Jaunted

Once again, we'll divide your options among four areas:

Long Beach Island: LBI is a long-time summer spot that has remained both independent and free from overdevelopment. Two hours from New York City, it's  too cold in the winter to turn into a year-round kind of place, or worse, something as ostentatious as the Hamptons. Eighteen miles long but only half a mile wide, the population grows by a factor of ten in the summer. As a seaside town, Fantasy Island is one of the more popular attractions (Warning! Theme song starts when you load the page) at the LBI.
Typical Rental: A bungalow or Cape Cod. This beachfront 3-bedroom will set you back $1500 for a peak week, but the location right on the Ocean is hard to beat.

Cape May: In many ways, Cape May is the anti-Beach town. A preserved seaside retreat from the Victorian era, Cape May is at the southern tip of the Jersey Shore and is popular with people summering from both New York City, Philadelphia, and even Maryland and Washington D.C. Instead of an amusement park, a big draw here is the Victorian (natch) Emlen Physick Museum, a restored house from that era on an estate. The area is also very popular with birders, as it is on the "Atlantic Flyway", the route along which birds migrate from north to south each year. Crazy birds! Changing locations just based on the seasons.
Typical Rentals: Aside from a classic seaside rental, why not go for something among Cape May's Victorian houses? You can snag this small cottage for $1000 a week in the peak season.

Seaside Heights: We'll get it out of the way first: Seaside Heights was indeed the site of MTV's True Life series on the Jersey Shore and where the MTV beach house was located on two non-consecutive occasions. Sorry. It's pretty much everything you'd expect from a town like that: nightclubs, guidos, families on the beach, guidos, craziness, and did we mention guidos? While good behavior is strictly enforced on the beach, in other places... let's just say that there are no taste police. If you're really interested, head on over to njguido.com, and all your questions will be answered.
Typical Rental: Condos. Why bother with anything else? You're only going to be passed out, anyway. As long as there are plenty of mirrors, this condo is a deal at only $950 a week in peak season.

Spring Lake: Spring Lake is as far from Seaside Heights as you can get in sprit without leaving the state entirely. Property values are obscene, starting at a million dollars just to get a plot of land on which to build. Instead of ticky-tacky guidos and pizza shops, there are highly regarded restaurants like Whispers. Although, Six Flags is not such a far drive, so all hope for fatuous summertime entertainments is not lost if you spend the summer here.

Spring Lake is polo sweater around the shoulders kind of place and home to the longest noncommercial boardwalk in Jersey. The similarities to the Hamptons don't end there: It can also take three hours, with traffic, to get here from New York City. All that, and you can't even bring food or drink onto the beach--that's how clean they like it. Leave the spray-on tan at home.
Typical Rental: Fancy and expensive. This 6-bedroom near the ocean is chock-full of amenities, but will et you back a cool $5500 a week in August.