Seaside Heights Hotels
Finding a hotel, and a room, in Seaside Heights New Jersey
Seaside Heights in the summertime is a party town. A lot of young people come to have a good time and whoop it up. This became evident to people who had never even heard of the place until they saw episodes of MTV's "Summer Share" and "True Life." These shows, part of the whole reality show genre, had the MTV folks descend on Seaside with video crews, techs, writers and a few young adults that were followed for the summer season. It did have a positive effect on the town and local merchants. People saw the show and wanted to come to Seaside. But getting back to the point…..a party place. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it is truly something you should be aware of when you are considering taking a trip to Seaside, and trying to find a place to stay.
The Hotel Landscape
If you could take a ride around Seaside Heights NJ in the winter, when all the crowds are gone, you would see that hotels dominate a lot of the town's 0.8 square miles of land. You would also notice some other things pretty quickly. You cannot find a Hilton, Holiday Inn, Sheraton or Best Western around town. This is not a place for big beachfront hotels, with their tens of stories of rooms and balconies that look out over the Atlantic Ocean. Instead what you find are all kinds of one-off hotels. The large majority of Seaside Heights' motels are owned by a person that runs the place.
The hotels of Seaside Heights come in many flavors - big, small, nicely kept and some, well, they are a little run down. In a way it is like visiting any number of New Jersey communities. Lots of places look fine and most could look better; if the owners had a lot of cash to spend on those improvements that maybe don't need to be made - but would make things like a bit more spiffy.
To figure out if you want to stay in a place you should take more than a quick look around. It doesn't take a lot of work to see how the hotel is kept up. It is just not that hard to differentiate between the owners that are doing a good job and those that are really not taking care of the place as well as they should.
Location
Close to the Beach or a block or two away?
Being close to the beach seems to always be a better choice if you are vacationing at the Jersey Shore. This may not be your best option in Seaside Heights. First of all there is the boardwalk. The boardwalk stays busy until at least midnight during summer weekend nights. If you are staying in a hotel that shares space with the boardwalk, you are on the boardwalk all the time. Now if you are planning on staying out most of the night, coming back to your room and staying up even later and will then be sleeping on the beach for part of the day then you will be fine. Otherwise you might want to get a little ways away from the beach.
