With Panama City Beach clamping down on spring break hedonism, should the Alabama coast be bracing for a season of mayhem?

That fear has been raised lately among some in the Gulf Shores-Orange Beach area, but local officials say they don't see much cause for concern - and they say they're fully prepared to shut down any public misbehavior that could damage the area's carefully cultivated reputation as a family-friendly destination.

"If you come here, you better behave, or you're going to jail. It's that simple," said Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon. "And we're not going to put up with the nonsense Panama City puts up with. We will have undercover officers, we will have uniformed officers, we will have everyone I can possibly have on the beaches, any place where spring breakers might gather. That is not who we are. We are a family friendly destination, that's what we're going to stay. This is not a place to come have MTV fun like you did in Panama City."

One source of concern: A poll on Oldrow.net, a site dedicated to exactly the topics you'd expect to be of interest to a heavily stereotypical constituency of Southern fraternity guys. The question was, "Where y'all headed for Spring Break this year? (RIP PCB)." Gulf Shores led the voting with 48 percent. As unscientific as the poll might have been, the result was enough for it to start circulating locally via social media.

There's also another factor heightening concerns in some quarters: Compared to some years when major Southeastern universities spread spring break over several weeks, this year things seem to be much more focused. The week starting Sunday, March 12, is break for a heavy slate of schools including Auburn, Clemson, Alabama, the University of Kentucky, the University of South Alabama, the University of Tennessee, the University of Texas and Mississippi State University.

"I do think more people will be here," Jenifer Surface-Ivey, publicist for Flora-Bama Lounge & Package, said of the scheduling. "We're excited about it."

She downplayed the notion that a storm was brewing. After all, spring break is a business opportunity for local businesses and cities alike. Preparation, from having enough staff in place beforehand to keeping the beaches clean during and after the party, is the key to making it a win-win for the communities and their visitors. "The city and us here, we kind of have our plan in place," she said.

There are other reasons to be skeptical that a barbarian invasion of Pleasure Island is on the way. For one thing, Panama City Beach isn't dead, or even closed.

Spring 2015 was a wild season in the Panhandle. Panama City Beach drew national attention for, among other things, a video that officials said showed the gang rape of an incapacitated woman as a crowd of bystanders did nothing and a shooting spree at a house party.

In April, a police official said the area had become a "war zone" and called for major changes. The following crackdown included some significant measures, including a ban on alcohol on the beach. The situation isn't fully resolved: Beach clubs taking the brunt of the changes are suing to have the new rules overturned. According to a recent report in the Panama City News Herald, their arguments include claims that the laws are racially motivated and that tighter hours for alcohol sales are a violation of free speech.

The upshot? Plenty of activities aimed at the college crowd, such as major beach concerts, still will be offered in Panama City Beach this year. But according to another News Herald report, locals are dreading as much as a 50 percent slump in business, and some are working for a long-term transition to being a more family-oriented destination.

Where does that leave Gulf Shores and Orange Beach? The answer seems to be: wary, but prepared.

"A lot of beach markets are bracing themselves because we really don't know what's going to happen as a result of Panama City Beach changes," said Joanie Flynn, vice president of marketing for Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism. "We don't think that we will be a logical place for them to come, because we're just not set up the same way we are over there."

Flynn said it will be a few weeks before tourism officials get a good sense of how booking rates are running this year. But the Alabama coast doesn't have the kind of monster beach clubs that draw thousands to some other markets, such as Panama City Beach, she said. Rental policies tend to be tight, and the area has worked for years to maintain a wholesome reputation.

Other officials, such as Kennon, said the critical thing is to establish right up front that law and order will be firmly maintained. The Orange Beach mayor said that last year, his city fired the first shot well before spring break.

Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon

"We did send a message," Kennon said. "We put our police and undercover officers out in force over the Easter holiday, and we had over 100 arrests on the beach and in places where young adults were gathering with drugs and alcohol, and we made a point. And we made it very public, what we were doing. And I think they got the message."

Maybe not everybody did. Last year's spring break incidents included police interventions at some large-scale parties and one memorable case in which Mobile County sheriff's deputies intercepted four underage LSU students on the way to Gulf Shores with more than 100 cases of beer and additional liquor.

Grant Brown, director of Gulf Shores' Recreation & Cultural Affairs Department, said the city had a good plan of action last year and is building on it this year. It starts with having a very visible law enforcement presence on the beach, and a multi-point effort to keep the sands pristine.

"Keeping the beaches clean, part of that is making sure that the large congregations, the parties that are on the beach, are respectful of the environment and respectful of the people that are down there," he said. "Everybody wants to have a good time, we'll allow people to have a good time, we're not going to stand for people getting crazy, and glass bottles on the beach, and the trash that gets typically left behind."

Kennon, typically, was more forceful: "We're absolutely going to enforce it," he said. "No glass bottles on the beach. If you bring a glass bottle on the beach, you're going to get a ticket. If you bring a glass bottle on the beach and you're intoxicated, you're going to jail. I can't be any more blunt or straightforward. I just want them to know they have been warned. This is not going to be a place of mayhem ... That's just not going to happen."

"One very new thing for us is a program called 'Leave Only Footprints,'" said Brown. "It's an ordinance that went into effect in October ... every night, one hour past dark, personal property has to be removed from the beach every night. Say, for instance, if you want to bring one of those tents, and you put a tent behind the beach house or a tent behind the condo, you can do that - but every night, it's got to be picked up and brought back up to your lodging location. If it's not, the cities will come by and remove it. And it's gone. It's been a successful program on the Florida beaches over the past year or so, and it's finally gotten to us." (Click here to see the ordinance.)

In other words, you can't build your own little compound and leave it out for multi-day use. The idea is that if all the tents, coolers and chairs have to come in overnight, they're less likely to get blown around by the wind, or become magnets for clutter, or to just be abandoned when their owners head for home.

"It'll upset a few people," Brown said. "But overall it's been very well received by the local residents and even some of the snowbirds that are here now"

"A combination of better oversight of the beaches, with additional enforcement, with our litter and trash pickup programs ... We feel like we're as prepared as ever to make sure that when people come here, they see what we want them to see and experience what we want them to experience, which is a clean and protected beach environment," Brown said. "That's why Gulf Shores is here ... It's not just a place to come trash the beach and be a party heaven."

"Our police chief, last year he put out a pretty stern warning," Brown said. "I don't see that philosophy changing at all this year. That raised a few eyebrows, but it seemed to do a pretty decent job."

There's nothing that we feel is a problem on the horizon," Brown said. "Either by a shift of the people getting kicked out of another location and showing up here," or by the convergence of more student bodies in a shorter time than usual.

Brown and Kennon stressed that their cities aren't opposed to spring break. But they have a clear target audience, and it isn't the MTV crowd.

Families are "the majority of our spring break, and that's our bread and butter here is to keep that," Brown said. "Our goal is going to be to not allow the overrun college kids to come in here and create havoc. We still have a lot of families that travel with their kids. That's who we're target-marketing to."

"Most of our spring breakers are families," Kennon said. "We have a strong contingent of families from the Midwest and other places that take that entire week and come down. And those college kids, those high school kids who are here with their parents, or with a youth group or church group or community service, we welcome. Because they are assets."

Kennon hinted that in his own youth, he might not have been in Orange Beach's target audience either. But that was then.

"The other spring breakers, the ones in the tradition of my spring break days ... I wouldn't put up with me being here," he said. "They can't do anything I didn't try to do, it's just gotten a whole lot worse, and I don't put up with it."