Apps, Terminals, and Antarctica Dreams

Royal Caribbean is testing digital scratch-off lottery tickets through its onboard app aboard Utopia of the Seas, with tickets priced from $2 to $20 and a top jackpot of $100,000; prizes under $2,000 post automatically to guest accounts, while larger wins require a Casino Royale visit and tax paperwork. The test follows Carnival Millions, launched in February 2026 with daily drawings offering up to $1 million, and an earlier BetMGM trial with Carnival that ended over satellite-internet lag and limited passenger interest. At Port Canaveral, construction has begun on a $95 million expansion of Cruise Terminal 10, a 145,000-square-foot facility roughly 30 percent larger than the existing building and able to handle ships carrying up to 6,700 passengers, with completion set for November 2027. The port recorded 8.6 million passenger movements and 1,038 ship calls in fiscal 2025. And Heritage Expeditions has completed drydock on Heritage Discoverer in Bremerhaven, Germany, ahead of the ship's first Antarctic passenger cruise, a preview voyage from Ushuaia running November 19 to December 9, 2026.