Funtown Beach Review: Look Elsewhere for Family Fun

There are beaches that earn their reputation, and then there is Funtown Beach in Seaside Park, a stretch of sand that has spent recent summers operating less like a seaside resort and more like an unsupervised house party that nobody remembered to chaperone. It advertises itself as family friendly. The lived experience, per the public record and a remarkably consistent chorus of reviewers, suggests the "family" in question is the one from the back half of a Jersey Shore bender.

Let us start with the day Funtown briefly became a regional emergency. In June 2018, a pop-up event called "BeachnikNJ18," promoted entirely through a viral Instagram post, funneled thousands of revelers onto Funtown’s sand, an event the beach’s own owner later claimed, through his lawyer, he knew nothing about until it was already happening. By the owner’s account he was "totally taken by surprise." A delightful thing to learn about the people charged with running the place you brought your kids to. The afternoon produced twelve summonses for disorderly conduct and loitering, one arrest tied to a fight, and enough underage-drinking citations that the neighboring police chief summed up his evening as "many skirmishes." The whole thing was apparently inspired by a DJ who had talked online about filming a music video on the beach, a music video that, per police, never actually happened. So: thousands of teenagers, no permit, no plan, and not even the promised video to show for it.

This is not a one-off. It is the house style.

Consider the beach’s signature amenity: for several summers Funtown has marketed itself as the only BYOB beach in the area, a place where you can "sip a drink with your feet in the sand." And this is not some quiet patron workaround the operators merely tolerate; it is the pitch. In a 2021 on-camera promotional interview, Funtown’s own then-manager declared it a "BYOB beach" and cheerfully invited the public to bring "anything you could put in your cooler." Anything. Bold positioning for an operation that also bills itself as wholesome. The result, predictably, is exactly what you would expect when you combine open alcohol, sun, and zero discernible supervision. One visitor reports paying a premium to get on the sand only to watch the people in front of her smoke the entire time while she reported it to two separate staff members and "nothing was done."

It gets bolder. New Jersey law draws a fairly bright line for unlicensed public places: you can permit wine or beer under narrow conditions, but distilled spirits are off the table. So naturally, in the summer of 2025 Funtown played host to the "Jersey Shore Day Drinkers Club," and this was about as far from incidental patron behavior as it gets. Per the complaint, it was an organized, publicly promoted affair, tent and banner and all, featuring a craft-distillery brand ambassador and the open distribution of shots and liquor-based mixed drinks on sand fully open to the general public. That gathering became the subject of a formal December 2025 complaint to the Seaside Park police, the municipal prosecutor, and the State of New Jersey’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, alleging exactly the kind of distilled-spirits free-for-all the statute forbids at an unlicensed venue. Whether or not enforcement ultimately follows, it is a tidy distillation of the house philosophy: if there is a rule, Funtown appears to treat it as a polite suggestion.

Then there is the entertainment programming, which seems to operate on the theory that nothing says "bring the kids" like five uninterrupted hours of club music. One reviewer recalls the DJ "playing terrible house music on the beach for 5 consecutive hours." A guest who showed up on Father’s Day put it more bluntly, describing music "describing each and every sexual activity possible," and noted that when she complained, the DJ’s customer-service philosophy amounted to telling her "I didn’t have to come." A masterclass in hospitality.

Should you make it onto the sand, do not get comfortable, and absolutely do not let your children drink anything. Funtown is famous for its aggressive closing ritual. One family reports being denied a bathroom run because staff were "closing in a couple minutes," this after paying over a hundred dollars just to get on the beach. Another guest who dropped three hundred dollars on a cabana describes being hustled off the property at 6 p.m. amid the "get off our property hooliganism," restrooms locked, showers shut. Locking the restrooms is certainly one way to keep families coming back.

If the chaos were the only problem, you could write Funtown off as merely poorly run. The staff make it personal. The reviews here are not isolated grumbles; they are a steady drumbeat. One guest reports that employees "were beyond rude to my family and scoffed at me when I asked about the pricing," at a beach "disgusting with cans and other trash everywhere." Another recounts losing a hundred and fifty dollars to treatment she called "the most unprofessional, unhelpful, inconsiderate, unreasonable, uncooperative and unaccommodating" she had experienced. The lifeguards, per another visitor, publicly screamed at a child over boogie-board flippers while waving through their own friends because "we know them and they come everyday," then laughed once the kid walked away.

And then there is the review that ought to stop any prospective visitor cold. One guest describes being turned away at the gate entirely: "Unfriendly staff racially profiled us and told us we weren’t allowed into the beach and go somewhere else," adding that it was "unbelievable that we’re still experiencing this in 2023." For a place of public accommodation marketing itself to families, an allegation like that is not a customer-service hiccup. It is the whole ballgame.

What gives the staff complaints an extra layer is who, exactly, Funtown empowers to confront and police its paying guests. At least one of the people the beach authorizes to get in patrons’ faces and summon police over them carries a documented record in the public court files, up to and including a federal fraud conviction. Management has apparently reviewed that resume and remained comfortable keeping the person in a guest-facing enforcement role. Which tells you most of what you need to know about the judgment being exercised at the top, and about how much benefit of the doubt the staff hurling accusations at paying customers have actually earned.

Funtown Beach has spent years cultivating an "anything goes" atmosphere, and to its credit, it has succeeded completely. Anything does, in fact, go: unpermitted thousand-person parties, BYOB free-for-alls, marathon club sets unfit for a daycare, locked bathrooms, vanishing fees, a staff whose warmth peaks somewhere around "you didn’t have to come," and a hiring bar set low enough that a federal fraud conviction is no obstacle to confronting your family at the gate. If that is the vacation you are after, by all means, the entrance is open until they abruptly slam it at 5 p.m.

But if "family friendly fun" is what you were actually promised, look elsewhere. As one reviewer put it with admirable economy: "Literally any other beach is better than this." Seaside is full of sand. Pick a different patch of it.

Seaside Park party a surprise; Officials unaware of event on the beach, Asbury Park Press, June 19, 2018. Owner William Major’s lawyer stated Major "did not initiate, advertise or promote the event," and described him as "totally taken by surprise." Reporting also notes twelve summonses for disorderly conduct and loitering, one arrest related to a fight, and that police tied the event to a DJ promoting a beach music-video shoot that "never happened."

'Beachnik' may face penalties, Asbury Park Press, June 21, 2018. Seaside Heights Police Chief Thomas Boyd describing "many, many skirmishes" and tickets for underage drinking. A companion "24 hours in the Seasides" sidebar describes Funtown as "the only BYOB beach in the area."

2021 on-camera promotional interview with Funtown Beach’s then-manager, who described the venue as a "BYOB beach" and invited patrons to bring "anything you could put in your cooler."

N.J.S.A. 2C:33-27, which prohibits the owner or operator of an unlicensed public place from allowing consumption of alcoholic beverages other than wine or malt beverages in areas open to the public.

Formal complaint to the Seaside Park Police Department, the Seaside Park Municipal Prosecutor, and the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, December 14, 2025, alleging violations of N.J.S.A. 2C:33-27 arising from the publicly promoted July 26, 2025 "Jersey Shore Day Drinkers Club" event at Funtown Beach, with enclosed social-media photographs and video.

Public court records, including a federal conviction in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, concerning a guest-facing Funtown staffer and reviewed by the author.

Google and public social-media reviews cited above, including accounts from Beth S., Will Strasser, Alan Busby, Ameet Vijay Sonavane, C. Monaco, Hassana Olarinre, Jim Henning, and Roberto Pared, plus a public Facebook comment from Karen Aller.