'I had the time of my life': What it was really like to attend 'MTV Spring Break' and BET's 'Spring Bling'

Searching "BET's Spring Bling" or "MTV Spring Break" on TikTok will turn up some old footage from the now-defunct televised Spring Break staples — and a lot of FOMO from Gen Zers who missed out on the mayhem. "BET took away Spring Bling before I could partake of the debauchery," one bemoans. "I just wanted to experience this one time," complains another young woman who grew up watching MTV's annual beach bonanza on TV.

"I'm like, 'Oh my God, they're reminiscing and wishing they went to something that we actually went to,'" says Greg Sherman, who attended MTV Spring Break in 2008 after driving with his friends from Georgia to Panama City, Fla. "It does make me feel old at the same time," the now-35-year-old adds.

Both MTV Spring Break and Spring Bling were mainstays of American college culture, with students from all across the country making their way to warm destination cities like West Palm Beach, Acapulco and Cancun to party on the beach and enjoy live performances from the latest chart-topping acts. Kids who were too young — or forbidden — to attend could soak up the televised action from home, dreaming of the day they too might gyrate on the sand with cameras rolling. But many never got the chance. MTV's week-long springtime spectacle moved to the network's spin-off channel targeted at college students, MTVU, in 2005 before calling it quits in 2014. BET's final Spring Bling, meanwhile, took place in 2014.

Like a lot of trends and cultural moments that peaked in Y2K — an era for which Gen Z has a particular affinity — these former Spring Break staples have been swept up in nostalgia. For those who actually got to experience them in person, they also mark carefree living without the watchful gaze of social media.

What were BET's Spring Bling and MTV Spring Break?

MTV Spring Break first premiered live from Daytona Beach, Fla. in 1986. The coastal resort town was an ideal destination for the inaugural spring break event, which drew likes of the Beastie Boys, Starship and Mr. Mister. The festivities, which typically featured celebrity hosts, musical acts ranging from Crowded House to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Destiny's Child to Eminem, competitions and beachside versions of the network's most popular shows, aired on MTV from 1986 to 2005, and on MTVU from 2005 to 2014.

BET followed MTV's lead by launching its own televised Spring Break event, Spring Bling, in 1997. The two-day event saw performances from some of the biggest names in hip-hop and R&B in addition to various competitions and dance battles. BET also utilized the massive gathering to promote sexual health education, partnering with the Palm Beach Department of Health and the Comprehensive Aids Program of Palm Beach County for the "Rap it Up" campaign to offer onsite HIV testing and related information. By 2010, however, the party was over.

Who showed up to Spring Break in style?

Both events were targeted at college students, and many Spring Breakers traveled across state, and sometimes country, lines to party.

"I have a picture of the driving directions that we wrote out on a sheet of notebook paper, line by line, because GPS wasn't really a thing at the time," says Sherman, the 2008 MTV Spring Break attendee who drove from Georgia to Florida with his buddies.

That year saw performances from artists like Pitbull, DJ Khaled and, most notably, for Sherman, Rick Ross.

"We had just bought the Rick Ross album and so we were riding down to that the whole time. And it was perfect," he tells Yahoo Life. And while seeing the biggest boss in person after copping his album might sound strategic, Sherman says it was entirely serendipitous.

"We didn't even know that MTV Spring Break was going to be there until we had already made plans to go to Panama [City]. Then my friends started going, 'Hey, you know, MTV, they're saying they're gonna be there.' And so sure enough, we got there, and everything was going on," says Sherman.

BET's Spring Bling also brought out the college kids, and was particularly popular among Black students and HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] attendees. In 2006, the crowd included a then-20-year-old Jeevan Brown, who drove from Charlotte, N.C. to Atlanta to attend Spring Bling with his cousin and friend. Now an author based in Maryland, Brown was at the time a student at the HBCU Johnson C. Smith University, and met up with friends from local HBCUs like Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta University.

Others hopped on flights to get in on the springtime shenanigans and ditch their cold college campuses.

"We flew from Chicago to Miami, and it was so funny because I remember when we left, it was snowing," Brittany Rodgers, a publicity and communications director who went to Spring Bling with her friends in 2009, tells Yahoo Life.

While the partying was unparalleled, the accommodations often left something to be desired. Rodgers still winces at the memory of the first "nasty" hotel she and her friends booked before moving to nicer digs. "Of course we're 19, [so] we were just picking the cheapest hotel," she says.

She wasn't the only one who was "balling on a budget", a common theme among cash-strapped college students. And many admit that not all decisions made were financially sound.

"I used my refund check to go down there. Now that I'm older, I would never do that again," says Brown. "That's probably the only thing I regret, but not even, really, because I was fresh. I had the time of my life."

A time before Instagram

While throwback clips of these Spring Break shows are popping up on TikTok and Instagram timelines, social media was still largely in its infancy during their heyday. When he attended in 2008, Sherman remembers Facebook being a relatively new offering that had to be accessed on a laptop.

"I didn't even post the pictures from Spring Break until I got back home to my laptop and internet," he says.

It can be hard to imagine attending a once-in-a-lifetime event and not documenting every millisecond online, but for Rodgers, this made the moment all the more special.

"You really just took in the moment. You would [still] take photos but you didn't have anywhere to upload them right away because you were mostly taking them on your digital camera," she says.

"I think people were more relaxed and they would do things more wild," adds Brown, who remembers posting some footage from the show — where the TV cameras cut away from dancers "basically on the stage stripping" during Uncle Luke's performance — to his Facebook. At the time, the concept of a digital footprint hadn't really taken hold; he's since deleted the clips.

With constant social surveillance, it may be harder for attendees to fake the funk if the event isn't as fun as they hoped, says Thomas Moore, who attended Spring Bling in 2007.

"Back then all we had was Facebook and I remember uploading my pics making it seem like we lived it up at Spring Bling, but the real party was in South Beach," says Moore, who considered the BET event so lackluster he felt compelled to lie about where he was.

"There was no DJ when we went; it was not a good look at all. All the action was in South Beach, which was like an hour away," says Moore. "We came all the way down from Bowie State and we had a blast in Florida, but Spring Bling was not what we expected. They kept doing takes over and over to make it seem like it was live but it was not."

Still, most attendees are happy to have been a part of such an iconic moment in pop culture history.

"I hate that some people couldn't experience it. Back then, that was the thing to do. You would look forward to Spring Bling and watching it live on BET. And now I don't think we have that relationship with BET anymore," says Rodgers.

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