ALL THINGS CLOUD 9 SPA - A Detailed Photo/Video Review Of Carnival Dream Spa

[rockbock]

The Thalasso Pool also has two showerheads in the circular section. The water which comes out of these showers is slightly cooler than the water in the pool. They were very refreshing and seemed to be quite popular among the Cloud 9 Spa guests.

 

 

 

 

 

My husband and I took several "goofy" posed photos in different parts of the spa when nobody else was around. Here are the first two goofy photos:

 

 

 

 

 

[rockbock]

FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE THALASSO POOL:

 

Very relaxing!

 

Great place for conversation, if you like to relax and talk at the same time.

 

The only real "negative" about the Thalasso Pool is that it overlooks the gym. This takes away from the relaxation aspect, but at the same time it was sometimes interesting to watch the people who were working out.

 

Towels are provided in this area. No need to bring one from your cabin.

 

There is a bench and plenty of space for your flip flops and other belongings.

 

There is a card holder where you can place your VIP Key while you're in the pool.

 

Some final photos of the Thalasso area:

 

 

 

[rockbock]

That's all for now. Will finish this review either tonight or tomorrow morning...

[yourdreamcruise]

Thanks for the update, my sister and I will be sailing on Oct 20th, we upgraded to a spa interior cabin, the upgrade was $11.50 more per person, which judging by your pics will be well worth it.

 

I'm a TA as well, did you get a chance to do a ship inspection? I put a request in with my BDM, but still awaiting a response.

[rockbock]

I'm a TA as well, did you get a chance to do a ship inspection? I put a request in with my BDM, but still awaiting a response.

 

I didn't even ask about it. There was a group called while I was waiting to embark after check-in, but I didn't want to spend the first few hours of my vacation doing an inspection lol.

[rockbock]

Now we'll move on to the four steam rooms/saunas...

 

I don't have a photo of the hallway you'll see when you leave the room with the Thalasso Pool, but if you exit the pool and walk straight ahead (past the spiral staircase and elevators on your left), you'll reach a dead-end in the hallway that looks like this:

 

 

 

Your options are to either unlock the door on the left, which leads into the steam rooms and saunas, or you can unlock the door straight ahead, which leads to the locker rooms and relaxation room. If you go through the door on your left, the hallway you'll see looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

The four steam rooms and saunas can be accessed from the doors on your right. There are also two walk-in open showers, which are just heavenly. On your left, you can get clean towels. There are also receptacles for your dirty towels.

[vivavegas]

Loving your review! Thanks for sharing all the great photos!:)

[rockbock]

Using the photo above as a guideline, the very first room on your right is the Aroma Steam Bath. As you can see from the photo below, this room is very "wet." It is typically maintained at a very warm temperature. At times, it is heavily infused with an aroma similar to a Vick's Vapor Rub (menthol scent). Other times, the aroma is very subtle. You can control the temperature and music level using the controls outside the door.

 

Inside this room, you'll find long couch-like tiled loungers. The tiles on the loungers are heated. The "decor" is pots of hot stones. There are several hand-held sprayers, which you can use to cool yourself (or the loungers) off with cool water...very refreshing. You cannot wear glasses in this room, or they will steam up instantly. If you cannot see without your glasses, I would suggest wearing contact lenses in this room. Due to the level of moisture and steam in this room, I was unable to take "good" photos for this review. The camera steamed up almost as quickly as I would wipe it dry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[KirkNC]

Wow, great review and photos, thanks!

[rockbock]

The room next to the Aroma Steam Bath is the Tepidarium. This room can be accessed from the main Cloud 9 Spa hallway (in the photo shown above), or you can access it from the steam rooms/saunas on either side of it. Here is the view from the main hallway:

 

 

 

 

And here is a photo of the door inside the Tepidarium which leads to the Aroma Steam Bath:

 

 

 

 

The door which leads from the Tepidarium into the Oriental Steam Bath (the next room) is a solid door, not glass like this one.

