CruiseLink
Which cruise lines let you see where your children are onboard?
Very few, and fewer than the news coverage suggests. Royal Caribbean sells a tracking band for children, but only on two ships. Princess lets you locate family on every ship through its free Medallion. Disney’s kids’ club band shows staff which club room a child is in, and Disney says plainly that it is not ship-wide tracking. On Norwegian and Carnival we found nothing that shows a parent where a child is.
Why nobody had put this in one place
Royal Caribbean’s Find My Kid has been written up again and again — by Royal Caribbean Blog, Cruise Hive, Cruise Mummy, Cruise Radio and Cruise Passenger, each time a new ship got it. Every one of those articles is about one line. None says what the other lines do, which is the question a parent choosing a cruise actually has. So we checked each line’s own pages on 30 Oct 2026.
Line by line
| Line | Can a parent see where a child is? | Cost and coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Caribbean | Yes, on two ships. Find My Kid shows the child’s location on the app’s deck maps while they wear an Adventure Ocean WOW Band. | Star of the Seas and Legend of the Seas only. Band reported at $14.99, ages 3–12. No internet package needed, but your phone must be on the ship’s wifi. Does not work in port. |
| Princess | Yes, fleetwide. Add travel companions in the app to locate and message them. Children wear their own Medallion. | Medallion free for every guest. Princess’s page does not say whether locating needs a wifi package. |
| Disney | Only inside the kids’ clubs, and only for staff. The Oceaneer Band’s chip tells Disney which area of the club a child is in. | Given to children registered with the clubs. Disney says it “does not provide ship-wide GPS tracking”. |
| MSC | Not any more, as far as MSC’s own pages show. MSC used to sell a Family and Friends Locator with its Wristband Plus. | That page now redirects to the general MSC for Me page, which lists the wristband (from age 12) and chat (from 16) but no locator. |
| Norwegian | No. Splash Academy bracelets identify the child. | Ages 3–12, worn all cruise, showing the child’s muster station. Teens get an Entourage wristband for entry. No location feature described. |
| Carnival | Nothing published that we could find. | The HUB app shows Camp Ocean’s schedule and check-in and check-out information (trade press, 2019). No location feature described. |
Sources, all checked 30 Oct 2026. Royal Caribbean: its own FAQs “What is the Find My Kid feature and how does it work?” and “Can I use Find My Kid or the WOW Band in port?”. The $14.99 price and the 3–12 age range are secondary, from Royal Caribbean Blog (11 Aug 2025), and are not on the FAQ we read. Princess: “What is Princess MedallionClass?” on princess.com (last updated 26 Feb 2024), and, secondary, Cruise Critic’s “Cruising with Princess Cruises’ Medallion Devices with Kids” (updated 27 Jul 2026). Disney: Disney Cruise Line help centre, “Can you track my children with the Oceaneer Band?”. MSC: msccruises.co.za, the Family and Friends Locator address and the MSC for Me page it now redirects to. Norwegian: ncl.com FAQ “How is my child identified in the Splash Academy and Entourage?”. Carnival: no first-party page found; the HUB detail is from Seatrade Cruise and Travelweek (2019). A line not saying something is not proof it does not do it, and these features change ship by ship. We could not check P&O or Cunard, whose sites refuse automated requests.
What the table means in practice
Royal Caribbean: real, but probably not your ship
Find My Kid is the only feature here built for exactly this job, and it is on two ships out of a large fleet. If you are not on Star or Legend, it does not exist for you. Where it does exist, it has the same limits as any ship system: it needs your phone on the ship’s network, the child has to be wearing the band, and it stops at the gangway, so it is no help on a port day.
Princess: the quiet one
Princess gets less attention for this than Royal Caribbean, and it covers more of its fleet. The Medallion every guest wears is the thing the app locates, so a child does not need a phone to be found. The open question is whether it needs a wifi package on your phone. Princess’s page does not say, so test it on the first afternoon rather than assuming.
Disney and Norwegian: bands that are not trackers
Both lines put a band on every child in the kids’ club, and it is easy to assume a band means tracking. Disney says outright that its band does not track a child around the ship. Norwegian’s identifies the child and shows a muster station. Both are useful. Neither tells a parent on deck 15 where a child on deck 5 is.
On a line without tracking
- Register younger children with the kids’ club. The club knows where they are while they are in it, and that is the most reliable “where is my child” answer on any line.
- Agree meeting points and times. Free, works on every ship, and fails only when plans change.
- Check whether your child can use the line’s app chat. On some lines they cannot: MSC blocks it for under-16s, Carnival for under-13s, and Disney and Norwegian switch it off for under-13s by default. And none of it reaches them on a port day.
- Know what to do if someone is missing. What actually works when you have lost someone onboard, including when to go to guest services.
Where CruiseLink fits, and where it does not
CruiseLink does not show anyone on a map. If seeing a dot on a deck plan is what you want, Royal Caribbean’s or Princess’s own system is the better choice where it exists, and nothing here replaces it.
What CruiseLink does is pass messages between the phones in your own group over Bluetooth and the ship’s local network, free, with no wifi package and no age limit, on any line. It tells you when each person’s phone was last reached. And if you start looking for someone, every phone in your group joins in, and the person you are looking for gets an alert with one button, I’m here.
The limits, in the same breath: everyone must install it before you sail, since downloading at sea needs a paid package. It reaches your own group, not the whole ship. A message moves when phones come near enough to each other, so on a large ship it is not instant. And it needs the child to carry a phone, which a Medallion or a WOW Band does not. A smartwatch on its own will not stand in for one: why a child’s Apple Watch cannot get online at sea. It is on the App Store and Google Play.
Get CruiseLink
Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.
