Key Aspects:
- Parents can now track their children onboard Star of the Seas with a new feature called “Find My Kid” in the Royal Caribbean App.
- Kids wear a tracking bracelet (called the Adventure Ocean WOW Band) that sends their real-time locations to their parents’ smartphones.
- This feature is currently only available onboard the second Icon-class ship and for kids between the ages of three and 12.
For many kids, a cruise vacation offers their first taste of independence.
With surveillance, onboard security teams, and the sheer fact that kids are confined to the ship, many parents will allow their children to roam free at least some of the time.
But onboard the world’s largest cruise ships, such as Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas and the newly launched Star of the Seas, the idea of letting your child explore on their own can be a bit more intimidating.
Both of these giant mega-ships can accommodate a whopping 7,600 guests at maximum capacity across 18 passenger decks that are packed full of attractions, meaning it could be easy to lose track of your little humans in the mix.
Thanks to a new tracking feature called “Find My Kid” that has debuted onboard the new Star of the Seas, parents will now be able to track their child’s location in real time using the Royal Caribbean App and the Adventure Ocean WOW Band.
The WOW Band, which is both waterproof and colorful (just how kids like it!), acts as a tracker that parents can access from their smartphones.
This option applies to kids between the ages of three and twelve, who are often too young for cellphones to message or text their parents using Wi-Fi packages.
How to Use “Find My Kid”
While many cruisers like to plan in advance, nothing needs to be done before embarkation day to use the “Find My Kid” feature.
Once onboard, parents can register their children at the Adventure Ocean Kid’s Club on Deck 6. Adventure Ocean WOW Bands must be purchased for $14.99 if families don’t already own one.
Positively, these bands can be used on future cruises for no additional fee, and also come with additional benefits that make them a good value for the money.
WOW Bands are already used on several other Royal Caribbean ships, but the “Find My Kid” tracker is not as of the time of publication.
For example, kids can use their WOW Bands to unlock their cabin doors so they don’t necessarily have to carry around their SeaPass cards. They can also be used to make parent-authorized onboard purchases.
At least for the bands purchased onboard Star of the Seas, the band will also show the child’s muster station, which is very helpful if the young cruiser is on their own during an unexpected emergency.
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Once a WOW Band has been purchased, parents can then sign up for the “Find My Kid” feature.
In order to access the tracker in the app, parents just need to follow three simple steps. First, they must connect to the onboard Wi-Fi network.
Next, parents will open the Royal Caribbean app and select the “Find My Kid” icon in the app’s menu.
From there, parents will be shown a live view of their child’s location on the app’s deck maps.
At this time, the “Find My Kid” tracker is only available onboard Star of the Seas – but it would not be surprising to see it roll out to more ships in the fleet in the near future.
A version of the tracker, called “Kidfinder,” was already tested onboard Icon of the Seas in the summer of 2024.