 

The Tepidarium is a dry room, maintained at a cool temperature. You can adjust the temperature or music level from outside the room. It is a nice transition to go from one of the warmer rooms into this one to cool off. The room is decorated with individual heated loungers and there is a beautiful ocean view. In the center of the room is a water feature with four sinks. Because of the cool temperature in this room, there are no water sprayers available. In the very last photo below, you'll see two doors. The door on the right is the one I photographed above, which leads into the Aroma Steam Bath. The door on the left, which you cannot see through, leads to the Oriental Steam Bath.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2012 by rockbock

[rockbock]

The next room you'll come to is the Oriental Steam Bath. This is a wet room, but it isn't nearly as wet as the Aroma Steam Bath. The temperature and music level of this room can be adjusted from outside the room. The temperature can be set anywhere from very warm, to very hot. The room has individual heated tiled chairs, as well as a large heated tile table, which is wonderful for laying on and stretching out. There are cool-water sprayers in this room, as well as hot stones. Since it's not as wet or steamy as the Aroma Steam Bath, I was able to take better photos of this room. As noted previously, you can also access the Tepidarium from inside this room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CruisinSinceIwasBorn]

Great review. My wife and I booked a cabin on the spa deck but not a spa cabin. After reading reviews of the spa, we decided to book the week long access package ($249). Though it was a lot of money, it was well worth it. There was no better way to end a day of sun then to relax in the spa before dinner. The showers in the spa were incredible. Carnival did a great job at limiting the number of guests. Most of the time we had the spa to ourselves.

[rockbock]

The Oriental Steam Bath was the room that my husband and I used the most during this week. We loved the fact that it was hot, but not super steamy. The cool sprayers were heavenly.

 

Earlier in the review I promised that there would be some goofy photos every once in a while. Well it's that time again! At once point, my husband and I were alone in the Oriental Steam Bath, so I joked around about how they should offer pole dancing classes in these rooms (since they all have poles). I am NOT a dancer, but I started goofing off and before I knew it, we had about 25 photos of me dancing around that pole lol.

 

[rockbock]

The last of the four rooms is the Laconium. This room is dry and was maintained at a fairly cool temperature, but not quite as cool as the Tepidarium. As with all of the rooms, the temperature and music level could be adjusted from outside of the room.

 

This room featured individual heated tile chairs, as well as heated tile loungers. It also had an amazing ocean view. There were cool-water sprayers in the room, but it was maintained at a cool enough temperature that I never saw anybody using them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2012 by rockbock

[JaniceB]

Thank you so much for this review. I have a spa cabin booked on the Breeze and was curious about the access to the spa and what was included. The photos are great!

[rockbock]

Taking a short break, but still to come are the open showers, the relaxation room, and the locker room...

[rockbock]

Before I move on, I found a few more photos of the various rooms, taken from different angles:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jules815]

Is there a difference between a Thalasso pool and a regular hot tub?

[rockbock]

Next, I want to show you the AMAZING walk-in open showers. My husband and I saw these showers the first day of the cruise, but we never used them because we didn't think they were anything special, and why bother using an "open" shower if you can use the private ones in the locker room or our cabin? Let's just say that all showers are not created equal and I WISH I had tried these showers on the first day of the cruise!

 

By choice, I chose to shower in the spa locker room every day. Despite having an oversized bathroom in my cabin, it was worth the few extra steps for me to shower in the spa locker room and enjoy a nice, comfortable shower. However, if I had tried one of these open showers on the first day of the cruise, I would have taken EVERY shower for the entire trip in my bathsuit, just so I could enjoy this shower. It has enough privacy that I could have easily found a way to discretely wash the parts of my body covered by my swimsuit.

 

Throughout the duration of the cruise, I NEVER saw another passenger using one of these showers. I guess we all really missed out on something amazing.

 

In the photo below, which was taken from the end of the hallway with the four rooms, you can see the entry to one of the two open showers. It's the area on the left with the purplish glow.

