Wooo! Spring Break '89! Back when Daytona Beach was the spring break capital

Mark Lane, The Daytona Beach News-Journal
·2 min read
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Spring Breakers at the Plaza Hotel, March 1989.
Spring Breakers at the Plaza Hotel, March 1989.

MTV set up in Daytona Beach and declared the town “The World Capital of Spring Break” from 1986 to 1993. The city was already a big spring break destination well before that and remains so today, but those years were the high tide of the event here.

At its height, an estimated half-million breakers descended on the beachside, gridlocking the streets, getting drunk and disorderly on the sidewalks and falling off hotel balconies. Daytona Beach, after congratulating itself on stealing the event from Fort Lauderdale, found that it could not handle the crowds that congregated during The World Capital of Spring Break years. Daytona Beach’s spring break reputation from that time is something tourism promoters still work to overcome.

Why are spring break weeks less of a civic emergency than they were in those days? Mostly it’s because the spring break market fragmented. Dozens of coastal cities bid for the attention of sun-seeking collegians. The event has even become international with venues in Mexico and the islands.

MTV wore out its welcome here, and starting in 1994, tried to crown other locales as capitals of spring break. But the most obvious reason for the smaller crowds is that Daytona Beach simply stopped promoting itself as a spring break destination back in the 1990s.

Spring break is still a seasonal event, often overlapping with Bike Week, but does not come close to taking over the town the way it did in the 1980s and ‘90s.

-- Mark Lane

A bikini contest competitor works the crowd, March 1991.
A bikini contest competitor works the crowd, March 1991.
Spring break revelers 1989.
Spring break revelers 1989.
Spring Break traffic backs up over the Broadway Bridge in 1989.
Spring Break traffic backs up over the Broadway Bridge in 1989.
Big beach crowd of spring breakers, March 1995.
Big beach crowd of spring breakers, March 1995.
Two Indiana teens here for spring break share a ride on the pier's sky lift, March 30, 1992.
Two Indiana teens here for spring break share a ride on the pier's sky lift, March 30, 1992.

Do you have vintage photos to share?

Do you have old photos that depict the people, landmarks and story of Volusia and Flagler counties? Don't leave them hidden away in boxes and albums. Send a scan or photo to mark.lane@news-jrnl.com for possible use on future historic photo pages.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Spring Break '89! Back when Daytona Beach was the spring break capital