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Device Allows Parents to Keep Tabs on Kids
Wet 'n Wild Las Vegas has a new device that allows parents to know exactly where in the water park their children have wandered at any time. The SafeTzone system involves a $2 wristband that transmits a radio signal. The band is put on a child or other guest and scanned. With the use of receivers strategically placed around the park, the wearer is constantly tracked. If the child wearing the device leaves the park, it triggers an alarm. "That's great," said Dionne D'Amico, a parent of young children visiting the park. "If [kids] take off on you when you turn your back, at least you can always find them no matter what." "It's something you can't put a price on," Joe D'Amico told ABC affiliate KTNV-TV in Las Vegas. |
SafeTzone works on anybody who wears the wrist tracking device. Users can scan their wrist transmitters at special tracking stations in the park, and their companions' locations can be seen on a screen, according to the manufacturer.
"If someone loses someone [and] they just want to find mom or dad, they just scan their wrist bands and lo and behold they show up," said Hannah Johnson of Wet 'n Wild Las Vegas.
Used Elsewhere
The Las Vegas park began using the devices last weekend, but the same system also was introduced recently at water parks in Orlando, Fla.; Pigeon Forge, Tenn.; and Irvine, Calif.
Regan Kelly, chief administrative officer for SafeTzone Technologies Corporation in Laguna Hills, Calif., told the Reuters news service the company initially marketed the product to water parks.
"The water parks … are generally the smaller parks of the major theme park chains," Kelly said. "Our strategy was to demonstrate our system to prove to the owners that this was an opportunity that would be reliable and benefit their larger parks."
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