well, yeah, we liked it, but the surf was too rough for my 3 yr old. the beach has had some erosion trouble recently and they replenished it with new sand and it's just not quite as smooth a slope as a natural unreplenished beach. are you looking for a lot of sand and surf time? if so, sunset beach might be more up your alley. we've stayed there for years and years and years and it's a very gentle beach, depending on the weather. carolina beach had a ton of stuff to do, though, which sunset does not. we loved the ferry ride from ft fisher over to southport (check out
www.ncferry.org) and the aquarium comes highly recommended, though we didn't make it 'cause we were only there for two days. dh and dd1 got swamped by a wave and he lost his glasses so we spent one afternoon at the wilmington mall lenscrafters getting new glasses
! it was fun, though. dh and i and dd2 walked down to the boardwalk one night and i thought that was fun (dd1 stayed with MIL at the condo). the condo we stayed in was fine -- not spectacular -- but fine. dd1 enjoyed the pool they had. i think riding the ferry was our favorite part. i'm on a quest now to check out all the beaches in NC. i've got quite a ways to go, but we might try to check out somewhere else in sept.
hth. please feel free to post or PM with any questions.