Old Orchard Beach Boardwalk, Pier and Playland

So what is the "boardwalk", exactly?

Three things sit next to each other at the foot of Old Orchard Street, and together they do the job:

• The Pier: a covered wooden pier running out over the sand and water, lined with food counters, bars and shops.
• Old Orchard Street: the pedestrianized block running inland from the pier: arcades, souvenir shops, pizza windows, fried dough.
• Palace Playland: an amusement park directly on the beachfront, immediately north of the pier.

You can do all three in a loop of about four hundred yards. That compactness is the town's real trick: everything the beach is famous for is within sight of everything else, and you never need the car once you have parked it.

The Pier

Old Orchard Pier rates 4.5 from 581 reviews, which makes it the most-reviewed single feature in town after the beach itself. It is not the pier that was built here originally. Successive fires and storms have shortened it dramatically over the decades, and what stands now is a fraction of the length of the Victorian original that ran far out into the water.

Go anyway, and go for the walk rather than the shopping. From the end you get the only view of the town from the water, with the sand running away for miles in both directions and the low hills rising inland behind the town. It is busiest in the evening. Early morning it is nearly empty and much more pleasant.

Pier French Fries (4.5 from 295 reviews, 12 Old Orchard Street) is the institution at the top of the pier and does one thing.

Palace Playland

Palace Playland is the amusement park on the sand. A genuine seaside park with a Ferris wheel, a carousel, thrill rides and a large arcade, all of it a few steps from the water. It is the only beachfront amusement park of its kind left in New England, and for families with children between about five and fourteen it is the single biggest reason to come to Old Orchard Beach.

Practical notes rather than hype: it runs on a summer season with limited shoulder-season weekends, tickets work on a wristband-or-individual-ride basis, and current pricing and operating dates are on the park's own site. Evenings are when it comes alive and also when the queues are worst; late morning on a weekday is the efficient slot.

Old Orchard Street

The pedestrian block is loud, bright and unapologetically tacky, and judging it as anything else misses the point. Arcades, T-shirts, temporary tattoos, pizza by the slice. Two things on it are actually good: Red Door Market and Deli (4.9 from 167 reviews, 39 Old Orchard Street) is the highest-rated food business in the town center, and Beach Bagels (4.4 from 861 reviews, 34 Old Orchard Street) is where a lot of people start the day.

At the top of the street, Hooligans (4.4 from 6,295 reviews, 2 Old Orchard Street) carries more reviews than any other business in Old Orchard Beach by an enormous margin, over six thousand, which is Portland-restaurant volume in a town of a few thousand year-round residents. That number tells you it is where everybody ends up, not that it is the best food in town.

The beach itself

Seven miles of sand, flat and hard-packed, running from Pine Point in Scarborough at the north end to Ocean Park and Camp Ellis at the south. The corpus lists it several times, as Old Orchard Beach (4.5 from 91 reviews) and as Old Orchard (4.5 from 133 reviews), which is a data quirk rather than two beaches.

It is a gently shelving beach with a big tidal range, and that shapes the day more than anything else. At low tide the sand is enormous and firm enough to cycle on. At high tide, in front of the pier, it narrows to a strip and the crowd concentrates onto it. If you have a choice, plan the beach around a falling tide and the arcades around high water.

Water temperature is the other reality. This is the Gulf of Maine. It warms up more than the coast further east, but "warm" is relative and July is the earliest most people find it comfortable.

Ocean Park, the quiet end

Walk or drive a mile and a half southwest along the shore and the character changes completely. Ocean Park was founded as a summer assembly on the Chautauqua model (lectures, music, temperance, sea air) and it still has the shape of one: a compact grid of small cottages around a green, a bandstand, and no arcades at all.

• Ocean Park Beach: 4.8 from 12 reviews, the highest-rated beach listing in the area, and the low review count is the point. Almost nobody who comes for the pier walks down here.
• Ocean Park Memorial Bandstand: 4.8 from 5 reviews, 11 Temple Avenue. Summer concerts on the green.
• Guild Park: 4.4 from 50 reviews, 74 Temple Avenue.
• Ocean Park Association: 4.4 from 15 reviews, which runs the programming.

If you are traveling with people who find the pier exhausting, this is the fix, and it is a fifteen-minute walk on the sand at low tide.

Where to eat

Ranked by rating weighted against review volume, so the order reflects places that are both well-liked and genuinely busy rather than a high score from a small sample.

