With those systems, a food inspection round that would take five hours with paper-based logs and conventional thermometers is done instead in two hours with devices that have temperature probes and readers that scan RFID tags on food containers.

Meanwhile, waiters and salespeople are more mobile and order-taking and order-processing are faster, especially in the pool area, where orders can be beamed wirelessly to the bartenders.

The POS and food inspection data is instantly fed to back-end Microsoft SQL Server databases where it is automatically analyzed and acted upon, whether it's to replenish low inventory in a store or to order that a food container be discarded.

Oasis of the Seas also has a face-recognition system that automatically sorts photographs taken by on-board photographers into each passenger's digital folder. Thus, passengers can stop at any time by the ship's photography center and, using touchscreen computers, access their photos, which they can then purchase or discard. The face-recognition system matches photos to the headshot taken of passengers during their pre-boarding registration process and which goes in their Sea Pass ID card.

Passengers use this Sea Pass ID card for a variety of other purposes on board. For example, parents can configure their children's cards to specify which activities they can participate in. This simplifies the verification process for staffers in the pool and activity areas, who only need to swipe the cards in their POS terminals and see what a minor is and isn't allowed to do.