Wingaersheek Beach — Attraction in Gloucester

Amazing beach with a serious parking problem. I have visited this beach a number of times since moving to Boston a couple years ago. Most recently I visited on the 4th of July Weekend. This beach is beautiful and extremely family friendly. The tidal pools are a great place for little kids to romp and explore. The sand is soft and glittery silver. There are also bathrooms, a concession stand, and umbrellas to rent (most days). However, they have a serious parking issue. The problem is not that there isn't enough space, but that their setup for collecting parking fees (which range from $25-30 dollars for non-residents) is complete hogwash. The 4th of July weekend was expectedly busy, but the parking attendants made the whole experience unpleasant for every family waiting in line with kids in the car. We waited 45 minutes to go 1.5-2 miles (some people waited an hour). Finally, at the entrance to the beach we found two people, one taking money and the other handing the money collector parking passes/tickets. Seriously?! There was no sense of urgency. They acted like there was 10 cars in line, not 100. I worked in a bar serving 1000s of drinks a night. Had I worked that slow, someone would have jumped over the bar and shook me. So here are my suggestions: 1) When no one is exiting the beach make both lanes an entrance to you can collect money from at least 2 lanes at once (use some cones). 2) Have more than two people collecting money and make those people perform the money collection and ticketing themselves. 3) In a single lane, have 3-4 people collecting money from 3-4 cars at the same time. Collecting from one car, then waiting for the next to drive up, and then collecting from them is needlessly slow. 4) Have a sign that says ("Cash Only - $30 - Please have money ready for attendant") 5) Give the attendants the right amount of change for a fast transaction. When the parking is $30, there are some common denominations of payment: $30 exact, $40 (i.e., two twenty dollar bills), a $50 bill, and a $100. That means you need plenty of $10s, some $20s and a few $50s. Overall, that will speed things up considerably. People do their part by coming early. You need to do your part and be ready to accept them. For the price of parking, people should not have to wait an hour. 6) Have a twitter account or provide live updates on your website regarding the parking situation.

So in the end, the beach gets 5 stars and the staff get 1. Please take these...

Came here for my first time this past weekend and I can't wait to come back! Obviously if your out of state or not a resident pre book your parking spot a few days before hand, I did it 3 days before on the "Blinkay App" with no problem, pre warning it is a bit pricey at $37. Overall the beach was beautiful! The water was blue/turquoise green, the sand was so soft, no rocks. We got there for 8am and we got to find a lot of wild life, from huge clams, to hermit crabs, shrimp, a dead horseshoe crab, and you got to walk out extremely far. I really enjoyed climbing rocks and taking pictures from them. There are bathrooms, and showers, also about 3 porta potties. There's a food area with a nice big menu but no prices. My friend got 3 small fires, and two waters and it came to $50, just for reference. There is also a shopping little area with shirts/sand toys/sunglasses/etc but very expensive. The seagulls were just like any other beach, you have your food out or lying around unattended they will attack it and or you, so be careful. The water was very shallow for quite a ways but I liked that, it was also really cold, and I'm use to cold water but I don't know why I couldn't take it this past weekend, it was only 75 but there was about 10 MPH winds. The drive for me was about 2 hours, all high way, I had no problems in the morning since I left early and got there for 8am which is when parking opened. Leaving around 4:30pm I of course hit Boston traffic which is to be expected. Overall it felt like paradise and I plan on coming back again this summer!

Finally made it back on 8-10-24 and it was just as beautiful as before!

I did snap a more recent picture of the food menu however there are NO prices displayed. I did ask a girl how much her ice cream cone was because it looked good and she said $7for a twist cone!!! So definitely come prepared with your own food!

The seagulls were HORRBILE! Snatched food out of two peoples hands in front of me throughout the day and then went over to peoples areas and started dragging their bags around the sand, so be very cautious of them...

The beach is beautiful and safe for children, but parking is an issue. 2 years ago they implemented payment for parking in advance, which I consider to be a good thing, but they didn't warn us and many families, drove there pointlessly because the tickets were already sold out. We learned our lesson! Now, every time we go there, we buy tickets in advance. So today, we presented our tickets and they didn't let us in, claiming that the license plate of the car we drove there was different from the car that was registered on website, and they were right because we have 2 cars, but for 2 years this has never been a problem. They never blocked the license plate or messed with our parking voucher. When we arrived they said we needed to change the license plate before we can enter the beach. We turned around as asked and parked and tried to change it. We were on the website and couldn’t figure it out. We were also told that if we couldn’t figure it out they could enter it manually. So we got back in line and they said they can’t enter it manually and that I needed to change it in the app and it takes 5 seconds. They never told us before that there was an app. They said we had to turn around again. We tried in the app and it wouldn’t let us so we asked for help and they said we had to call support. There was no number to call, only an email. I emailed and never got an answer. They said we couldn’t enter even though we bought a parking pass. The app is called Blinkay app. In short, after 1 hour trying to get in with the already paid ticket, we decided not to miss the beach day and buy another ticket, for another beach because the tickets for Wingaersheek were already sold out. Wingaersheek beach is perfect, but the organization of the parking lot is horrible. If they were going to change the rules it would have been helpful if they made it well aware on the website. There is nothing wrong with the beach itself,...