Place	Rating	Reviews	Where
Hooligans	4.4	6,295	2 Old Orchard St
Joseph's By the Sea	4.4	1,036	55 W Grand Ave
Tami Lyn's Place	4.6	646	126 W Grand Ave
Beach Bagels	4.4	861	34 Old Orchard St
Taqueria 207	4.5	727	2 Ocean Park Rd
Elevate Cafe	4.8	363	155 Saco Ave
Big Daddy's Bar and Grill	4.5	515	2 W Grand Ave
Paloma's Restaurant	4.7	283	15B E Grand Ave

Joseph's By the Sea is the town's proper dinner: an actual restaurant with an ocean view and 1,036 reviews behind a 4.4, a mile from the noise on West Grand Avenue. Tami Lyn's is the local breakfast. Elevate Cafe (4.8) and Paloma's (4.7) are the two highest-rated sit-down rooms in town, both away from the strip.

Also worth knowing: Lone Pine Brewing Company (4.6 from 187 reviews, 32 East Grand Avenue) for beer near the beach, Beach Lobster & Farmstand (4.7 from 183 reviews, 35 Saco Avenue) to buy lobster and produce rather than eat out, and The Local OOB (4.8 from 56 reviews, 23 Washington Avenue) if you want somewhere that feels like it belongs to the town rather than the season.

Getting there, and the parking problem

Old Orchard Beach is roughly twenty minutes south of Portland and is one of the very few Maine beach towns you can reach without a car: Amtrak's Downeaster stops in the town center on a seasonal basis, a short walk from the pier. Check Amtrak's current schedule, because the stop is not year-round.

If you drive, understand what you are signing up for. Parking near the pier is all paid, the lots are small and privately run, rates rise with demand, and on an August Saturday the whole town center is full by late morning. The workable strategies are to arrive before ten, park further out and walk in, or take the train and skip the problem entirely.

Rain, and other things to do

• Harmon Museum & Old Orchard Beach Historical Society (4.9 from 16 reviews, 4 Portland Avenue). Small, volunteer-run, seasonal, and the highest-rated attraction in town. Good on the resort's improbable Victorian history.
• Funtown Splashtown USA: the larger amusement and water park, a few minutes inland in Saco. Bigger rides and a full water park; a different proposition from Palace Playland.
• Veteran's Memorial Park (4.6 from 246 reviews, 4 Heath Street) and Milliken Mills Trails Park (4.6 from 20 reviews), green space away from the sand.
• Dunegrass Golf Club (4.3 from 406 reviews, 65 Wild Dunes Way). Eighteen holes inland.

The honest drawback

Old Orchard Beach is loud, and in high summer it is very crowded. The town center in August is a press of people, the arcades are relentless, the parking is expensive and scarce, and the strip's food is mostly fried and forgettable. If you are looking for a quiet stretch of Maine coast, this is emphatically the wrong town, and no amount of framing will change that.

The corollary is that it is honest about what it is, which a lot of the coast is not. It has been a working-class summer resort for well over a century, with a long-standing French-Canadian following you can hear on the beach, and it delivers exactly the day it promises: sand, rides, fried food, noise. Come knowing that and it is a good day out. Come hoping for a fishing village and you will hate it.

Where to go next

The contrast is easy to find. Prouts Neck is fifteen minutes north and is the exact opposite. Private, silent, a cliff path and nothing to buy. Biddeford is ten minutes south for mill-town food and a much better dinner. Saco sits between the two. For the full town listing, see our Old Orchard Beach page.

Frequently asked questions

Does Old Orchard Beach have a boardwalk?

Not in the Atlantic City sense. There is no long timber promenade along the dunes. What people mean by the Old Orchard Beach boardwalk is the Pier, which runs out over the water and rates 4.5 from 581 reviews, plus the pedestrianized block of Old Orchard Street behind it and Palace Playland on the sand alongside.

Is Palace Playland worth it?

For families with children roughly five to fourteen, yes. It is the last beachfront amusement park of its kind in New England, and being able to walk from the sand onto the rides is the whole appeal. Older teenagers usually want Funtown Splashtown in Saco instead, which has bigger rides and a water park.

Where should you park at Old Orchard Beach?

All the parking near the pier is paid and privately run, the lots are small, and the town center fills by late morning on summer weekends. Arrive before ten, or park further out and walk in. Better still, take Amtrak's Downeaster, which stops in the town center seasonally, a short walk from the beach.

Which part of Old Orchard Beach is quietest?

Ocean Park, at the southwestern end, about a mile and a half from the pier. It was founded as a Chautauqua-style summer assembly and still has a bandstand and cottage grid instead of arcades. Ocean Park Beach rates 4.8 from just 12 reviews, which tells you how few pier visitors ever walk down.