Vibe and Mandara thermal spa?

[doolfan]

My daughter and I are booked on Viva for next year to celebrate her college graduation. It will be our first cruise. I see that we can buy passes for Vibe for the week and will plan to do so as soon as they are available. The thermal spa (Mandara Spa) I’m less clear on. Can you only enter if you have the spa room? Or can you buy day or week passes?  We have a standard balcony room. If we can purchase a pass, would it too much to have both? Would it be somewhat redundant? 

[ggTexasGal]

8 hours ago, doolfan said:

My daughter and I are booked on Viva for next year to celebrate her college graduation. It will be our first cruise. I see that we can buy passes for Vibe for the week and will plan to do so as soon as they are available. The thermal spa (Mandara Spa) I’m less clear on. Can you only enter if you have the spa room? Or can you buy day or week passes?  We have a standard balcony room. If we can purchase a pass, would it too much to have both? Would it be somewhat redundant? 

If you want to utilized the Spa, Yes, you would need to purchase a Spa Pass. Sometimes, they offer Day Passes to the Spa (but possibly not at all).

I would decide between the two different passes depending on the season and the itinerary. 

On a cold season/itinerary, I would only purchase the Spa Pass.

On a port intensive itinerary, I would not bother with either, unless you are staying on the ship during ports of call.

[RunBikeCruiseDC]

9 hours ago, doolfan said:

My daughter and I are booked on Viva for next year to celebrate her college graduation. It will be our first cruise. I see that we can buy passes for Vibe for the week and will plan to do so as soon as they are available. The thermal spa (Mandara Spa) I’m less clear on. Can you only enter if you have the spa room? Or can you buy day or week passes?  We have a standard balcony room. If we can purchase a pass, would it too much to have both? Would it be somewhat redundant? 

We had a few people that had both on our cruise last week, they were not planning on leaving the ship as the ports of call were the typical Bahamas cruise that many of us have done a bazillion times.  

[wurm914]

1 hour ago, RunBikeCruiseDC said:

We had a few people that had both on our cruise last week, they were not planning on leaving the ship as the ports of call were the typical Bahamas cruise that many of us have done a bazillion times.  

This was my rationale (some may call it girly math) for justifying buying spa passes.  We're unlikely to get off the ship much at all, I love the ship atmosphere and have been to the Caribbean many times.  I figure $319 pp  (9 day cruise) for a spa pass is a lot cheaper than excursions.

[Laszlo]

12 hours ago, doolfan said:

My daughter and I are booked on Viva for next year to celebrate her college graduation. It will be our first cruise. I see that we can buy passes for Vibe for the week and will plan to do so as soon as they are available. The thermal spa (Mandara Spa) I’m less clear on. Can you only enter if you have the spa room? Or can you buy day or week passes?  We have a standard balcony room. If we can purchase a pass, would it too much to have both? Would it be somewhat redundant? 

These video's are Not from the Viva but they will give you an idea of what Vibe and the Thermal Spa are like. Vibe and Thermal are both sold as weekly passes, sometimes you can get a day pass to the Thermal on a port day. If the weather looks to be great all week get the Vibe, if not get the Thermal or splurge and get both if you can 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by Laszlo

[jcollin]

we had both on Escape in March.  Well worth it.  For Escape we had a spa balcony so that part was covered.  For the Vibe we purchased them from with in the NCL app.  Ability to buy them beforehand is nice, no more running people over to get them on day 1.  On the NCL app it was $209pp for Vibe for the week.

[doolfan]

Thank you guys very much for the help!  We’ll do Vibe for sure and the spa if we can get a day pass. Being our first cruise and first time to Europe we are planning to do all the ports, but it will be nice to relax in a hot tub in the evening!  We’ll get a spa pass for our one at sea day if offered!

[iKarenE]

We were on the Escape last week and bought the weeks pass for the Thermal Spa. ($299 a person for the week) It was the highlight of our trip. It was amazing and perfect if you wanted to relax and get away from the crowds. The therapy pool was unbelievable. Just a heads up.....Ours sold out fast and I went online at 12:01am 120 days out and bought it. Later that day it was sold out. They limit the amount of passes they sell, ours was limited to 120. We didn't do the Vibe Pass but wish we did. The pool and pool decks were so crazy packed and we couldn't find empty seats the couple of times we looked. That was disappointing for sure. The thermal spa made up for it though!! 

[eileeshb]

On 5/4/2023 at 2:32 AM, doolfan said:

Thank you guys very much for the help!  We’ll do Vibe for sure and the spa if we can get a day pass. Being our first cruise and first time to Europe we are planning to do all the ports, but it will be nice to relax in a hot tub in the evening!  We’ll get a spa pass for our one at sea day if offered!

I picked the spa pass for my Mediterranean cruise as it was long days in port with a lot of walking so the jets in the therapy pool were very good as a bit of a massage.  On my cruise the ship was less than 50% capacity so there was no need for Vibe, but it would probably be useful now that the ships are over 100% double occupancy.  I'd check the price of a Spa balcony cabin to see if the cost of switching to that is greater or lesser than the cost of 2 thermal spa passes.