When you board a Royal Caribbean (RCL) ship, your SeaPass card immediately becomes an essential part of your cruise experience.
The card, which is waiting for you tucked into a spot next to your cabin's door, acts as your door key, onboard charge card, and an essential piece of identification should you get off the ship in port.
SeaPass cards, however, are a bit of a hassle. You need yours to get into your room and, in many cases, to buy anything from a drink to an added-fee ice cream to anything you may spot in one of the ship's shops.
You also need to tap or insert your card in slot machines at the casino (or hand it to a pit boss at table games) in order to track your play and earn rewards.
Many passengers keep their SeaPass cards on lanyards with detachable clips. That enables them to have the cards available for scanning without needing a pocket. Others tuck their SeaPasses into their phone cases -- not a great idea as smartphones can deactivate cards -- while others simply put theirs in pockets.
There's no perfect system and people regularly lose cards or find theirs not working, -- both of which require a stop at guest services.
Now, Royal Caribbean has brought back a technology that makes SeaPass cards less important that's very similar to a technology Walt Disney (DIS) uses at its theme parks. (The cards still will be needed in some cases.)
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Royal Caribbean Has Some Useful Technology
Before the pandemic, Royal Caribbean had been offering "WOW Bands" on some of its newer ships. The bands, which work a lot like Disney's MagicBands, act like another version of your SeaPass card, at least when it comes to opening your cabin door and paying for onboard purchases.
A rubber bracelet equipped with an RFID chip, the WOW Band does not replace all the functions of your SeaPass. It can't be used to get off the ship or to track play in the casino, but it does mean you need to use your SeaPass card much less often.
Much like the process at Disneyworld and Disneyland, Royal Caribbean now does not give passengers bands. Instead, at least before the covid pandemic on ships that offered the technology, it sold them for a small added fee to passengers who wanted to use them.
When the cruise line came back from the covid pandemic, it did not bring back the bands. That was actually an odd choice as WOW Bands actually minimize touch points between passengers and crew while also enabling people to enter their rooms in a touch-free fashion.
Now, Royal Caribbean has brought back WOW Bands on at least one sailing of one ship, according to the Royal Caribbean Blog, which is not affiliated with the cruise line.
Royal Caribbean Quietly Brings Back WOW Bands
Right now, WOW Bands have been spotted for sale only on a single sailing of Symphony of the Seas. The second largest ship in the Royal Caribbean fleet, and one of the cruise line's newest (2018), Symphony was also recently used to test the cruise line's new menus, which are now being rolled out fleetwide.
Now, the Royal Caribbean Blog's Elizabeth Wright spotted people wearing the bands on her Feb. 11 Symphony of the Seas sailing. She was also able to purchase one for $5.99 (an increase of $1 from the last time they were sold) and reported that people who had WOW Bands from previous sailing were able to use them after getting them activated for their current sailing at guest services.
The bands are not required in the way they are on Virgin Voyages, which uses a similar bracelet-based technology in place of something equivalent to a SeaPass card. Passengers can opt to buy them on sailings where they are made available or keep using their SeaPass cards as they always have.
Royal Caribbean has not made any statement on its plans for expanding the use of WOW Bands or whether this was a one-time test. The cruise line's website actually still says that "WOW Bands are currently unavailable throughout our fleet."
