In my post about the first day we spent at EPCOT, I said I’d explain how the Life360 app would come in handy a couple days after I downloaded it. That decision came about when my oldest lost her phone in Project Tomorrow and Find My iPhone was entirely unhelpful at actually finding her iPhone. Let me preface this by saying I am NOT sponsored by Life360 or anyone affiliated with it, and this is not an ad. This is just my personal experience using the app on our recent trip.
Life360 really saved our second Magic Kingdom day. Here’s what happened…
On Friday morning, I sat with the big kids under a tree in the entrance plaza at Magic Kingdom waiting for my wife and our toddler to get through the bag check. I was super distracted, as our oldest was asking me to head inside so she could use the restroom. I let my wife know I’d meet her inside the park, next to City Hall. When we got there, I realized MY phone was gone.
I have pretty bad anxiety, and I was panicking. My wife found us, left the toddler with the big kids and I, and then took my rollator over to the ECV rental area while I started dumping my stuff out of my bag, searching for my phone. I tried calling it from one of the kids’ phones. My wife tried calling it too. We had no idea where it could be. My wife went out to the entrance plaza to check around where we had been sitting. I asked a couple cast members in the area and then went into the guest services’ lost and found area to ask them. No luck. We’ve lost all kinds of things at Disney before, but phones and wallets are definitely the worst things to lose. Usually things are turned in… but we’ve lost one phone permanently at Magic Kingdom before, and my anxiety was spiralling.
“But, wait,” you say “you have all these photos from the previous days of your trips! What happened?”
A couple minutes after walking out of the Guest Services’ lost and found station, I remembered the lost phone incident at EPCOT two days before… and then I remembered installing Life360 on my phone. While I hadn’t managed to get it installed on my daughter’s phone yet, I HAD gotten it onto the middle kids’ phone the day of that first incident. At that point, my wife had gotten back to me with the scooter. I borrowed the middle kid’s phone, and pulled up the app – and sure enough, THERE IT WAS. It was somewhere in the entrance area still, on the far side of the train station. I hopped on the scooter and followed the signal… to the ECV rental area. I asked cast members if they knew if a phone had been turned in. No luck… But then they asked if I had stored anything there.
Turns out, I put my phone in a small zippered pocket on the underside of my seat… for the first AND LAST time ever. I had been so distracted I put it in a place I wouldn’t remember, and then my wife had turned my rollator in to be stored while getting the scooter. My phone had been going off, between pings from Find my Iphone and so many calls. Thankfully, they were able to match the rollator to the claim ticket, and retrieved my phone for me.
Thankfully, this was the last time a phone was lost on the trip. Nonetheless, I was so happy to have the phones set up on the app. I highly recommend this app to anyone who is heading to the parks. If you’ve got kids who tend to wander, if you have anxiety, or if you’re prone to misplacing things, Life360 can seriously save the day.
Access the Mouse 