The Best Things to Do on Pleasure Island by Golf Cart (And Three You Can't Reach)
A cart changes how the island works. Parking stops being the thing that decides your day, the six miles from the boardwalk to Fort Fisher becomes a pleasant drive instead of a hunt for a space, and the trip itself turns into part of the outing.
Here's what's genuinely worth driving to — and, just as usefully, the three places people plan around that you cannot legally reach in one. If you'd rather have the full ranked list with current hours on every stop, that's the top 18, ranked, and the same stops are pinned on our island map.
The Carolina Beach Boardwalk
The obvious one, and the one a cart improves most. Lake Park Boulevard through the boardwalk district is posted 25 mph, so it's an easy, unhurried drive, and the annual parking pass on the vehicle covers most nearby town lots and every street-end space — which is exactly the parking that costs $25 a day in season and fills by early evening.
Go at night. The rides, the lights, the smell of doughnuts, and a five-minute drive home instead of a walk back to a car parked eleven blocks away.
Fort Fisher State Historic Site
About 4.75 miles from the boardwalk, roughly 12 minutes, and legal the entire way — the corridor is 25 mph through Kure Beach, then 35 mph south of the town line. It's free, and it's open Tuesday through Saturday.
This is the best cart drive on the island. Ocean on one side, marsh on the other, no traffic once you're south of Kure Beach, and a genuinely significant Civil War site at the end of it. If you only make one real trip in the cart, make it this one.
The Fort Fisher ferry terminal
About 6.5 miles, roughly 16 minutes. The ferry to Southport runs from the southern tip, and even if you don't board it, the terminal area at the end of the island is a quiet, windswept place most visitors never bother to reach.
If you are thinking of taking the cart across: the ferry does publish a fare class covering golf carts, but which class an LSV falls under isn't something we could confirm. Call 1-800-BY-FERRY before you build a day around it.
Kure Beach and the pier
Every street in Kure Beach is posted 35 mph or under, so the whole town is open to you. It's quieter than Carolina Beach, more residential, and the pier is the center of it.
Two things to know: a few streets drop to 10 mph — Atlantic Avenue among them — so watch the signs. And your Carolina Beach parking pass does nothing here. Kure Beach runs a completely separate parking program, so plan to pay to park during their season.
The street-end beach accesses
This is the underrated one. Carolina Beach has beach access points at the end of numerous streets, each with a handful of parking spaces — and street-end spaces on both the beach and canal sides are covered by the cart pass.
In a car, those spaces are a lottery. In a cart, you can actually check three of them in the time it takes to circle a lot once, and park in a space a full-size vehicle would struggle with.
Sunrise one side, sunset the other
The island is narrow enough that you can have both in the same day without it being a project. Ocean side for sunrise, Cape Fear River and marsh side for sunset, ten minutes apart.
This is what a half-day Early Bird rental is actually built around — out before 7:30 AM, back by 12:30, and the good light happens while the island is still empty.
Three places you cannot reach in an LSV
Worth knowing before you plan around them, because all three come up constantly.
Carolina Beach State Park. The hiking, the marina, the Venus flytraps — genuinely worth seeing, and effectively unreachable by cart. State Park Road's only connection is Dow Road, which is posted 45 to 55 mph and therefore off-limits to an LSV end to end. Separately, North Carolina bans golf carts in state parks by rule; whether a registered LSV is covered by that rule is genuinely unclear, and we're not going to guess. Either way, the road settles it. Take the car.
Freeman Park. The drive-on beach at the north end requires an operational four-wheel-drive registered vehicle and a paid permit, and the ordinance separately names golf carts as prohibited. An LSV doesn't qualify on either count.
The Island Greenway. The paved 1.2-mile path is limited to bicycles and pedestrians. No motorized vehicles of any kind — the town was blunt about that when it opened. It's also not a road, and the state statute that permits LSVs permits them on streets and highways.
And the one that changed recently: the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher is closed. It shut down entirely on May 26, 2026 for a renovation running beyond two years, with no published reopening date. Don't drive down expecting it — though the historic site next door is open and free, and worth the trip on its own. More on what the closure means for the area.
The one rule that governs all of it
Look at the speed limit sign. 35 or under, you're legal. Above it, you're not — though you may still cross it at an intersection. That single test covers every trip on this list, and it's why Dow Road and Snow's Cut Bridge are the two hard edges of the map. The full route guide has the details.
Planning a route, or not sure whether somewhere is reachable? Text or call 910-999-2278 before you book — we'd rather answer it now.