. Around them you’ll find all the modern favorites too, from Skee-Ball and air hockey to hoops, claw machines and a prize-redemption counter. It’s pure nostalgia and a fun tradition to pass down to the next generation.
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A Boardwalk fixture since 1946, the Gay Dolphin Gift Cove is the oldest and largest gift shop on the East Coast, with more than 70,000 items packed into 26,000 square feet across three winding floors. Kids can happily get lost in the maze of shelves hunting for shark teeth, saltwater taffy, kites, magic tricks, seashells and every beachy trinket imaginable. It’s free to wander, gloriously over-the-top, and a slice of old-school Myrtle Beach you won’t find anywhere else.
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You can’t miss the giant King Kong clinging to the front of this Broadway at the Beach complex. One ticket covers three attractions: pose with lifelike wax figures of movie stars and superheroes at the Hollywood Wax Museum, then wind through Hannah’s Maze of Mirrors and its 288 mirrored twists and turns. Older, braver kids can take on Outbreak: Dread the Undead, a walk-through zombie experience that is genuinely intense, so it is easy to skip with younger ones. It’s a fun, slightly kooky pick and a great rainy-day backup.
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Billed as South Carolina’s largest VR arena, this Restaurant Row playground drops kids into free-roam virtual worlds, mixed-reality adventures with real animatronics, laser tag and STEM stations, plus a full indoor playground with slides and ball pits for the littles. There are escape-room-style challenges and VR games the grown-ups will happily jump into as well.
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One of the newest ways to burn off energy in North Myrtle Beach, Jack’d Up Games is a warehouse of fast-paced interactive challenge rooms. The headliner is The Floor Is Lava, where you leap across glowing platforms without touching the ground, but there’s a whole lineup to conquer: dodge lasers in the Lazer Vault, test your reflexes on Neural Impact and Pulse Matrix, and go head-to-head on HyperHoops. It’s built for competition, so it’s a hit with families, groups and anyone up for a little friendly rivalry.
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Part mini golf, part tropical fever dream, Mount Atlanticus rises five stories through a historic downtown building, with two 19-hole courses (the Minotaur for challenge-seekers, the Conch for younger putters) and ocean and Ferris-wheel views along the way. The legend is the 19th hole: sink a hole-in-one across the narrow strip between two lagoons and you win a lifetime free pass, with your photo on the clubhouse wall.
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Dinner and a show, pirate-style. Pirate’s Table is a big Calabash-style seafood buffet in Surfside Beach where a costumed pirate crew roams the dining hall with sword fights and sea shanties. The showstopper for kids is the 10,000-gallon indoor pool with real, live mermaids swimming right beside the tables. The mermaids appear seasonally (typically in summer), so it’s worth calling ahead to make sure they’ll be in the water during your visit. Pile your plate with crab legs, shrimp and prime rib while the little ones watch wide-eyed.
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Dolly Parton’s Pirates Voyage turns dinner into a full-blown adventure, with rival pirate crews battling across two full-size ships in a 15-foot-deep indoor lagoon, plus aerial acrobatics, sword fights, pyrotechnics and animal encounters, all while you dig into a four-course feast. For kids, the most unique touch is the “Join the Crew” makeover: before the show, artists transform little ones (ages 3 and up) into a pirate or a mermaid, complete with makeup, accessories and their own sword or wand. It makes the whole night feel like they’re part of the story.
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Ripley’s has a whole family of attractions around Myrtle Beach, and kids can happily bounce between them. At Ripley’s Aquarium at Broadway at the Beach, catch the underwater Mermaid Show as divers glide among the rays, meet two-toed sloths Cleo and Rico in Sloth Valley, and reach in to touch a stingray in Ray Bay. Down on the Boardwalk, the Believe It or Not! Odditorium is packed with oddities like a shrunken head and a six-legged pig, while Crazy Golf is a neon blacklight indoor mini-golf romp and the Mirror Maze scrambles your sense of direction with mirrored glass and LED lights. Quirky, a little spooky and endlessly fun.
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This isn’t your average playground. Tucked into Grand Park at The Market Common, Savannah’s Playground is a huge, fully inclusive space built so kids of all ages and abilities can play side by side, with wheelchair-friendly swings, adaptive zipline-style chairs, sensory features and wide, rolling pathways. It’s free, it’s beautifully done, and it reopened in 2026 after a major renovation.
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For older kids with energy to burn, Shark Wake Park is a blast. Bounce, climb and cannonball across Obstacle Island, a full-acre floating aqua park of slides, towers and monkey bars, then try cable wakeboarding, kneeboarding or water skiing, no boat required, with lessons for first-timers. The obstacle course is built for ages 7 and up who can swim and stand at least 45 inches tall.
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Part science lab, part sensory craft, Slime Kitchen lets kids build their own batch of slime from scratch. Pick a base, then layer in scents, colors, glitter and mix-ins and whip it all together on a real stand mixer. It’s a hands-on, no-two-alike creation, everything is non-toxic, walk-ins are welcome, and yes, they get to take their slime home.
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Foot golf is exactly what it sounds like: golf you play by kicking a soccer ball into oversized cups, and Tupelo Bay in Garden City is where to try it. It’s a great, low-pressure way to get the whole family outside and a little competitive, and the complex also has a driving range and lighted disc golf if you want to make an afternoon of it.
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You can’t miss it: WonderWorks is the giant upside-down building at Broadway at the Beach. Inside, it’s an “amusement park for the mind” with 100-plus hands-on exhibits where kids can lie on a bed of nails, brace against 84-mph hurricane winds and fly a NASA spacecraft simulator. Add laser tag and an outdoor ropes course and zip line, and you’ve got hours of indoor-outdoor fun.