 

 

 

When you first enter one of the showers, it looks like the first photo below. Then the "room" kind of turns direction a bit and creates a semi-private area in the back of the shower, which you can see in the second photo below. The best way to describe it is that nobody who passes the shower when you are using it can actually see you showering; however, since it is open in the front, anybody who wanted to walk into it could see you. For that reason, you kind of need to wear a swimsuit in these showers.

 

 

 

 

[babyblue78]

 

The process is a little different for weekly or daily Cloud 9 Spa passes. These guests will be given a new paper wristband each day with the "color of the day." They pretty much need to wear this wristband all day long, since it isn't reusable like the white bands given to guests in spa cabins. I believe the process of exchanging the S&S card for the VIP key is the same for these guests, except that two guests can't share one VIP key.

 

 

Great review of the spa! :)

 

Just to share our experience, we just disembarked yesterday from the 10/6 sailing and purchased the couples spa pass. (We considered the spa cabins, but really wanted a cove balcony so this gave us both.) At the spa checkin each day we were given a different colored wristband, but in case others are curious they were not the typical paper type. They were "upgraded" plasticized bands that snapped on with the Cloud9 logo printed on them, they were comfortable and didn't bother us at all. Each time we checked in together they asked us if we wanted one access card or two, we were allowed to share. So, we could have kept the card all day as you described as well as long as you can share one Sail and Sign card.

[babyblue78]

Is there a difference between a Thalasso pool and a regular hot tub?

 

The water has minerals added, and it is not chlorinated.

[rockbock]

I know from the two photos in the last post these showers look nice, but not really like anything special. That's why I didn't try them until the last day! One the last day of the cruise, I realized that there were a lot more knobs and controls than I thought were there, so I tested them out.

 

 

 

 

As it turns out, this shower didn't have just the rainfall shower head and the handheld sprayer. There were also powerful jets that sprayed water out of the side of the shower...but that's not all. These showers have an amazing "mister" too. When you turn on the mist, it feel kind of like you're standing under one of those mist machines that you frequently see at amusement parks to cool you off on a hot day. And these showers also have mood lighting, which is kind of a neat feature.

 

So yeah, we couldn't resist the temptation to take some more goofy photos when nobody was around to see. We turned on the mood lighting and turned off the camera flash. The result was some photos with very interesting lighting. We had to also turn off the mist while taking photos, because it clouded the camera. Here's what the lighting looks like:

 

 

 

That's the last of the goofy photos that I'll be posting lol.

 

But I can't stress enough that if you are a person who enjoys a good shower, you MUST try these out during your cruise. If I ever have the pleasure of staying in a spa cabin again, I'll be using these showers every morning.

[rockbock]

Is there a difference between a Thalasso pool and a regular hot tub?

 

 

(1) Size - The Thalasso Pool is almost the same size as one of the outdoor pools on the Dream. You can't really "swim" in it like a regular pool, because the lounger takes up a lot of space and it's very shallow, but it's HUGE.

 

(2) Temperature - On this ship, the ourdoor hot tubs were NOT hot. They were luke warm. This pool is supposed to be maintained at body temperature (slightly warmer than luke warm); however, it was maintained at about 101 degrees the entire week.

 

(3) As another poster mentioned, this pool is treated with minerals. It is supposed to be extra soothing and relaxing, particularly for arthritis patients. Personally, I didn't notice the minerals at all, but I'm sure they must have been there.

 

(4) Comfort - The lounger is so much more comfortable than a traditional hot tub, but only if the jets are off. As I mentioned earlier, the jets are too powerful and you have to really strain your body to not get pushed off of the lounger if the jets are on. I even saw some very large people getting pushed off of the lounger, so weight won't help you in this case.

 

(5) Cool Sprayers - Having the cool water showers in the tub was a nice feature. They seemed to be very popular among everyone using the Thalasso Pool.

[rockbock]

More later...taking another break.

[jwilloughby46]

Question, are there no more "free" saunas? Just wondering if there was another small sauna area that you could use without having to pay for it.