A Colorado founder on the perfect storm of America 250, the World Cup, and a normal summer's worth of festivals — all happening at the same time.
I've been thinking about this summer for months now, and I keep landing on the same conclusion: I don't think most American families have fully internalized what's about to happen between now and Labor Day.
Three things are converging at once. Any one of them would make this a busy summer. All three together is unprecedented.
What's Actually Happening This Summer
1. The FIFA World Cup is co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico.
This is the biggest World Cup in history — 48 teams, 16 host cities, six weeks of matches starting June 11. The US host cities alone include New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. Every one of those cities will have packed stadiums, fan zones, watch parties, and street festivals during match days. Even cities that aren't hosting matches are doing watch-party events at major venues.
If you're traveling anywhere near a host city this summer, you're going to feel it.
2. America turns 250.
July 4, 2026 is the United States Semiquincentennial. The 250th birthday of the country. This is not a normal Fourth of July. Every state, every major city, and most small towns are doing something bigger than they've ever done before. Philadelphia is the epicenter, but the ripple is national.
KOA's travel team called it "once-in-a-generation." That's accurate. The next time the US has a milestone birthday like this, none of us will be around for it.
3. A normal summer of festivals, concerts, and family travel is happening on top of everything else.
Lollapalooza in Chicago. Summerfest in Milwaukee — the world's largest music festival. Outside Lands in San Francisco. State fairs across every state. National park visitation that's already projected to break records. Major league baseball season in full swing. Theme parks bracing for record-breaking attendance numbers.
None of this is new. But none of it slows down to make room for the World Cup or America 250. It all happens at the same time.
What That Adds Up To
More crowds. More travel. More airports. More long lines. More moments where you're standing in a sea of people trying to keep track of your kids.
I've written before about what that feels like as a parent. The moment you scan a stadium concourse and can't spot your kid. The split-second when the helmet goes one direction and the kid goes the other. The end-of-day chaos at the lodge or the lobby or the gate when everyone is tired and gear gets left behind.
That feeling is the entire reason myScanBandz exists. I'm a ski patroller and a paramedic — I notice gaps between when something goes wrong and when help arrives, because that's my job. I noticed one of those gaps this past fall at an Avalanche game with my two kids — packed arena, thousands of people, and no real plan if we got separated. That's when I started building this.
Coors Field opening weekend this spring was the first time I watched the system do its actual job. A week before that, someone had scanned my son's helmet at Snowmass and called me within ten seconds. I've written about the same problem at concerts, playoff hockey games, and theme parks like Disney and Universal. Different venues, same pattern.
This summer is going to surface that problem more often than any summer in recent memory.
Where My Family Will Be
I'm going to be honest about what I'm prepping for, because this is the kind of thing where vague advice doesn't help. Here's what's actually on our calendar:
Air travel. We've got family trips lined up. Airports in 2026 are going to be a different kind of crowded — World Cup tourism inbound and outbound, plus the normal summer surge, plus the America 250 travelers heading to Philly and DC. TSA lines, gate areas, and unfamiliar terminals with overstimulated kids are exactly the environment I built for. A QR safety wristband on each kid before we hit the airport is the new shoes-and-jacket check.
Water World in Denver. One of the biggest waterparks in the country, packed every weekend, kids in swimsuits with no pockets, locker rooms with hundreds of identical lockers, wave pools where parents lose visual contact in seconds. This is the single most product-relevant place I'll go all summer. Wristbands on the kids, gear tag stickers on the swim bags and water bottles.
A Rockies game at Coors Field. Where the whole thing started. Different season, same crowd density. I wrote about that original moment here if you want the founder origin story.
The San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld. We're eyeing a California trip. The San Diego Zoo is one of the most-visited zoos in the world — millions of people a year, and most of them are families with kids who don't know the layout. SeaWorld is the same story. Big day, big crowds, lots of gear, lots of overstimulation, and an end-of-day exhaustion phase where things go missing. I've written about this exact pattern at theme parks like Disney and Universal before. SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo are different venues, same problem.
A few more we haven't confirmed yet — probably a parade, probably a concert, probably some local festival weekend, definitely something we haven't planned yet that pops up in July.
That's a normal summer for a Colorado family. And every one of those is a place where the safety system I built earns its keep.
Where Your Family Will Probably Be
If you're a parent reading this, your summer probably looks similar:
- A theme park trip
- A few ballgames
- One or more big festivals or fairs
- Travel through at least one airport
- Local July 4 fireworks (which will be more crowded than usual this year)
- Maybe a national park visit
- Maybe a World Cup watch party
- A few "we're just driving to grandma's" moments that turn into something bigger
Each one of those individually is fine. Stacked together — and stacked on top of every other family doing the same things in the same places at the same time — and you start to understand why I've been thinking about this for months.
The Series I'm Writing This Summer
I'm using this blog as the anchor for a series I'm writing across June, July, and August. Each post will dig into a specific environment and what works (and what doesn't) when the crowds get real.
What's coming:
- The airport blog. Family flying in summer 2026. What every parent should think through before TSA.
- The waterpark blog. Water World, in particular. The lost-stuff-in-a-locker problem. The wave-pool problem. The QR-on-a-wristband solution.
- The theme park / zoo blog. SeaWorld, the San Diego Zoo, and the specific kind of chaos that happens at million-visitor venues with kids who've never been there before.
- The World Cup blog. Watch parties, fan zones, and what it looks like when soccer fever hits a city that isn't used to crowds that size.
- The July 4 blog. America 250 fireworks shows are going to be the most crowded fireworks shows of your life. Here's how to plan.
- The Coors Field follow-up. A year later, here's what's changed.
- The end-of-summer recap. What we hit, what worked, what I'd do differently.
Each post will link back to this one, and to each other, so anyone who lands on a single piece can find their way through the whole story.
What This Series Isn't
This isn't doom-posting. I'm not telling anyone to skip these events. We're going to all of them. Some of the best memories my kids will have from their childhood are happening this summer — concerts, fireworks, baseball games, water parks, road trips, fairs.
I'm telling you what I'm doing to be ready. That's it.
The product I built is part of the answer. A QR wristband for each kid — Ski Patrol, Sports, Rainbow Fun, Let's Go, or Mountain Fun — and a few gear tag stickers on the helmets, water bottles, ski bags, and now the swim bags. Two minutes to register, no app needed, no batteries, no subscription. Built for exactly the summer that's about to happen.
But honestly — even if you don't buy the product, the bigger point stands: this summer is going to be different. Plan accordingly.
One Last Thing
I'm a Colorado ski patroller, paramedic, and dad. I build this stuff in a room over my garage between shifts. I'm not a corporation. I'm not a brand. I'm a guy who walked into a hockey arena with his kids one night, looked around, and thought if we get separated right now, what's the plan? I built this before I needed it. A few months later, someone scanned my son's helmet at Snowmass and called me on the spot. The system works. That's why I'm telling you about it before the most crowded summer in modern memory shows up at your door.
If anything in this post resonates — if you've had your own moment of panic in a crowd, or if you're already thinking about the summer ahead and feeling a little overwhelmed — the full product lineup is here. Setup takes two minutes per kid.
And if you're going to be at any of the events I mentioned and want to compare notes, find me on Instagram @myscanbandz. I'll be the dad in the navy shirt looking slightly overwhelmed.
See you out there.