From bowling lanes and laser tag to axe throwing, simulators, dining and a beer garden, High Tides & Good Vibes in Surf City delivers the all-weather, all-ages entertainment locals and visitors have been waiting for.
Photography by Unique Media & Design
As a kid Frankie Williams and his family visited Topsail Island. In college he helped clean its beaches after surfing on weekends. Today, his construction business and home are here.
Eric Shirley knew he wanted to live at the beach and worked — first in medical device sales then venture capital — to make that happen.
By the time the two men met in Surf City a decade ago, they both had families and were working, volunteering and enjoying coastal living on Topsail Island. Little did they know then that one day they would be the designers and owners, along with two other partners, Brian Mallin and Kranti Ponnam, of the island’s most modern family entertainment center, High Tides & Good Vibes.
For years, locals and visitors have enjoyed bright sunny days in and on the waters and beaches of Topsail Island, the Williams and Shirley families among them. Residents and visitors praise Topsail’s fishing waters, surf its waves and walk its beaches, but on rainy days in the summer or off-season colder days, everyone has long wished for a place to be warm and dry and have fun without a drive to Wilmington or Jacksonville. Posts on Facebook groups bemoaned the lack of a local place to see a movie, enjoy an arcade or bowl a few frames.
Those complaints changed into compliments with the mid-December 2025 opening of High Tides & Good Vibes in Surf City. This is not your dad’s bowling alley, where the clack-clack-clack of bowling balls assaults your ears. Nor is it an obnoxiously loud indoor playground of years past.
Situated away from the noise and traffic of Highway 50, High Tides & Good Vibes is a refined place for family fun, a date night or a business event.
On any given day Shirley and Williams are on site in the multi-experience venue housing 16 bowling lanes, a karaoke room, laser tag, an arcade, a restaurant, an outdoor beer garden and much more.
This space offers multiple ways to enjoy yourself whether you are a toddler just learning to play with others or a grandparent happy to sink into a comfortable chair while your grandkids try the indoor zipline or ropes course.
Entering the wide lobby, guests see Surf City influences everywhere, from the restored VW bus that greets them to the bright, open restaurant off to the left. Color choices throughout the building reflect the coastal environment with its blues, greens and various sand tones. Wood lends a warm, elegant tone to the restaurant as plants screen the dining area from the play area. A beautiful quartz bar with gray stonework separates the beer garden from The Boardroom restaurant, where a new menu will soon be revealed. The restaurant and bar area seat 140.
In the main area, the 10-obstacle ropes course in the ceiling is a cool feature and a great use of vertical space. A 60-foot zipline goes from one end of the building to the other and is placed such that from the parking lot you can see people ziplining at night.
There are 16 contiguous bowling lanes including a separate space with four VIP lanes that can be closed off, making them perfect for everything from team-building events to birthday parties.
The Ballistics Tower is a three-story, indoor kids’ playground with multiple foam ball elements — a volcano throws balls in the air, and canons blast them at targets. Pneumatic tubes suck the balls up and then dump the colorful, soft foam balls onto the kids below.
The arcade spans the space from the Ballistics Tower to the back of the building offering 67 different games, including many favorites like the claw and pinball. Tucked into the back of the arcade, laser tag rooms thematically tell the story of Topsail’s pirate history with a twist — a zombie invasion.
Technology rules across High Tides, where games can be changed up to increase the customer experience. The XD Dark Ride Theater is an eight-seat 4D arcade game simulator with five different movies and movable seats. Two multisport simulators are golf-based, but players can do everything from lacrosse and basketball to dodgeball and bocce. Real darts and real axes are thrown at a target, but instead of a traditional static target, 26 different games are available, including tic-tac-toe and Connect 4.
“But again, via projection, it’s lasers and all kinds of fancy technology,” Shirley explains.
The five acres that High Tides sits on holds meaning and memories for Williams and his family.
“My wife and I actually bought the trailer park about eight months prior to this project with the intent of not developing it,” Williams says. “We wanted to make sure no one developed it … and then we did a feasibility study.”
That study indicated the best place to locate High Tides was the land he bought. The same land that held the trailer he stayed in on beach vacations as a child and was his surf shack through college.
Williams and Shirely sketched out the plan for High Tides on a napkin one day at lunch.
Nearly 40 local investors, a consultant and architecture and design professional helped turn that idea into its full vision a little over a year later.
The owners paid attention to every detail of design and implementation at High Tides. The building sits deep on its five-acre parcel, deliberately placed far from traffic noise. The outside space hosts a covered patio with a full bar and table seating and a stage for live music. The 4,000-square-foot turf beer garden is filled with seating clusters of cushioned chairs and couches and high-backed Adirondack-style chairs.
Inside, the acoustics are great, Shirley says.
“You can sit in the restaurant and have dinner, and you’re not listening to bowling pins or the kids playing over in the arcade area,” he says, adding that they spent a tremendous amount of time and money focused on sound attenuation to ensure that the noise would not travel.
“I don’t think we would have done anything differently from a design standpoint,” he adds. “We’re unbelievably pleased with the layout and how it flows.”
Now that High Tides is open, each day is a learning experience for Williams and Shirley. As they learn, they adapt the space to better meet their guests’ needs.
“A group of moms was coming in, letting the kids play in the playground for an hour or so and then taking them home for naptime,” Shirely says. “We reconfigured things and got some additional furniture to create space where they could sit, relax and watch their children play.”
Local partnerships are important to Williams and Shirley and are seen across the facility. Furniture from Lowder’s Furniture in Sneads Ferry fills the beer garden. Craft beers from Salty Turtle Beer Company and Surf City Brewing Company are featured, along with liquors from Hidden Ships Distillery. The recently opened Cookie Bar is another local partnership, this one with Sundial Coffee and Tea.
The staff at High Tides is a mix of local teens and adults, many of whom have been in the restaurant or service industry.
As teens themselves, Williams and Shirley spent summers in their family businesses. That meant tobacco for Williams, whose family farmed in rural North Carolina. Shirley’s family owned a furniture store in South Carolina, and his summers were spent moving and delivering furniture.
Both of the owners’ daughters work at High Tides. By summer, they expect to employ about 200 individuals, counting bar, beer garden, restaurant and game area staff. Locals might recognize a few folks in the management team, behind the bar or serving their food and drinks.
“Our staff, we’re blown away by them,” Shirley says. “We get complimented on our staff constantly. Especially the teens who understand commitment, accountability and teamwork. The parents have done a great job with these kids.”
“This is a people business,” he adds. “You can have the best product in the world, but if you don’t make it about the people, both employees and customers, it will fail. It’s important to us that we’re maximizing the customer experience and that comes from staff maximizing the experience for the patrons.”
Since making Surf City home, the Williams and Shirley families have joined into the community structure as coaches and school volunteers and on various Town of Surf City boards and commissions. In the few months that High Tides & Good Vibes has been open, they say they are thankful for the community’s support. They see not only a solid future for High Tides & Good Vibes in Surf City, but also have plans to build 10 to 15 more family entertainment centers in a multi-state radius over the next decade.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE NIGHT OUT
High Tides & Good Vibes
13971 N.C. Highway 50, Surf City
(910) 910-2695
hightidesandgoodvibes.com
