Well, my question is if those paths keep access after freeing the king, or if they need to make a meatcar afterwards.
I expect that the underlying KoL code is unchanged from when the beach (well, probably shore, actually) was first introduced, in that it is actually a once-per-ascension unlock, in that someone probably has an ancient never-ascended character that untinkered the meatcar years ago and still has beach access. So keeping it as a preference is probably still correct. (In addition to the backwards-compatibility angle that katyarn pointed out.)
Either way, I don't think kingLiberated() is the correct thing to check here. Worst-case scenario, we should be able to auto-detect beach access either from main.php or from topmenu.php (or awesomemenu.php or whatever the revamped topmenu was called).