LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California company wants to wipe away the classic summer scene of the tearful kid lost in the theme park.

Using local-positioning technology, a junior cousin to the loftier global-positioning variety, privately held SafeTzone is peddling systems whose sole purpose is to let people track each other within the confines of today's sprawling theme parks.

The Laguna Hills, California-based company has already installed or is in the process of installing systems in four parks, including a 2-week-old system in the Wet 'n Wild park in Orlando, Florida, owned by Vivendi Universal's EAUG.PA Universal Studios Recreation Group.

The company is also in various levels of discussions with most other major theme park operators, including Cedar Fair LP FUN.N , Six Flags Inc. PKS.N and the granddaddy of them all, The Walt Disney Co. DIS.N , said Regan Kelly, SafeTzone chief administrative officer.

To date, SafeTzone has operational systems in Wet 'n Wild and in the Wild Rivers Waterpark in Irvine, California. The former system became operational on May 31, while the latter was SafeTzone's first customer when it went operational last year.

Two other parks, Dolly's Splash Country in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, affiliated with Dolly Parton's signature resort, and Wet 'n Wild Las Vegas, which is not affiliated with the Orlando park, are set to turn on new systems this summer.

"The water parks ... are generally the smaller parks of the major theme park chains," Kelly said, explaining his company's decision to target water parks initially. "Our strategy was to demonstrate our system to prove to the owners that this was an opportunity that would be reliable and benefit their larger parks."

LAND-BASED SYSTEM

Rather than using a global, sky-based system, SafeTzone uses a more garden-variety land-based positioning system that relies on a series of receivers placed throughout each park.

Each person is charged a fee of about $2 per day to use the system, then dons a plastic wristband that transmits his or her whereabouts to the nearest receiver at 12.5 second intervals.

The park is broken down into a number of "zones" based on the owner's needs, allowing the system to pinpoint a person's whereabouts to a specific zone. Anyone can locate someone else in his "group" by going to a locator station in the park.

Kelly said Wild Rivers, a typical park, has 34 zones that allow the pinpointing of a person's position to within 20 feet to 50 feet.

The systems cost anywhere from $150,000 to $2 million to design and install. The company generally receives monthly fees based on the amount of usage, with individual systems able to accommodate anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 people.

"We partner with the parks," he said of his 2-year-old company. "They staff it, and we support the technology."

Wet 'n Wild-Orlando spokeswoman Sandra Sciarrino said her park's system went operational on May 31, but has not been in use long enough for a serious review.

She said the park likes the system because it puts parents' minds at ease.

"It's not so much that we think kids get lost, but more peace of mind for the parents so they know they can instantly find their child," she said. "We hope it makes people who wouldn't have come before less wary now that we have the system."