Mikey from Hangtime stood on the Myrtle Beach boardwalk at night, funnel cake smell in the air, watching his friend Gavin get launched 200 feet into the sky on a slingshot ride that, by his own admission, looked a little too sketchy to board himself. That decision, comic as it was, captured something real: the gap between America’s worst and best rated vacation destinations is not quite what the star ratings suggest. Armed with an unlimited budget and a willingness to eat a genuinely freaky milkshake, Mikey set out to test both ends of the spectrum back to back, scoring each destination on fun, comfort, and value, with a vacation ability score out of 30.
Dirty Myrtle earns its nickname, and a few surprises
Myrtle Beach is a roughly two-hour flight from Dallas, and Mikey made no attempt to soften the city’s reputation. He booked the lowest rated resort in town, the Bermuda Sands Resort, at $210 a night. The room delivered: a missing smoke alarm, a pillow without a pillowcase, and a lamp with visible stains. The twist was the view. A direct beachside sightline explained why the place still fills up, rust and wasps included.
The boardwalk held its own. A local resident named Sharon, who has lived in Myrtle Beach her whole life, offered the most honest travel tip of the trip when asked what to do: ‘Eat. They have good restaurants here.’ She was not wrong. The four Ripley’s attractions on the strip ranged from a genuinely impressive mini golf course with a zipline hole to a mirror maze that Mikey described as feeling like a nightmare he could not escape. The haunted adventure that followed was no touch, physical anyway. ‘Emotionally, yes, we will,’ the guide warned before they went in.
Parasailing nearly fell apart entirely. Wind shut down every company in town except one operating boat that was running at 17 out of 21 knots and climbing. The transfer between boats mid-ocean while seasick gave the whole excursion the energy of a low-budget action movie. Mikey made it up, made it back, and spent the rest of the afternoon at Pirates Voyage, a dinner show he called the self-proclaimed best in the country, where performers he suspected were former Division I gymnasts dropped from the ceiling while the audience ate and argued over which side of the room was winning a competition nobody fully understood. Final score for Myrtle Beach: 18 out of 30.
The Four Seasons royal suite and a surprise envelope with stakes
Orlando’s Four Seasons Resort is a different planet. Mikey had secured the royal suite, which he described as ‘basically an entire house,’ complete with a wraparound balcony overlooking the surrounding theme parks, a full office, a movie room, and enough square footage to get genuinely lost. He did a rapability test on the balcony. It wrapped.
He also brought his mom and surprised her mid-resort-speedrun by producing his sister Jessica, whose debut on the Hangtime channel was immediately memorable. Universal’s Volcano Bay at night followed, and something about darkness, glowing lights, and a water coaster that runs through an active volcano made the experience feel more like a rave than a family outing. His mom got her leg stuck briefly on the first ride. His sister emerged from inside the volcano having lost track of him entirely.
The final morning at Discovery Cove was built around a sealed envelope Mikey had been dangling over his sister since check-in. She had to swim with sharks to open it. The sharks turned out to be behind clear glass during an underwater sea venture walk at 14 feet deep, but the suits were hard to get on and the safety video was not exactly calming. She went down anyway. Inside the envelope: a $5,000 family vacation. ‘Take your family and grandma on another vacation,’ Mikey told her. ‘Love you.’
The five-star vacation scored 20 out of 30, winning by two points.
The buoy that came from a dolphin’s mouth
At the Discovery Cove dolphin lagoon, a trainer guided a dolphin close enough to deliver something directly into Mikey’s hands. The dolphin presented him with a small subscribe buoy. He kept it.
Back at the Bermuda Sands Resort, that beachside view was still there on night one, rust and all, doing exactly what $210 a night at the worst rated resort in Myrtle Beach promises: putting the ocean right outside the window and leaving the rest up to you.
