Adding to the experience are the free plastic buckets and spades for making sandcastles, portable goals for beach soccer, nets for volleyball and even giant touch-screen internet terminals on the boardwalk.

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Events include Elvis cage fighting, confessing sins at the virtual confession box, breakfast aerobics with the nuns, more nuns and priests five-a-side soccer on the beach and the Lovely Lady competition (a homage to the kitsch Irish Rose of Tralee), where girls are tested on their sandwich-making or swiss-rolling skills.

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